Where did the Portland Hearts of Pine lose its way this season?
Sure, four games remain and the Hearts technically have a chance to make the playoffs, although it would take a small miracle. But it is a legitimate question for a club that came in with such high aspirations following its successful inaugural season in 2025.
The answer is pretty simple. The season was lost on the road, and in particular, during the end of games in stoppage time.
Portland conceded 50 goals this season and nine of those — nearly one in five — came in the 90th minute or later. Eight of those nine were in away matches. Portland lost a total of 14 points in those seven games, which was the difference between a clear playoff spot vs. the Hearts’ current standing near the bottom of the table.
Of course, clubs concede goals in stoppage time. That happens every week in USL1. Conversely, the Hearts won their match on July 3 on the road vs. Naples with two goals of their own in stoppage time.
So it would be ridiculous to think that in a different universe, Portland would have earned all 14 points it lost in those late-match results. But losing this many times in the closing moments of matches has left Coach Bobby Murphy wondering what could have been. Several times this season, Murphy has said he has never seen so many late-match collapses before.
“I told the team a couple of weeks ago we’re probably a grand total of five feet away from being in third or fourth place,” Murphy said. “You know, an inch here, a foot there. It’s just small margins and whether it’s our own fault or the luck or the universe or just the way things have happened, we haven’t gotten those little breaks that make a difference.”
Murphy believes the late-game disasters turned into a proverbial snowball running downhill for many of his players. As matches moved into the end stages, he said, players started wondering if another collapse was imminent and in response began playing passively, standing around and failing to mark opponents.
“You start trying to protect something that isn’t yours to protect,” Murphy said. “You’ve gotta keep being aggressive, you’ve gotta keep closing people down.”
In several games, Hearts’ defenders gave far too much space to their opponents. The match vs. the Charlotte Independence serves as an excellent example: Portland conceded two goals deep into stoppage time because of lackluster defense. Just look at the second goal to see how wide open Charlotte’s Stefano Pinho was left in the box.
There’s other important information to take from the graphic above.
Most importantly, Portland has not been a second-half team. If you group the seven windows into halves: the first 45 minutes account for 16 of 50 goals conceded (32%), while 34 goals (68%) were tallied in the second half. The last three windows (61-75’, 76-89’, 90’+) account for 26 of 50 (52%). The single worst window on the whole chart is 61-75’, with 10 goals, more than any other 15-minute stretch. The 90’+ window, by contrast, covers only a few minutes of actual clock time yet still produced the second-most goals of any window — nine.
So it was not just stoppage-time collapses; the fade started well before the final whistle.
Ray Saari, Portland’s newly hired Sporting Director, said he was still assessing the season but believed that there’s room for the club to improve in multiple areas beyond simply the late-match scoring issues.
“The club isn’t in a position right now that we’re happy with — this is an ambitious place,” Saari said. “There’s a lot of things that myself and Bobby are evaluating with the squad, what we can do to get better, so I wouldn’t say there’s one thing or two things, but definitely a lot to assess and take in for sure.”