PORTLAND, Maine — The Hearts of Pine were as harmless as this weekend’s supposed Nor’easter, falling 4-1 Saturday night to the Sarasota Paradise in a surprisingly uncompetitive match that essentially ended Portland’s postseason dreams.
Portland fell behind 2-0 in the first seven minutes of the match. The Hearts rallied with a spectacular goal from Jay Tee Kamara 12 minutes later, but the brief surge came to a crashing halt with a third Sarasota goal just before halftime. Sarasota added a fourth tally soon after the teams returned for the second half, and the Portland offense petered out like the storm that dropped a little rain on fans at Fitzpatrick Stadium but really never materialized.
While Portland technically remains in striking distance of Fort Wayne FC, which holds the final playoff spot, the Hearts are eight points behind with four matches remaining and five teams between. Fort Wayne also has five games remaining.
It was a strange match because it never felt like Sarasota was dominating even though the Paradise outpossessed Portland 58% to 42%. The Paradise only registered five shots on goal, but as the scoreboard showed, they buried four. All were also no-doubters.
“It’s disappointing when you get a result like this,” said Hearts’ defender Josh Drack. “I don’t necessarily think it was that big of a difference today quality-wise but they capitalized on two goals really early and we were in a deficit from the beginning.”
The Hearts only garnered two shots on goal, and besides that remarkable solo effort by Kamara, they rarely seemed dangerous in the final third.
But to say the match was more of the same for Portland would be wrong. For the first time in more than a month, the defense looked discombobulated and vulnerable, failing to mark opponents at the worst possible time. Over its last three matches, Portland had conceded just two goals (two wins and a draw).
The poor defensive effort likely stemmed from limited roster choices because of injuries and last-minute international call-ups. On Friday, the club learned that it had lost a second player this week to an international call-up. Midfielder Michel Poon-Angeron was on a flight Friday to Port of Spain so he could play for his home country, Trinidad & Tobago. Earlier in the week, defender Mo Mohamed was called up to Somalia.
Factor in injuries like Ollie Wright’s season-ending knee tear and their departures left Portland with a thin roster. Diego Letayf Escutia took Poon-Angeron’s midfield slot while manning Mohamed’s right-back position was Jaden Jones-Riley, who had played sparingly this season as he worked himself back from a serious knee injury sustained in 2025.
Losing Poon-Angeron particularly hurt the Hearts’ defensive flow and transitions, Hearts’ coach Bobby Murphy said.
“He provides a lot, he’s an emotional piece, he’s a continuity piece in terms of what we want to do,” Murphy said. “Now you’re putting a lot on Diego (Letayf Escutia), you’re putting a lot on Matteo (Kidd). You saw that early on, that continuity that we had been building, now it gets disrupted again.”
Throughout the first half, Sarasota players were slicing through Portland’s defense with little to no marking from defenders. Following the second goal, Murphy yelled from the sideline to Kidd, telling him and Letayf Escutia, who were manning the middle, “Stay in there. You guys are all over the place!”
Murphy lamented having to put players like Jones-Riley “in bad spots.” He was replaced by Drack to start the second half after having several tough moments in the first 45 minutes.
“Jaden is coming back and we are trying to give him a chance to get his legs under him,” Murphy said. “We have to throw him out there because we are out of bodies that can play there. It’s probably a little unfair but it’s the world we live in right now.”
Sarasota struck quickly, first off a corner kick in the fourth minute where Sarasota’s Kisa Kiingi slipped unabated through the box and one-timed a shot past Portland goalkeeper Hunter Morse. Sarasota’s Sander Røed took a Hearts’ turnover and was left unmarked so he swiveled and curled in the game’s second goal three minutes later.
Kamara’s goal came after he made a run down the right side and tried to pass to his teammate, forward Aboubacar Camara. The pass was blocked, deflecting back to him, and in an “Okay, I’ll just do this myself” moment, Kamara dribbled through several defenders and then craftily slotted it past Sarasota’s sprawling goalkeeper, Alexander Sutton.
For nearly 20 minutes, Portland took the upper hand and a tying goal felt imminent. But then the Hearts’ defense broke again, enabling Røed to score his brace by shooting into a mostly wide open goal. Scoring that in the last few minutes of the half sucked the life out of Portland and the Hearts never recovered.
“We just can’t concede goals like that,” Murphy said. “We concede at bad moments.”
Portland and Sarasota had come into the game tied with 30 points. While Portland is technically still within reach of Fort Wayne, the Hearts would need a 2014 Sunderland-esque “Great Escape” to even have a chance to overcome such a deficit.
Don’t tell the players that the playoffs are out of reach though. They still believe.
“We just want to go 4-and-O and see what happens,” Kidd said.