Goal: Red Bulls: Glass Half Full, or Half Empty?

The Red Bulls' season-opening game at Portland on Sunday night might have been the best game of a busy opening weekend for Major League Soccer. In some ways, though, the 3-3 tie was also the worst.

A few words on Sunday's key players:

Fabian Espindola is going to be really popular in Harrison if he keeps popping up in the right place. Acquired in an off-season trade with Real Salt Lake, he scored twice in the first 25 minutes Sunday, opportunistically pouncing on defensive mistakes. Sometimes scoring takes a brilliant move (more on that later). Sometimes it's just a matter of being in the right place. Sometimes it helps if your team's best player is so invisible for long stretches that you have more room to move.

Diego Valeri had the play of the game, juggling an entry pass through the center of the Red Bulls' defense before flicking it past goalkeeper Luis Robles in the 14th minute. It was a stunning bit of skill from the Argentine, who like Espindola was making his debut for his new team, and it served as a lifeline for Portland in a half in which plenty went wrong.

Mikael Silvestre had the worst opening night by an M.L.S. defender in front of his home crowd since, well, Nicola Caricola. But even the mighty Caricola was only to blame for one goal. Silvestre was responsible, directly or indirectly, for all three scored by the Red Bulls: a mind-numbingly bad back pass that led to Espindola's opening goal, a whiff that let Espindola in again to score the second, and a poorly timed walkabout that allowed the Red Bulls to add a third before halftime. That's a rough debut for a guy who attended his first practice with the team on Friday. At least he knows it can't possibly get worse.

Silvestre's troubles only served to cover up for the wild night of Jamison Olave, who scored the third goal — for each team. Olave pounced on a Heath Pearce cross in the 28th minute, scoring from close range, but then deflected a similar low cross from the right into his own net in the 83rd minute, completing Portland's comeback. Olave also wandered away like a child from his mother in a department store in the 93rd minute, leaving Ryan Johnson alone for a bicycle kick that could have won it for Portland.

The referee Jair Marrufo is not going to like the grades he gets from the league office after he turned a blind eye to a clear penalty in the 54th minute, when Heath Pearce pulled down Andrew Jean-Baptiste like a calf-roper in a rodeo ring. Pearce did everything but tie Jean-Baptiste's ankles together when he was done, but Marrufo saw none of it. Darlington Nagbe took Marrufo off the hook just over a minute later when he slammed in a rebound to make it 3-2, but if the Timbers hadn't come away with a point, they would have (rightly) been screaming about Pearce's foul.

Man of the match? For Portland, it has to be Valeri for his tight-space juggling act. For the Red Bulls? A tossup between Espindola and Silvestre.