COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Portland Timbers jumped up and down at midfield, as thousands of Timbers fans looked on from the stands, waving flags and singing in a moment of pure elation. It was a very long time before the players slowly made their way off the field, still holding the MLS Cup high. Portland beat the Columbus Crew 2-1 at MAPFRE Stadium in Columbus in front of 21,747 fans Sunday to win its first MLS Cup in club history.
It was September 20, a warm, sunny September Sunday afternoon in Portland. Erin and I had returned from our honeymoon- two weeks in Iceland and Norway- less than 72 hour prior, and we were sitting in the stands at Providence Park in downtown Portland as the Timbers lost to the New York Red Bulls 2-0. The game tickets had been a wedding present, so we were excited that one of our first activities back on American soil would be a Timbers game. Soccer is a passion for me, not so much for Erin…but she’s been coming around, if for no other reason than so many of our friends are rabid Timbers supporters.
Unfortunately, our excitement was for naught as the Timbers came out and laid an egg in a game nowhere near as close as the final score might otherwise indicate. Yes, New York would finish the season with the best record in Major League Soccer (MLS) and win the Supporter’s Shield. No matter, on that afternoon the home side would have struggled against Our Lady of Perpetual Motion Junior College. No passion, no effort, and no evidence that things might change. Optimism was in short supply.
The next weekend, they traveled to Columbus and somehow managed to beat the Crew 2-1 (note the foreshadowing) in surprisingly decisive fashion. Upon returning to Portland, they reverted to type and lost to Sporting Kansas City 1-0…and looked even worse than they had against New York. If the season had ended after the loss to SKC, they wouldn’t have qualified for the playoffs. The passion felt by the team’s fan base hadn’t diminished, but any hope they would qualify for the postseason was diminishing. The candle handn’t been snuffed…but it was flickering with its last dying light.
And then it happened.
“We were never in danger,” Portland coach Caleb Porter said. “We were comfortable. We were tight. We saw the game out. We shut it down. That’s a part of winning.”
The victory capped a three-year mission for Porter, who led the University of Akron to an NCAA title in 2010 before leaving in August 2012 to join the Timbers.
“All I could think about [at the final whistle] was sharing that moment with my players,” he said. “We’ve been through a long season and shared the highs and lows.
“We haven’t always gone on long winning streaks, but when we do lose, we respond and get big wins and that’s what we did this year, every time I think people thought that we were down and out, we pop up with a big result, the players deserve credit for that, that shows their character.
Portland traveled to Utah, where Nat Borchers put a header past his former mates to beat Real Salt Lake 1-0…and the Timbers looked like a side on a mission. The following weekend, I traveled to L.A. with some friends for the Timbers match against L.A. Galaxy. To say we weren’t optimistic would have been an understatement of epic proportions. In June, the Timbers had traveled to StubHub Center, only to be embarrassed 5-0 on national television by the home side.
Get a roll of stamps and mail it in, eh? We were simply hoping the Timbers would show up and spare the embarrassing effort they gave four months earlier. Unrest among Timbers fans was palpable. The team was underperforming, playing as if their wake up call had been set for 15 minutes before kickoff. Even the Timbers Army, which traveled to Southern California in large numbers, was surprisingly subdued.
This trip to L.A. turned out far different. The Galaxy, on paper the most talented (by far) side in MLS, jumped out to a 1-0 lead and showed no sign of letting up. Just as we were fearing the Timbers might fold like a bad poker hand, they came to life in the second half. Four different Timbers scored in 25 minutes to beat the Galaxy and former Timbers goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts 5-2 before a sellout crowd of 27,000 and a national television audience. Something changed on that warm afternoon on the campus of Cal State-Dominguez Hills. My friends and I were beyond that our trip- three days on the waterfront in Manhattan Beach- had been capped by a decisive win over a side that for years has been a nemesis. The consensus that the case of Pliny the Elder consumed by my friends (I can’t stand IPAs) was the good luck charm. Whatever the case, there are worse things to be doing than drinking expensive beer in Manhattan Beach before and after a Timbers victory.
Including the win in L.A., the Timbers would go undefeated over their final eight regular and post-season matches. The week after decimating L.A., they returned to Providence Park and dismantled Colorado 4-1 in the season’s final match…and qualify for the playoffs as the #3 of six seeds. They barely made it past Sporting Kansas City (perhaps the most unsportsmanlike and dirty MLS side) in the knockout game. In the 11th round of the penalty kick shootout, goalkeeper Adam Kwarasey made his penalty kick and then stopped the effort from SKC’s keeper, and the Timbers lived to fight another day.
They defeated Vancouver and FC Dallas in successive home-and-home aggregate series…and looked impressive in doing so. Yes, the side which not two months earlier could have justifiably been left for dead would be playing for its first-ever MLS Cup.
Yesterday, The Timbers capped their undefeated streak, returning to Columbus and defeating the Crew by the same 2-1 score to win the 2015 MLS Cup. Portland came out aggressively, scoring twice in the first seven minutes, and Columbus was never able to mount a comeback after scoring in the 18th minute. At the final whistle, Portland had it’s first MLS Championship and the Rose City’s first major championship since the Trail Blazers won the NBA title in 1977.
Yeah, it’s kind of a big deal.
The proceedings weren’t without controversy. The sequence that led to the Timbers’ second goal, off a header by Rodney Wallace, began with the ball rolling well over the touchline without the assistant referee calling it. That was unfortunate for the Crew…but a Columbus defender got away with a blatant second-half handball that prevented the Timbers from scoring their third goal. Tit for tat, I suppose. Factor those things in, and the score line very likely would have remained unchanged at 2-1. Crew fans throwing beers cans notwithstanding, the Timbers were the better side on this day. The Timbers 2-1 victory at MAPFRE Stadium on September 26th was revealed to be no fluke.
Erin and I watched the game at a pub with friends. I had an opportunity to purchase game tickets, but while we could have afforded that layout, we couldn’t justify the couple thousand dollars it would have cost for plane tickets and a hotel. So we did the next best thing and celebrated with friends, which made for a very special afternoon. The pandemonium in the pub was unlike anything I’ve experience. I’m not a screamer…but my throat is still sore from deviating from my norm in a major way. A few of us, myself included, were a bit misty-eyed at the final whistle.
Trust me, when it comes to passion, there are few supporters groups on the planet more committed and all-in than Timbers fans. Winning the MLS Cup for the first time was, to quote Vice-President Joe Biden, “a big f——-g deal.” The Timbers’ charter is landing at PDX in a few hours. The airport is shutting down the upper roadway, normally reserved for dropping off passengers, in anticipation of several thousand supporters greeting the team on what promises to be a cold, very wet, and generally pretty miserable afternoon in the Rose City.
When the team arrives, NO ONE will care about the weather.
Erin and I finally were able to purchase season tickets for next season, and I can hardly wait. Turns out I won’t have to wait long; the Timbers first match is in the first week in March.
Game on, eh?
