There have been precious few uncomplicated good things about the Portland Timbers’ 2021 season.
Long before last night, Dairon Asprilla was one of those things. A career-long inconsistent, temperamental depth player turned—seemingly out of the blue—into an everyday starter, hustle machine, and consistent goal scorer, one of the first names on the team sheet each week, all year long.
The improbability of a player like Asprilla, at 29 years old, in his seventh season with the club, making the turn and having a season like he’s had this year is difficult to overstate.
The one thing that Asprilla has always had, from the moment he arrived in Portland, is knack for the late-season spectacular. And on Wednesday night, with the Timbers hosting the San Jose Earthquakes in the thick of a battle for playoff positioning, he delivered the kind of signature moment to punctuate this career year that only he could. In the 55th minute, with the Timbers leading San Jose 1–0, Santiago Moreno, spotting a streaking Asprilla, slightly overhit his through pass. It should have been an easy play for Earthquakes goalkeeper JT Marcinkowski.
But as Marcinkowski came to claim the ball ahead of Asprilla, he bobbled and spilled it on the top left corner of the box. Asprilla controlled the ball with his back to goal, popped it up into the air with his first touch, and then, still going backwards, away from goal, launched an exquisite arching bicycle kick that sailed over the retreating Marcinkowski’s head and in one hop nestled into the back of the net.
A bicycle kick goal in any game, at any level of soccer, is a rarity to savor. A bicycle kick goal like this one—with Asprilla picking up a loose ball, back to goal, setting himself up, and still getting the power and precision on the overhead required to beat the defense, is like little else you’ll ever see.
In a vacuum, it was an astonishing moment. Add in all of Asprilla’s history in Portland, and it was the that much more extraordinary.
After all, it was just two seasons ago that Asprilla scored a similarly jaw-dropping bicycle kick in a game not for the Timbers, but for T2, facing not the Earthquakes in a crunch MLS match, but the Las Vegas Lights in a sleepy USL encounter. And keep in mind, Asprilla was not a rookie that March night at Merlo Field. He was approaching his 27th birthday, having scored a grand total of five regular-season MLS goals in four years in the league. He looked for all the world like an entertaining player who had neither the ability nor the mentality to be an everyday contributor for the big club.
But perhaps because of that spark, that feeling that Asprilla could be a special player if only he could get the support he needed and mentally lock himself in, the Timbers stuck with him. It is a testament to the club’s faith and Asprilla’s faith in himself that he’s still with the Timbers this year to produce a season like the one he’s had and this goal that no one in Portland will ever forget.
The accolades poured in almost immediately, from Alyssa Milano, from SportsCenter, and from newspapers around the world. Asprilla is deserving of every one.
From a competitive standpoint, the goal—as Asprilla’s always do at this time of the year—mattered a great deal as well. It all but put away the Earthquakes, handing the Timbers a massive three points and stopping their three-game skid.
Otherwise, it was a night of positives for Giovani Savarese’s team. Santiago Moreno turned in by far his best performance for the club, the defense kept its first clean sheet in nearly a month, and, perhaps most importantly, the attack threatened consistently and scored twice with Sebastian Blanco sitting on the bench.
The Timbers’ first goal, which came with just more than ten minutes to play in the first half, was excellent in its own right. Bill Tuiloma, back at his natural position at center back, brought the ball out of defense and pinged an entry pass in to Yimmi Chará, who combined with Felipe Mora and hit Moreno, who returned the ball to Mora, who whipped a dangerous low cross into the middle that Diego Chará stabbed in to open the scoring.
It was quietly one of the best team goals of the season—made by the excellent central attacking midfield play of Yimmi Chará, the equally excellent center forward play of Mora, and the awareness of Diego Chará, the captain, making up the numbers to unbalance the Earthquakes defense and finishing instinctively.
That one goal would have been enough. The Timbers were compact defensively, allowing the Earthquakes nearly 60% possession and getting out-passed 490–336, but San Jose lacked the creativity or cohesion to break Portland down. Though they eventually took 17 shots, they located just five on target. Steve Clark’s only memorable save came from very little shortly after the restart, when a quick spin and shot from Jeremy Ebobisse on top of the box had Clark stretching to turn it wide. Other than that, and a scuffed chance in the opening ten minutes, Ebobisse had little to show for his return to Providence Park.
The Timbers could have run up the score further in this one as well, with Blanco nearly scoring the night’s second world-class goal on a signature slaloming run through the box shortly after coming on, but San Jose made it to the final whistle with a respectable scoreline intact.
The Timbers now get a full off week before they travel to Utah to face Real Salt Lake for a playoff-positioning six-pointer, one that they should have Blanco back in the starting lineup for. But when that game kicks off, and for many games to come, we’ll all still be basking in the glow of that Asprilla moment—reminder, amidst a difficult season and continued, righteous, painful acrimony between the club and its supporters, of what a joy this sport can be.