The Portland Timbers honored Diego Valeri by inducting him into the club’s ring of honor before their Saturday night match against the Columbus Crew—and by earning a 3-2 win on the field.
Coming into the game winless in their last five matchups, Portland was hoping to honor ‘The Maestro’ with three points to snap the winless streak.
Celebrating his birthday, head coach Gio Savarese wanted the win as a present.
The day was made right for both, as the Timbers secured the nail-biting 3-2 win over the Crew.
Neither team could create much early in the first half, as the game lacked any sort of rhythm or control. However, that changed after the first 25 minutes.
In the 28th minute, Claudio Bravo somehow found a way a collect the rebound to find Dario Župarić. The center back played it to Dairon Asprilla, who finished past Columbus goalkeeper Patrick Schulte to put the home side up 1-0.
Two minutes later, Franck Boli played a perfect through ball into Asprilla, who beat two defenders and Schulte double the Timbers’ lead. Evander’s pass to the frontline had sprung the counterattack.
This made the match the first time Portland had scored more than one goal in a game since their 3-1 win over the Vancouver Whitecaps in May.
Still, in first half stoppage time, Columbus responded with a Lucas Zelarayán goal to cut the lead in half.
In the 49th minute, Zac McGraw headed a potential Christian Ramírez equalizer off the line.
In the 62nd minute, the Portland Timbers put out their best substitutions of the year with Sebastián Blanco, Yimmi Chará, and Felipe Mora coming on.
The party was spoiled in the 65th minute, when Zelarayán would tally a second goal for a brace. His golazo was hit perfectly from outside of the box to beat Timbers goalkeeper David Bingham.
In the 69th minute, the Crew nearly went ahead when Jacen Russell-Rowe got passed the backline. Bingham came up with the biggest save of the night to keep it level.
In the 73rd minute, Mora won the header off a set piece and to redirected it to Y. Chará, who hit off the post.
The Timbers were not going to let the party end on a sour note. In the 80th minute, Y. Chará played a ball across goal that found Blanco, who smashed it home for the 3-2 lead.
This was Seba’s first regular season goal since his amazing comeback from injury.
The Timbers legend was not only being honored for his successes on the pitch—but fro what he did off of it, too.
Valeri was a player who loved being in the community and giving back to people. Any time he was given the change to help, his mind way already made up.
He will go down as a legendary player in the team’s history—and as one of the best people to take the pitch for the club.
Valeri and his family have the utmost love for the city of Portland. They should be remembered for always being a light to everyone who came across them.
Thank you, Diego, Florencia, and Connie.
You all be missed very much. We are forever grateful.
Hat Trick watch
In Timbers history, no player has ever tallied a hat trick, but that could have changed Saturday.
Cooooool finish from Dairon Asprilla to put @TimbersFC ahead!
Our condolences are to Dairon Asprilla’s hometown friend and their family. His strength in the face of great loss is remarkable and inspiring. Please send all your positive thoughts and vibes to him.
This article originally appeared in FourFourTwo USA. We are republishing it on the occasion of Diego Valeri’s departure from the Portland Timbers.
Nobody in Portland can quite believe they’ve got Diego Valeri.
When the Argentine came here in 2013, it was almost by accident. The Timbers had been eyeing then-U.S. men’s national team midfielder Mix Diskerud, an acquisition that was ultimately undone by the fine print in Diskerud’s potential contract. Valeri was plan B.
What nobody could have foreseen was what Valeri would become. After five years in the Rose City, Valeri is not only a player who defines the Portland Timbers on the field, but he’s a man who inspires more effusive emotion off it. The universal love Valeri’s won in Portland transcends any other athlete’s — or probably, for that matter, any other public figure’s.
That level of admiration goes much deeper than what he does on the field. That’s where it started, of course — Valeri is an elite enganche who orchestrates the Timbers’ attack and also happens to score lots of goals — but what has everyone in awe is he also happens to be an almost impossibly good guy. It seems like a violation of some basic law of the universe for a human being to be both as gifted with a ball and as humble, circumspect and generous as Valeri is.
The outer layer of Portland’s love affair with Valeri — the part that’s observable from outside the city — is his community service. The marquee example is his collaboration with Keith Palau, the Timbers supporter who was named “Community MVP” by the league’s MLS WORKS initiative in 2017.
Palau headed up a renovation of the visitation rooms at two foster care facilities — where foster kids get an hour each week to meet with their birth families — in Washington County, just west of Portland. “They tend to be cold and clinical,” Palau says of the facilities. “You know, it’s in a government building.”
Under the banner of 107ist (short for 107 Independent Supporters Trust, the organized, dues-paying core of the Timbers Army), Palau started raising money to redecorate the drab Hillsboro room in Timbers green and gold.
Sometime during the fundraising and planning stages, Palau unexpectedly heard from Valeri. “I want to help,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”
Palau didn’t take it seriously at first. “I thought, ‘that’s nice to say.’ ” But Valeri came back, and he, his wife, Florencia, and their young daughter, Connie, showed up to build furniture and paint.
“You expect them to show up for 30 minutes and pretend to paint a little bit, but no… They were here to work, and they stayed the whole time. They’ve always done more than you’d expect,” says Palau.
A Portland Trend: Everybody Loves Diego
Photo courtesy of Todd Diskin
It’s the same story with the other projects Valeri has gotten involved with. Once a year, the Timbers, Thorns and T2 teams, which all share the same ownership, organize Stand Together Week, during which the teams send players to work on community service projects. That’s how Valeri found out about the Children’s Book Bank, a Portland nonprofit that distributes free books to kids in underserved communities.
“He came and volunteered right after training,” remembers Todd Diskin, partnership manager at the Book Bank. “He was amazed that all this existed,” Diskin says, gesturing at the stacks of donated books that fill the nonprofit’s Northeast Portland space.
Diskin gave Valeri the lowdown on childhood literacy: how kids living in poverty get, on average, 25 hours with books between birth and first grade, compared with 1,000 or more hours in more affluent communities. How that discrepancy affects educational outcomes for those children before they even start school. How working to change it is an anti-poverty measure.
Valeri’s own account of his affinity for the Children’s Book Bank is almost startlingly personal, revealing the genuine empathy with which he approaches the world. “Some kids don’t have an atmosphere around them that’s ideal,” he says. “Books are a world where you can be involved with a reality very different than you are living in.”
The Argentinean playmaker spent the day cleaning donated books, but just as he did with the foster care visitation rooms, he didn’t simply show up for a photo opportunity. “He reached out to me not too long after that wanting to volunteer, to do more,” says Diskin.
He started bringing books Connie had outgrown, and at one point, all three Valeris came back for another book cleaning session, which Diskin opened up to Timbers Army members. Connie, now 8, held a book drive at the family’s apartment building.
A handful of other causes in the Portland area have captured Valeri’s interest. One is Operation Pitch Invasion, which restores and builds soccer fields and futsal courts in underprivileged neighborhoods. Valeri is often seen at OPI court openings, and recently bought a piece at Art Without Pity, an art show benefiting the nonprofit.
He’s also worked with the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, which organizes soccer clubs and clinics for the youth it serves. One day, he showed up to a futsal training to meet some of those youth.
Photo courtesy of Julie Roberts
There’s more he doesn’t talk about, not wanting it to look like he’s out for publicity; it’s common knowledge among Timbers Army regulars that much of Valeri’s work in the community isn’t publicized at all.
Ask him about why he’s gotten involved in these causes and Valeri deflects. Much of it, he says, he gets wind of through Florencia, who he says is “behind everything” (he rarely refers to himself at all, instead defaulting to “we,” by which he means himself and his wife). He’s much happier talking about people like Palau and Diskin than about his own involvement, which he plays down as perfectly normal. “It’s the way I want to live,” he says. “I’ve always lived like that… We’re all responsible for the place we live.”
For a pro team’s star player to be this embedded in his community isn’t normal, of course. But the fact that he sees it that way is an important part of why Valeri is so universally beloved here. To really understand the depth of the love affair between Valeri and this city, you have to understand two things: the soccer community in Portland, and where Valeri himself comes from.
A lot of ink has been spilled about the “authenticity” of the gameday atmosphere at Providence Park: the elaborate tifo, the smoke, the ritualized setlist of never-ending chants What’s not as well understood outside Portland is that the whole phenomenon is a legitimately grassroots endeavor — and that it has a reach that goes well beyond the stadium.
There’s history here, dating back to the NASL Timbers of the 1970s. The modern-day Timbers Army started with the resurrected USL team; back then the supporters group was “25 people banging on pickle buckets,” as Diskin puts it (he was there). In the mid-2000s, when the campaign to get the Timbers into MLS started, it wasn’t a corporate ownership group but members of the Army, who often wound up at City Council meetings, lobbying to bring the league to Portland, hashing out bureaucratic details with reluctant council members.
Today, there are two 501(c)(3) organizations affiliated with the Army: OPI and the Gisele Currier Scholarship Fund, which raises money for local kids who otherwise couldn’t afford to play club soccer.
Mirroring Valeri’s attitude, most people take it as a given. “There happened to be a lot of civic-minded people involved, people who cared about the community,” 107ist board member Sherrilynn Rawlson says. “It seemed like a natural development.”
Start asking around, and you quickly realize the Timbers Army is a huge extended family. Talk to Rawlson, who stands in section 116, and she’ll ask if you know Michelle, in section 103. Michelle will ask if you know Darren, the drummer. Darren, naturally, is friends with Frank, who bangs one of the big drums that are the Army’s beating heart.
Everybody says to talk to Frank.
Franklin Oteiza is a Chilean immigrant who fell in love with the Timbers back in 2003, in the club’s USL days. He was Valeri’s first introduction to this strange fiefdom, serving as a spiritual guide when the Argentine arrived in Portland.
To hear Oteiza tell it, Valeri’s arrival in the Rose City was spun by the fates. He knew about Valeri’s exploits at his boyhood club, Atletico Lanus — how, in 2007, the then-20-year-old helped his club win its first-ever Apertura title, the same year the squad had gotten a hard-fought road draw against league giant Boca Juniors. He remembered commentators hailing Valeri as the next big thing when he went to Porto on loan in 2009.
“I knew if this guy signed, he was going to be the greatest Timber ever in the history of the club,” Oteiza says with the certainty of a man who’s lived and breathed this game his whole life. “I’m talking about a completely different level, something that’s just not common in MLS.”
Photo by Nikita Taparia
Oteiza felt a kinship with Valeri even when his acquisition by the Timbers was still a rumor. The footballing cultures of Chile and Argentina have a lot of shared DNA, and when Valeri signed with the Timbers, Oteiza couldn’t get over the feeling that he needed to talk to him, to tell him about his adopted home, one South American expat to another.
“It was really important for me to tell this guy we’re for real,” he remembers. “That here we chant and clap and sing for victory for 90-plus minutes… This is it, this is just like Argentina, man. Just like Chile. We sing with all this crazy power, and we’re not going to stop.”
One day shortly after Valeri’s arrival, the drum corps was unloading at the stadium. “As I’m parking, I’m telling my buddy, I need to talk to Diego, I need to talk to Diego,” Oteiza said. As if on cue, Valeri emerged from one of the park’s arched gateways. “Right there in front of me, man.” Valeri, who was still learning English, was relieved to meet somebody who sounded like he came from back home.
“He told me the story about the Timbers, and I was shocked,” says Valeri. “He told me about the history, about the Army, the way they are organized, the way they support the team, they support the city. It was amazing. I didn’t expect that history.”
The grassroots nature of the Army reminded Valeri of the way football works in Argentina, where clubs tend to be supporter-owned. “You don’t find that in different places around the world, in the big clubs,” he says.
Where Valeri and Oteiza come from, intensity and passion often go hand-in-hand with violence and organized crime. “Those were the times, unfortunately, when a lot of crazy stuff was happening in Argentina,” says Oteiza. “People getting killed at the stadiums.”
That’s something Valeri is all too familiar with. “Every team in my country has or [has] had violent experiences,” he says.
By Valeri’s later years at Lanus, Florencia had stopped bringing Connie to matches, fearing for her safety. The family knew they had to get out of Argentina when they were robbed at gunpoint in 2012.
For men living in poverty where Valeri comes from, football “is the only way we have,” Oteiza says, “to release all this incredible frustration and anger and pain.” He recalls being shocked, at his first Timbers game, that people drank beer in the stadium without fights erupting.
Around the same time Valeri arrived in Portland, the Timbers Army, which produces its own line of merchandise, came out with a new t-shirt with a fitting slogan: “Welcome to Paradise.”
It didn’t take long for Valeri to settle in on the pitch. He scored 10 MLS goals in 2013, and it was in that first year that he first kissed the Timbers crest on his shirt after scoring, a gesture that makes Oteiza’s voice shake when he talks about it. In 2015, after spending much of the season recovering from a torn ACL, Valeri took 27 seconds to notch the Timbers’ first goal in the championship match against Columbus—the fastest in MLS Cup history.
By then, Valeri had adopted Portland as his off-the-pitch home in earnest. “When my daughter started to settle down and have a normal life right as a kid,” he says, “there was a moment where I [thought] that Portland is my home.”
Connie, who was four when the Valeris arrived, is a Portland kid through and through. She plays for a youth club at Rose City Futsal and follows the Thorns religiously.
She got her dad into the team, too. Despite growing up with Lanus, Valeri says the Thorns are the first club he’s had the chance to truly support; he rarely attended matches in person as a kid, saying, “our economic situation wasn’t the best.”
It was Connie — who’s more impressed with Tobin Heath’s skills than her dad’s — who got him in the door, but Diego soon became a supporter in his own right. Like his community service work, his support for the Thorns isn’t some occasional token gesture.
“It’s great atmosphere and it’s a great team,” he says. That, too, reminds him of the football culture in Argentina. “You’re waiting for the weekend to be at the stadium to support your team.”
To say Valeri has embraced Portland as his home doesn’t quite capture the intimacy of the relationship he has with this community. The feeling that he belongs to the city is pervasive, and Oteiza isn’t the only Timbers Army regular he’s struck up a friendship with.
Photo courtesy of Thundercats FC
After a match one day in 2016, Valeri spotted a rail banner with the words “Valeri’s Club” written in an arc across the top. Intrigued, the Valeris asked who painted the banner. That’s when the family got to know the Thundercats.
The Thundercats, a co-ed futsal team who play at the same Northeast Portland facility as Connie, started out as an open-invite squad. “If you want to learn how to play,” says Michelle DeFord, “that’s what we can do.”
Just like Diskin and Palau, the Thundercats didn’t quite believe it the first time Valeri said he wanted to play with them. “We were like, ‘We can’t break Diego Valeri,’ ” remembers DeFord, who painted the banner. “He can come when we do open play.”
Valeri showed up and kicked a ball around with the adult team and a gaggle of kids. But he wanted to play. Eventually, a week came around when the team was short on subs, and Valeri came through, along with Shade Pratt, who played for the Thorns at the time. Nobody remembers the score, but the league’s mercy rule, which normally kicks in when one team has a seven-goal lead, went ignored.
“You know in The Sandlot, when Benny’s like, ‘put your glove in the air’?” says Jared Grawrock, asked what it was like to play with Valeri. “That’s exactly what it is. You make a run and the ball will get there… I’m still in awe. None of that shine or coolness has gone away.”
That’s the general feeling around the city. Almost everybody, sooner or later, gets emotional talking about him. He still seems too good to be true.
It’s hard to gauge Valeri’s own awareness of his stature here. He’s glad to spread joy from the field, but he recognizes that what he does for a living, ultimately, is just a game. “After the game is done,” he says, “and after you retire, you’re a simple guy. You’re just one more.”
Asked why he, a guy who has three caps for Argentina and is consistently lauded as one of the best players in MLS, wanted to spend a Wednesday night playing in an adult rec league, he pauses, looking faintly bemused.
“Because I love to play,” he answers, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And they’re my friends.”
It took a while for the Timbers to break through against the LA Galaxy Saturday afternoon, but once they did it became a field day at Providence Park.
After a frustrating, scoreless first half, Portland found the opening goal they so desperately craved in the 47th minute. Forward Felipe Mora, who subbed on after Andy Polo left the game in first-half stoppage time due to a hard, unnecessary tackle, read the space and got on the end of a well-placed cross from outside back Josecarlos Van Rankin. From there, the Timbers scored two more times and cruised to a 3–0 victory against Los Angeles.
“The commitment to perform what we work on during the week is what coaches always want,” coach Giovanni Savarese said. “It shows what this team is all about. A united group that will fight. It doesn’t matter who goes out on the field, everybody’s going to try and perform for each other and today was another very good performance.”
Los Angeles provided a tough test for a Timbers team looking to build on their 2–0 win at San Jose a week ago. Coach Greg Vanney’s team entered the match on a two-game winning streak and took 12 of their first 18 possible points. Talented players such as Chicharito, Jonathan Dos Santos, Efrain Alvarez, and Julian Araujo dotted the visitors’ starting 11. Despite the talent on paper, however, they struggled to find any sort of rhythm against the hosts.
While it took Portland a while to grow into the match, the team looked solid defensively and did enough to prevent the Galaxy from finding too many dangerous opportunities. Still, for as solid as the Timbers looked, they struggled to find a decisive goal or opportunity of their own throughout the first half.
A lot of those squandered chances stemmed from trying for the jugular. Multiple times throughout the first half, Portland pushed the ball into the attacking third in transition before settling for a half chance. A ball into the box turned into an attempted bicycle kick by forward Dairon Asprilla. In another transition moment, outside back Claudio Bravo found himself with time and space and tried to laser the shot in from deep. Those opportunities came dangerously close both times, but were both still low-percentage chances.
Photo by Kris Lattimore
Near the end of the first half, the Timbers went a man up after Los Angeles forward Derrick Williams received a straight red for his brutal aerial challenge on Polo. The Peruvian watched the second half on crutches and Savarese’s immediate update did not sound good.
“When there’s a tackle like that, you don’t want to see that on the field,” Savarese said. “Especially having players that then have to come out because of that situation. Right now, the most important part is hopefully Polo can come back.”
The reckless challenge quelled the crowd at Providence Park for a few minutes, but Portland eventually made the most they could of the man advantage. Mora said that the game changed once the red card was issued. Spaces between the Galaxy’s center backs opened up, which the team relentlessly exploited in the second half.
“It was very hard to find spaces, but after the red card we spoke at halftime,” Mora said through a translator. “We knew that we needed to be calm, patient, and wait for the right opportunities. Thankfully after the first goal, the game opened up more for all of us and we were able to get two more goals.”
Mora took advantage of the newly found space with his header to open the second half, then 13 minutes later, netted a brace. Once again, the Chilean forward showcased his movement in the box, but this time by reading a second ball. In a moment of chaos, Van Rankin’s floated shot hit the top post, Mora reacted first, and he powered another opportunistic header past goalkeeper Jonathan Bond.
To cap off the high-scoring second half, the Timbers received an opportunity from the penalty spot after Los Angeles defender Daniel Steres brought Van Rankin down in the box. Midfielder Diego Valeri, who missed a pair of penalties in Portland’s 2–1 loss against Seattle, once again stepped to the spot. This time, he left little doubt as he confidently blasted the ball past Bond for the 3–0 lead.
“I needed to score that goal,” Valeri said. “After missing those two PKs against Seattle, it was important for me to score that third goal and keep lifting the team. Anyone can miss a PK, but for me it was important to put the ball in the net and keep looking forward.”
Photo by Kris Lattimore
Just as sweet as the win, the Timbers put together their second-consecutive clean sheet against a team that entered Saturday with 10 goals. The center back tandem of Dario Zuparic and Bill Tuiloma came up big, while loanee goalkeeper Logan Keterrer put together another impressive performance.
“I think that has come because of the discipline of the group in the way that the guys have performed, in the way that the guys have executed the plan that we put together,” Savarese said. “We have players that are sacrificing for others in order to make sure that we cover every space, and that’s what we’ve seen in the last two games.”
With the three points, Portland wrapped up their home schedule before the three-week international break on a strong note. The Timbers now travel to Philadelphia high on confidence for one final match before the break, playing with house money and a roster getting healthier by the day.
Portland coach Giovanni Savarese understood the task at hand before the Timbers even touched down in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for the first leg of their CONCACAF Champions League series against CD Marathón.
He knew that Marathón, a team that’s won just two of its first ten league games in the clausura season, wanted to make the most of a fresh start in a new competition. That they would be comfortable sitting back before springing into attack.
Earlier in the week, Savarese talked about the directness and individual talent Marathón possessed, and acknowledged that the opening game would be a good time for his team to test their mettle, especially with the ball.
In many ways, that’s exactly what played out on Tuesday in Portland’s 2–2 draw at the Estadio Olimpico Metropolitano. The Timbers finished the game with 58% of the possession, outshot Marathón 16–12, and completed 107 more passes.
In their first competitive game since the first round of the 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs, Portland was given both the ball and the onus to do something with it against a compact opponent. While known more as a counter-attacking team in the Savarese era, the Timbers will face games where they need to break teams down with the ball. A season ago, the team showed progress in that facet of their game––hey, fewer hopeful crosses is always a good thing––and received an early opportunity to test themselves in possessional play this season.
“I thought it was very competitive, and I thought that we did a lot of very good things, especially in the first half,” Savarese said. “We created chances. Unfortunately, we couldn’t capitalize a little bit more on the chances we created.”
The Timbers started the match on the front foot and found themselves with multiple scoring opportunities early. Yimmi Chará continuously attacked Marathón left back Luis Vega down the right wing, which created danger right away. Winger Dairon Asprilla later bodied off a defender to get a shot off in the box that he dragged wide by a good margin. In the 27th minute, midfielder Eryk Williamson nearly pulled off a moment of magic with a side-footed shot that keeper Denovan Torres did well to save.
Then, in the 35th minute, Portland found its breakthrough when striker Felipe Mora brought down the ball in the box and squeezed the ensuing shot under Torres’ outstretched right hand.
The goal, while not flashy, perfectly exemplified the Timbers’ effective possession play. With the team in their attacking third, right back Josecarlos Van Rankin slowly made his way from the right side of the field to the left half-space where he received the ball from left back Claudio Bravo, beat two defenders, and chipped a ball with his left foot to Mora, who found the back of the net.
Van Rankin’s addition into the attack provided the Timbers with an offensive wrinkle in possession, which helped them break down coach Hector Vargas’ compact side. The right back’s presence in that left half-space drew Marathón center back Mathías Techera away from Mora for a split-second, which allowed the striker to control the ball and get a shot off. While there are potential drawbacks to that type of cross-field run––say the ball turns over quickly and that entire space is vacated––the addition of Van Rankin into the attack proved crucial in Portland’s first goal of 2021.
Savarese also asked Mora to drop into midfield from time to time to help the Timbers create numerical advantages in central areas while in possession. With wingers Yimmi Chará and Asprilla tasked with stretching Marathón’s defense, Mora had plenty of room to work with when he dropped back and combined with midfielders Diego Valeri or Eryk Williamson. While Mora seemed to tire near the end of 90 minutes, his ability to drop into midfield and also finish opportunities in attack will certainly prove useful for Portland this season.
Savarese said the team went into the game with the aforementioned goal of stretching Marathón out, especially between midfield and defense, to create more space in possession. He felt like the team did that, especially early.
“I think that the balance that we have with Diego Chará and Eryk [Williamson] in the middle was very, very good,” Savarese said. “The defense handled the long balls really well, and going forward we were patient enough to find the right moment to keep the ball or to get behind to create opportunities.”
Valeri thrived in the additional space created in midfield. The Timbers star scored the (own) goal of the game from a free-kick taken from yards behind the box and constantly popped up in vacant midfield spaces. The Argentinian played a large role in both finding and creating the “right attacking moments” that Savarese mentioned.
“He was phenomenal today,” Savarese said. “He was very active and found a lot of good spaces to give us the chance to be able to be vertical.”
While Portland looked effective in possession through large stretches of play, it wasn’t all perfect. The Timbers failed to capitalize on multiple golden opportunities. In the 57th minute, Yimmi Chará had a great opportunity on a corner kick that fell into his path in the box with nobody around him, but he didn’t put enough power on the ball and shot it straight at Torres.
Marathón’s deeper formation also enticed Portland to creep further up the field, which opened up new spaces for the very direct Central American side to attack through. That’s what happened in the 68th minute when midfielder Kervin Arriaga found plenty of room between the Timbers’ lines to drive into before delivering a well-weighted pass to forward Marlon Ramírez who leveled the score 2–2.
“Arriaga found moments to dribble and become a little more dangerous,” Savarese said. “Then they found some corners and more dangerous crosses.”
On Tuesday, Timbers fans got their first look at what Savarese wants his team to look like when forced to play with the ball. In just under a week, some will see it first hand when the team returns to Portland with a 2–2 result to defend and everything to play for.
“We’re not satisfied with this result,” Savarese said, “but scoring two goals away is very important.”
Jorge Villafaña turned and put his hands over his face. Diego Valeri started to walk off the field with his head down. Jeremy Ebobisse squatted down and rubbed his forehead.
Seconds after FC Dallas goalkeeper Jimmy Maurer dove to his left and punched the ball away, players in green and gold came to grips with the fact that their season was over.
“In a penalty shootout, anything can happen,” Valeri said, “and it’s just a tiny difference that changed the game. We are very disappointed with the way our season is ending, but our team left everything on the field. That’s why we have to be proud.”
Before Sunday night, the Timbers were a perfect 100% in their three games that came down to spot kicks this season. But penalty kicks are a game of chance, and it was Mauer, not Steve Clark, who guessed a kick correctly to help his team seal a playoff win.
The shootout went eight rounds, making it the third longest in MLS history. As it went on, the pressure to match FC Dallas make-for-make eventually became too much for Portland.
Villafaña, who just thirty minutes prior was the hero after he scored what looked to be the game-winning goal in the 82′, was the player whose missed penalty sealed the game.
“When you leave a game to PKs it can go either way,” Savarese said. “It’s unfortunate because we did everything to be able to win this match until that moment.”
That late moment Saverese referenced came in the 90+3′, just one minute prior to the final whistle.
With the Timbers up a goal and on the verge of advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals, 17-year-old Ricardo Pepi got behind Portland’s back line and slotted a deflected ball past Clark for an equalizing goal at the death.
Up until that point, Portland looked to be in control. But from then on, it was all FC Dallas — right until Maurer came up with the final save on Villafaña.
The late equalizer is the sixth goal the Timbers have conceded in stoppage-time this season. It was also the 15th goal the defense allowed after the 75′, which led the entire league.
Finding different ways to snatch defeat (or a draw) out of the jaws of victory is not exactly a new issue for this Portland team. There have been numerous warning signs throughout the year. Eventually, frustrating results turned into a legitimate trend.
Cracks first started to appear in an Aug. 29 game against Real Salt Lake at Providence Park. With just five minutes and stoppage time remaining, all the Timbers had to do was see out a 4-2 lead. Instead, RSL clawed all the way back and Sam Johnson tied the game at four in the 90+5′.
In late October, the Timbers were on track to beat LAFC until Portland conceded a late goal to 16-year-old Christian Torres in the 90+3′.
Four days later, Portland had a golden opportunity to leap over their bitter rivals, the Seattle Sounders, and into first place in the Western Conference. Instead, Will Bruin found himself wide open at the back post to head in an equalizing goal deep into second-half stoppage time.
And just three minutes into stoppage time against FC Dallas, Pepe’s goal swung all the momentum in the visitor’s favor.
“We, in the last minute, allowed a goal to come in that changed the trajectory of everything that we did well during the match,” Savarese said.
So, what made the Timbers so susceptible to conceding those late goals? It’s a question that could be argued all off-season.
At times, Portland struggled to capitalize on early chances that came back to bite when it entered stoppage time only up a goal. You could argue it is chance, but how much of conceding late is a psychological thing when it happens so frequently?
In the team’s MLS is Back Tournament run, they allowed four goals after the 80′, but Portland found enough goals to win those games. That didn’t happen in the MLS Cup playoffs.
But what was a heartbreaking conclusion shouldn’t overshadow all the Timbers accomplished in a season that spanned from March until November with a four-month break in between.
They won the league’s first––and hopefully only––MLS is Back Tournament trophy over the summer, and played some fun soccer doing it.
After months of uncertainty in 2019, club legend Diego Valeri returned to Portland and picked up where he left off. He ended the season with his 100th MLS assist when he played Villafaña in on goal against FC Dallas.
Gavin Wilkinson and the Timbers front office built up attacking depth over the offseason, and they needed all of it after Sebastián Blanco and Jarosław Niezgoda suffered season-ending injuries toward the end of the year. Jeremy Ebobisse, who broke out in many ways this season, dealt with a concussion over the past few weeks, and didn’t enter the game against FC Dallas until the 88′.
“It’s very frustrating,” Valeri said. “It’s a tough emotion, it’s hard to process now. But we have to rest well and scout the season to see why we had a good season, [find] what the positive things were that we did during the whole season and try to reinforce it.
An argument can be made that Portland was the better side Sunday night. Saverese alluded to that sentiment multiple times in his post game press conference. But MLS isn’t always fair; Portland learned that lesson the hard way against FC Dallas.
“We believed that even though we had adversity and players who were not with us, we still had a group that could go all the way,” Savarese said. “Unfortunately, now we are out and we have to plan for next year.”
The Portland Timbers had gone three games without a win coming into Wednesday’s match against the LA Galaxy at Providence Park, but that streak was ended in emphatic fashion on the night as the Timbers’ attack exploded past the Galaxy in a 5-2 win.
As has been their style in 2020, the Timbers opened the scoring early, putting the first ball in the back of the net in just the sixth minute. Running onto a ball down the left from Yimmi Chará, Jorge Villafaña clipped a cross into the Galaxy box that found Jarek Niezgoda cutting in front of Nicholas DePuy. The Timbers striker nodded the ball toward the far post, sending it skipping off the turf and past the dive of Jonathan Klinsmann to put the Timbers up 1-0.
The Galaxy had a chance to pull one back in the eighth minute, when a Cristian Pavón corner kick found the leaping form of Yony González rising out of the press of bodies in the Timbers box. González struck a strong header toward goal, but the chance clanged off the post and bounced away, with the following rebound hitting a forest of legs and deflecting clear.
The Timbers extended their lead in a chaotic fashion in the 19th minute. After a Diego Valeri corner kick was cleared away by the Galaxy, the Timbers had a pair of chances to put the ball back into the box. First Villafaña fired a shot toward goal that was deflected back out of the box and fell to Pablo Bonilla. The Timbers’ other fullback took his opportunity to fire a second shot into the box. This time the ball into the box found the head of Niezgoda for a snap header on goal. Niezgoda’s quick reactions were enough to beat Klinsmann again, putting the ball into the net and the Timbers up 2-0.
Niezgoda had a chance to complete his hat-trick in the 30th minute when the Timbers were sent to the spot for a handball in the Galaxy box, but instead, it was Diego Valeri who stepped up for the Timbers. The Maestro left no doubt as to who should be taking the Timbers’ penalties, striding up to the ball and hitting a powerful and precise shot that tucked perfectly between the post and the outstretched fingertips of the Galaxy keeper.
Now up 3-0, the Timbers were firmly in control for the remainder of the first half.
After cruising into half-time, the Timbers were given a rude reminder that Pavón is very, very good in the first minute of the second period. Moments after the restart, Sebastian Lletget, a half-time substitution, played a diagonal ball into the Timbers box. González was the first man to the ball, but let it run through his legs and onto Pavón in space. With the Timbers stepping toward González, Pavón was left to line up his shot and slam a simple finish past Steve Clark to get the Galaxy on the board.
In the wake of the Galaxy goal, it still took the Timbers several minutes to shake off the lethargy that had infected the team. As the second half continued, however, the Timbers shook it off and more.
In the 60th minute, Eryk Williamson received the ball from Niezgoda at the top of the Galaxy box and went on the dribble. Artfully cutting around his defender, he was in one on one with Klinsmann and, as the Galaxy keeper rushed off his line, Williamson picked out a simple finish to regain the Timbers’ three-goal lead.
Then, in the 74th minute, Andy Polo looked to top Williamson’s effort with a stunning goal of his own. A long ball from Chará on the Timbers’ left found Polo wide on the right. As the long ball fell to him, Polo took its measure and lined up a volley, hitting a spinning, dipping ball that swerved perfectly around Klinsman and inside the far post for the Timbers’ fifth goal of the night.
Although the game was fully over, the Galaxy did manage to grab back a second goal in the first minute of stoppage time. After a no-angle shot from González was parried away by Clark, the rebound fell to Pavón in front of goal for an easy finish, putting the final scoreline at 5-2.
After an unexpectedly long break, the Portland Timbers were back in action on Wednesday night and were clearly determined to make up for lost time against the LA Galaxy. Despite a Galaxy side who were up for a fight, the Timbers went off, beating LA 6-3 on the road.
The Portland Timbers brought home all three points from Saturday night’s road match against the San Jose Earthquakes, dissecting their hosts in a game that finished 6-1 to the good.
The Timbers started the match looking energized, taking advantage of the fresh legs in Giovanni Savarese’s starting XI to put the Quakes under pressure from the opening whistle. That pressure nearly paid off early on, as the Timbers were able to quickly create several chances off turnovers—including a Jeremy Ebobisse shot from the top of the box in the third minute that skipped just wide.
As things settled down into a pattern of fouls and disrupted passes, the Timbers lost some of their early advantages, but soon found a new avenue of attack through Bill Tuiloma and Julio Cascante carrying the ball forward from their positions at centerback and forcing the Quakes to lose their marks in order to step out and confront them.
With the match once again opening up for the Timbers, the visitors were quickly about to find a pair of back to back goals in the span of just three minutes.
First, in the 25th minute, off a corner kick Cristhian Paredes fought for control of the ball at the top of the San Jose box with Shea Salinas. In an attempt to touch the ball past the Quakes defender, Paredes popped the ball up into the air only for it to strike Salinas on the arm. Referee Rosendo Mendoza had no hesitation in blowing his whistle and pointing to the spot, and, despite the protestations of the Quakes, his call was upheld by the video assistant referee.
Diego Valeri, back in the XI after staying on the bench for the Timbers’ midweek draw against San Jose, stepped up to the penalty spot and hit a low, hard shot to the tight of Daniel Vega, beating the Quakes keeper for the opening score.
Just two minutes, later the Timbers were once again back in the attacking end, and again they struck in the aftermath of a spot kick—this time a free kick served in from long distance by Diego Valeri that was not properly cleared. After the ball was headed away from the box, Paredes played it back to Jorge Villafaña in space, and the Timbers fullback hit a curling cross into the box. As the ball dropped at the back post, Ebobisse rose up above the crowd and hit a skipping header off the pitch that bounced off the pitch and past Vega before nestling into the back of the net.
Of course, it would not be a Timbers game without opposition chances late in the half.
A pair of chances for the Quakes called Aljaž Ivačič into action during his first start for the first team. First, a chipped ball into the Timbers box found Carlos Fierro lurking between Cascante and Tuiloma for a snap header from inside ten yards. Ivačič was equal to the moment, though, and came up with a fantastic reflex save to palm the ball away before sticking out a leg on the follow-up shot to deny Nick Lima as well.
In the 44th minute, however, the Quakes opened their account. A low cross from Salinas out wide on the Timbers’ right found the run of Fierro entering into the box. The Quakes midfielder took the ball in stride, hitting a swerving first-time shot that blew past the dive of Ivačič and splashed into the back of the net to pull the scoreline to 2-1.
Early in the second half, the Timbers reclaimed their two-goal lead. In the 58th minute, Diego Chará pounced on a loose ball in the Quakes’ end and cut an angled ball back toward the top of the box. As a group of players scrambled toward the ball, it was the late-arriving run of Valeri that got the Maestro to the ball first. Valeri hit the ball on the run, powering a shot into a crowd of defenders that pinballed off two pairs of legs before wrong-footing Vega and rolling over the goal line to put the Timbers up 3-1.
The Timbers further extended their advantage in the 70th minute when they capitalized on another moment of confusion in the Quakes’ end. After a turnover deep in the San Jose half, Ebobisse got on the ball at the top of the box and, after creating space for himself on the dribble, hit a low shot along the turf that forced Vega into a diving save. The San Jose keeper got a hand to the ball, but it was Yimmi Chará who was first to react, dashing forward past the Quakes backline and tapping home a side-footed shot from point-blank range.
As the match wrapped up, the Timbers grabbed another. After D. Chará took the ball into the corner and was fouled in the 85th minute, Valeri stepped up to the free kick and served an out-swinging ball into the box. The service was perfectly weighted for Cascante, who had pushed forward for the opportunity, and the Costa Rican center back outjumped his defender to put a nodding header down off the turf and past Vega for goal number five.
Now facing a thoroughly demoralized San Jose side, the Timbers scored their sixth in the 87th minute to close the match out. A string of passes through the Quakes end carried the Timbers into the box and it was D. Chará who played a square ball into the path of Jarosław Niezgoda ten yards from goal. Jarek swept a shot forward that deflected off a defender and over Vega for the final goal of the night.
For the third match in a row, the Portland Timbers played in an empty Providence Park, and for the third match in a row the Timbers gave up at least three goals, losing 3-2 to the LA Galaxy.
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