It was, by many of the usual metrics, a lovely Sunday afternoon at Providence Park. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and the Portland Timbers won their seventh game in eight attempts, continuing an improbable run up the Western Conference table that has them positioned to contend as the weather finally begins to turn and the MLS season enters its final stage.
But the result, a 1–0 Timbers victory on the strength of a late headed goal from the Polish marksman Jarosław Niezgoda, felt like little more than a sideshow.
This Timbers victory should have been the second game of the weekend played at Providence Park. The Portland Thorns were supposed to take the field first, on Saturday, for a derby match against their northern rival, OL Reign.
That match did not happen. In its place, after all games across the NWSL were suspended following the horrifying revelations reported by The Athletic last week regarding the conduct of former Thorns manager Paul Riley, Thorns supporters rallied outside the stadium in support of the players Riley abused and those who remain within an American soccer league that has at every turn disregarded their safety.
They also called for the firing of Timbers and Thorns general manager Gavin Wilkinson, who has emerged again as a lightning rod for anger.
Timbers fans last called en masse for Wilkinson’s firing in the autumn of 2012, when the club was suffering through a miserable season on the field. They were wrong then. The Timbers won the Western Conference the next season and an MLS Cup two years later, and Wilkinson’s prowess as a soccer executive has proven beyond any significant doubt many times since.
They’re not wrong now. This time, the frustration is not that Wilkinson can’t pick soccer players. It is that he, along with Timbers and Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and the club’s president of business Mike Golub, failed to ensure that Riley’s career ended after they were made aware of the allegations of his predatory, coercive, absolutely despicable behavior towards their players.
The club investigated Riley following the 2015 season and, with his contract expiring, let him walk. We don’t know exactly what that investigation turned up, and we don’t know exactly how seriously the club endeavored to communicate to the NWSL and Riley’s future employers that he was an active danger to their players too.
What it looks like, lacking that information, and knowing the connections between the Wilkinson and one of the men responsible for hiring Riley to his next job, is that the Thorns, like the Catholic Church, simply moved an ill-behaved coach on to his next parish, consequences be damned.
Sinead Farrelly. Mana Shim. How many others there are—both among those who spoke anonymously to The Athletic and those who weren’t reached or chose not to be interviewed—we don’t yet and will probably never know.
Timbers players Saturday released a statement expressing their support for NWSL players, while Giovani Savarese and other members of the Timbers coaching staff wore teal ribbons in a show of solidarity.
Savarese and his team entered Sunday in a difficult position. Around them in the stadium, and particularly in a vociferous North End, the supporters called—colorfully, loudly, and repeatedly—for their boss to be fired.
The Timbers Army, singing and chanting to the beat of a drum branded with the logo of the Rose City Riveters, made their position known from pregame to the final whistle. Banners hung or hoisted in the North End included “Believe, Support, and Protect NWSL Players,” “Protect the Players, Cut the Rot Out,” and, most memorably, a simple, “You Knew,” along with plenty of two-sticks aimed specifically at Wilkinson.
All the team on the field could do was focus on the task at hand, no matter how trivial it felt taking place in the middle of one of the biggest storms in franchise history.
Knowing a win would cement their status as in the West’s top four with Real Salt Lake’s loss on Saturday, the Timbers faced a Miami side in desperate need of points to keep their distant playoff hopes alive.
Starting without Sebastian Blanco, whose return to fitness was so critical in their revival this fall, and with Diego Valeri suspended for yellow card accumulation, the Timbers lacked a measure of attacking inventiveness in the first half. But Miami was rarely more than ponderous going forward themselves, with the Timbers comfortably defending deep and looking to break with pace.
When Blanco was introduced with a quarter of an hour to go in the second half and no score, the Timbers quickly began to rack up chances. It was thanks only to some excellent emergency defending from Miami’s three center backs, led by Leandro Gonzalez Pirez that the game remained level for as long as it did, and thanks to some very soft defending in the middle of that box that Niezgoda was allowed to freely position himself in the path of a Blanco corner seven minutes from time and nod in the opener.
Miami thought they had equalized just moments later when substitute Julian Carranza headed a cross past Clark, but the goal was ruled out for a push on Dario Zuparic. Miami manager Phil Neville said after the game that his team was “robbed,” and perhaps in a narrow sense, he was right. The whistle on Carranza was soft, one of a number of marginal calls that so often decide close, pedestrian late-season games.
But in a broader sense, his team did not take advantage of the opportunity presented to them in Blanco’s reduced fitness and Valeri’s suspension. They lost the expected goals battle by nearly two and only forced Steve Clark into a pair of notable saves, one on an uninspired Gonzalo Higuain, the other on Brek Shea.
Miami had one more great chance after Carranza’s equalizer was ruled out, deep into stoppage time, but Gonzalez Pirez, outstanding on the other end of the field, sent his open look well wide. That was it. The Timbers are now seven points clear of fifth, on a glide path to hosting a playoff game.
Afterwards, Savarese and Clark were asked about the NWSL. For many of the supporters, the afternoon ended with that subject—and the club’s response to it—foremost in mind. The Timbers Army and the Rose City Riveters are extraordinary in the American sporting landscape for the outspokenness and seriousness with which they take their sociopolitical commitments.
They also, in recent history, have been extraordinary for their effectiveness. The supporters, with the help of others across the MLS, namely in Seattle, stared down the league and won its fight to fly the Iron Front in 2019. The coming fight to hold the organization accountable for its role in perpetuating Riley’s career will, in many ways, be a much bigger challenge.
Paulson’s most enduring trait in a decade-plus as a major league owner, right alongside his passion and inability to stay off Twitter, has been his loyalty to and faith in Wilkinson—a loyalty that has been richly rewarded in on-the-field success.
This scandal is not not going away any time soon. U.S. Soccer and FIFA have opened investigations. The NWSL remains in turmoil, with the Thorns scheduled to play the Houston Dash at home on Wednesday night. Their current manager, Mark Parsons, who is vacating the role in a matter of weeks, has not faced the media since the story broke.
The level of protest at this, a Timbers game, not a Thorns game, made that plain It is as yet unclear what is coming next for Riley and everyone who passed the buck and did the bare minimum instead of stopping him cold. But it is obvious, if there was ever a doubt, that Portland fans are going to keep close score.
