With MLS Calling, Timbers Focus on Now

The signs of the move to MLS next season are all around the Timbers. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a distraction,” midfielder Ryan Pore said. Photo: Dustin Eppers/EnzymePDX

These Timbers could be forgiven for feeling slighted as a sideshow, a warm-up act for the real thing. All week long as the team practiced, the diesel engines belched and the backhoes beeped backward building a new access road in the renovation of PGE Park for next year. The giant banner splashed across the existing west wall heralded “MLS 2011.” Head Coach and General Manager Gavin Wilkinson was adding prospects for next year’s team to the practice mix and even to Sunday’s game.

“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a distraction,” said attacking midfielder Ryan Pore.

But Pore and others are taking to heart advice from none other than next year’s MLS coach, John Spencer, who, just before he was officially added to the scene Aug. 11, told this year’s squad that, for now, they were in “sole possession of the jerseys. Don’t let anybody take the job from you.”

Ever since, the team has played as if its soccer life in Portland hung in the balance. The Timbers have gone 3-0-2 including a 3-0 dispatching of Baltimore on Sunday in which they ran circles around the opposition in the opening 25 minutes as if they were headed to – not slighted by – the MLS.

“A championship here with this team this season would make it hard for the coach to get rid of a lot of us,” said Pore, who added a goal against Crystal Palace to up his USSF Division 2 Pro League-leading total to 14.

Adding to the urgency is the unfinished business from last year’s crash out of the postseason in the first round, after putting up the league’s best regular season record.

But the path to a championship will not be easy, even with the team hitting its stride. After Thursday’s game against Puerto Rico, the Timbers will be forced out on the road for the final five regular season games, as the PGE renovations kick into high gear. In the first round of the playoffs – Portland is holding steady in the fourth slot in advance of the eight team post-season tourney – the Timbers would give away some of their home field advantage by hosting their leg of the first two-game series in the smaller confines of Hillsboro Stadium (capacity 7,600) or University of Portland (capacity 4,892).

The players are trying to look past that fact, as well.

“There’s something special about playing in PGE – the atmosphere and everything that comes with it is just brilliant,” said defender Ross Smith. “But the Manchester City game we played at University of Portland [in July], the atmosphere was just electric. So wherever we go, the Timbers Army will come and support us and you know it will be electric. Yes, it will be different. But that’s the way it goes, and we just get on with it.”

Meanwhile, Wilkinson is trying to shoehorn newer players into the lineup to test them out for next year. The latest is 19-year-old Ghanaian Kalif Alhassan, who impressed the coach in a scouting trip to Africa earlier this year and saw 17 minutes at midfield in his first appearance, Sunday against Baltimore. Kevin Goldthwaite, a former Timbers defender who was with the New York Red Bulls, just signed on last week for the remainder of the season.

Ross Smith, who’s been fighting his way into the regular lineup despite several injuries this season, said the added numbers have actually raised the competitiveness of daily trainings.

“Every single training session is full on, with guys just desperate to be in the starting 11 for every game,” Smith said.

And that helps a player block out the sound of construction and all the other background noise going on around him.

“It’s only a distraction if you let it become one,” Smith added.

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