Timbers Grab Bag 04.30.08

By: Bob Kellett | April 30th, 2008

I dig Anne Ramzy’s weekly USL-1 column on Soccernet, especially when she leads with a Timbers bit like she has the past couple of weeks. I never was concerned with the speed of Chris Brown or Takayuki Suzuki, but I guess someone out there might have been. Suzuki has deceptive quickness and as we saw against Seattle when he tracked down a ball before setting up Miguel Guante’s goal he is more than fast enough at this level of competition. Brown is not fleet of foot, but he doesn’t have to be. His upper body strength is enough to hold off defenders closely marking him. Now if only Anne could tell her overlords at ESPN that she is a weekly podcast guest on TheOffside.com not Offside.com then life would peachy.

Anyway you look at it…
…the Timbers are on top.

Player of the Month
The club’s official website is asking for your vote for the Timbers player on the month for April. Looking back at the three games, I would say my top three choices are: 1. Chris Brown 2. Takayuki Suzuki 3. Miguel Guante. Brown and Suzuki for obvious reasons. Guante because he snapped the team out of its doldrums against Minnesota and he had a fine second half against Seattle. Your choices?

Lonely in Japan
A reader from Japan writes:

There is a problem about Live broadcasting. Company “PLAYON” delivers 　USLLIVE.com　 on　Internet. One Japanese Suzuki’s 　fan asked “PLAYON” can we register USLLIVE.com from JAPAN. “PLAYON” 　answered that “you can not”. We can watch when Suzuki 　plays soccer , on youtube , highlight of Timbers　official　web site only. We can listen AudioLive only. 　We are lonely.

What a missed opportunity for USL Live. If you look at the number of people watching Suzuki’s clips on YouTube and the number of Japanese visitors coming to this little ol’ blog, the interest level is very, very high in Japan. USL Live could make a little bank if it opened up its broadcasts to people overseas. Heck, the Timbers would be smart to secure a Japanese play-by-play guy for their home games and stream it over the Web. I bet for some games they’d have more people listening in Japan than in the U.S.

Ride the bus
There is one thing we know for sure. There are at least two busloads of Portland Timbers fans heading to Seattle for the game on Saturday, May 10. Can we fill a third bus? If your butt is looking for a seat and your voice is looking for a game outside of Portland to cheer for the boys in green and white and you are willing to pay $30 (great deal considering the current gas prices!) for a ride but no ticket, you’ll want to contact - finnegantimber@gmail.com. You can also scrawl through this monster thread on Talk Timbers for more details.

Alvarez, superstar, how many championship have you won so far?
Former Timbers forward Byron Alvarez scored a pair of goals in the MISL championship game on Saturday, but it wasn’t enough to lift his Monterrey team to victory over Baltimore. Alvarez was the top point earner in the postseason with 22 points. Do you think he’ll show up on a USL team’s roster this summer? He did finsh 18 points in 22 games for Charleston last season. The Battery’s offense has been rather anemic through their first three games so I guess he could return there, but I haven’t seen any scuttlebutt about that happening.

A Jake Sagare sighting
Former Portland Timbers midfielder Jake Sagare must love to play soccer. He has signed on to play with the PDL’s Yakima Reds, his hometown club. Now all he needs to do is talk fellow Yakamite Aaron Heinzen out of retirement. The way the US Open Cup is set up this year we could get a chance to see Sagare play against his former team. Yakima would need to qualify out of the PDL’s Northwest Division and then be paired with Portland to make that happen. You need an advanced degree to figure out how the US Open Cup works. My understanding is that the PDL teams will qualify based on their early season results.

A Jaime Ambriz sighting
It is Former Timbers Day here at Blog Central. Jaime Ambriz is playing for the PDL’s Ventura County Fushion, another possible US Open Cup opponent. I talked with Jaime at the start of the Timbers training camp and he was eager to return to Portland, but the numbers were stacked against him with Brown, Suzuki and Benjamin Totori joining the club at forward.

I have experienced Armageddon and it ain’t pretty
I showed up for work yesterday and started to go through my usual routine of checking out nine thousand Timbers and soccer-related websites only to receive a message saying that my organization was restricting access to these sites (Oddly, this blog was still accessible. I guess this is a serious education site.) My heart skipped a beat, but I figured this could be a good thing. I have a lot of work to do and shouldn’t be spending time watching things like the Champions League and checking my alerts to see if Chris Agnello finally surfaces anywhere (drop me a line or leave a comment if you know his whereabouts). And then it dawned on me that I could no longer do my hourly check of Talk Timbers. I was ready to quit on the spot. I made it through most of the morning, hands shaking from withdrawl. It was lunchtime but I wasn’t hungry. My stomach was too upset. I was missing the usual Shittle hating threads and the endless here’s a new chant threads and even the legend of hecklewood. Life had no meaning. Finally, late in the afternoon when I was just about to curl up in a ball under my desk and cry the switch was turned back on and life was once again whole. As silly as it sounds, the Timbers and all you absurd people are an important part of my daily routine. I love you and despise you for that.