Are the Portland Timbers any better than they were at the end of the Chris Agnello era in 2006? Forget the ownership situation. Yes, it is better. Forget the fan base. Yes, it is bigger. Forget last season. Let’s focus on the current product on the pitch. In 2006, we saw a team that was poorly constructed with players who shouldn’t have even been in the USL First Division. We saw a team that couldn’t score goals, couldn’t shut other teams down, and couldn’t win. We saw a manager who was lost on the sidelines, who lost his locker room, and who was lost for answers. The soccer wasn’t entertaining. It was excruciating. If you watched the Timbers play against Atlanta and Charleston this weekend you saw the same thing.

You saw a team that was out shot 29-13, a team that mustered two shots on goal in 180 minutes of play, and a manager that didn’t even bring a full bench even though his team was playing two games in two nights in the heat and humidity. You saw a team whose lack of depth was exposed when two of its players went down early with injury. You saw a team that couldn’t hold the ball, couldn’t build an attack, and couldn’t mark their men when they needed to the most. You saw aging players who have been asked to play too many minutes lose the fitness battle. You saw a team that wasn’t playing to win, but rather to merely hold on. You saw an attack that continued its season-long futility and that was a fluke stoppage time goal away from being held without a goal for the tenth time in 19 games. You saw a team that erased all memories of the heart and hustle that were on display in 2007. You saw a team that brought back memories of the lethargy and losing of two years ago.

Unlike a couple of seasons ago, the USL First Division is abysmal this year. If you look at the table even the pessimist inside can’t help but ponder the notion that if this Timbers team could just put together a few wins and just make the playoffs it could salvage the season.

But if you watched the games this weekend you saw no indication that this team – a team that hasn’t won at home since April and that has two wins from its last 16 games – is even capable of putting together two minutes of solid soccer let alone a few wins.

The vast majority of the 8,000 or so people that will show up at PGE Park when the Timbers face Carolina on Thursday will not have spent the weekend squinting at their computer screens watching these games. They are the lucky ones. They will be blissfully ignorant of just how bad this team played and how uninteresting it has become to watch the same sorry script over and over again. They will show up because a night at the stadium is a good time — cheap beer, nice weather, the Timbers Army, chainsaws, and a chance to hang with friends.

Those of us who did suffer through these games will also show up (at least those us who aren’t going on their honeymoons will show up). That’s what we do. So what if we suck? and all that. We’ll enjoy the cheap beer, the nice weather, the Timbers Army, etc as much as anyone else, but we’ll also show up because we have an emotional attachment to the club. It is an attachment that outlasted the crap of 2006 and the crap of seasons before that and that will outlast this season’s crap.

We’ll show up because as supporters that’s all we can do. All we can ask in return is that the team shows up too, and that it rewards our loyalty by giving us some reason to look forward to the final eleven games of this season and some reason to think that things haven’t slipped all the way back to where they were two years ago.

The North End celebrates

Byron Alvarez is checked into the boards

Brad Knighton makes a big save

Justin Thompson almost heads one in

Tom Poltl gives a Tigres player a forearm shiver and doesn’t get a three-game suspension

Timber Joey leads the cheers

Thompson and Alvarez collect their rewards

Some awesome shots over on Soccer City USA

Arsene Oka heads home a cross from Neil Dombrowski to score his first goal in a Timbers uniform and to put Portland ahead 2-1.

Takayuki Suzuki is stoned on a penalty kick by Hollywood United keeper Javier Barragan and Arsene Oka misses off the rebound.

A Celeb Celebrates

Hollywood United FC team president and actor Anthony LaPaglia joins his team in celebration. Photo: Allison Andrews/Soccer City USA

The Timbers Army will Rock you like a Hurricane

More highlights of Hollywood United’s 3-2 victory over the Portland Timbers available for absolutely free on USL Live.

Timber Jim is our sunshine

Cameron Knowles gets all choked up meeting Kevin Taylor

Photo: Allison Andrews/Soccer City USA

You cannot stop us

Happy Birthday, Takayuki Suzuki

Your birthday gift is the ability to now sing soprano

Bryan Jordan gets airborne

Photo

I’ll update this later when the heroes out there post their videos and pictures.

Timbers Army mid-voice

Photo: Allison Andrews/Soccer City USA

Chris Brown misses a sitter late in the second half.

Timbers keeper Ray Burse makes a save off of a Mauricio Salles free kick

Wise men say that singing off-key is fun when you are among friends

Ray Burse looks ahead to Saturday in Seattle

Darren Sawatzky shares his thoughts on being illegitimate and how he has the clap and can’t get rid of it

I’ll update with more stuff once it becomes available.

David Falk is the webmaster of www.GOALSeattle.com. He has followed the Sounders and the Seattle soccer scene since 1974. He was instrumental in starting the Cascadia Cup competition and had lobbied for the NBA Sonics to change their Yellow & Green (ick!) color scheme. He’s recently realized that will soon no longer be an issue. His thoughts on the Timbers and Sounders rivalry ahead of Saturday’s clash in Seattle are below. My take on the Northwest Derby can be found here.

Sounders and Timbers fans are looking at 2008 through very different lenses. So are the clubs themselves.

While the Timbers look to continue their hot start with a second win in Seattle this Saturday night, the Sounders are hoping for some home magic to turn around the performance and result from their 2-0 loss in the Rose City in late April.

It goes far beyond one match, though, this seeing things differently.

When I attended Seattle Sounders 2008 Media Day on Wednesday the ’signs’ were everywhere around Qwest Field. Not one of them contained the classic Sounders wave logo used on and off since 1974. Nope, the new crest of Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer had claimed space with none left for the current team.

2009 will mark the end, or perhaps just a league pause, in the Seattle-Portland derby. Up to division one will go the Sounders, and staying in division two will be the Timbers. No one knows if the rivals will ever play a league contest again.

Seattle’s rise to the higher league has been met in Seattle with dazzling ticket sales. While the USL-1 Sounders are met with apathy the MLS FC have 15,000 season ticket deposits almost a year before kick-off, with talk of selling out all 24,000 lower bowl seats for each match they’ll play in 2009.

Portland is on the MLS trail, as are the Vancouver Whitecaps. Rest assured that Seattle is not only watching, but hoping for a Cascadian revival in Major League Soccer.

When you can get a guy like Seattle Sounders head coach Brian Schmetzer to set aside years of combative nature and speak hopefully of the Timbers joining MLS one day, then, well, you begin to see a less-heralded side to this derby. In the end there are fans, players and team officials on both sides that are feeling a bit glum about what will be lost after 2008.

Seattle Sounders FC will enter Major League Soccer with lots of tradition behind them, and exactly zero geographical rivals. For many in the Emerald City this obviously isn’t a problem (see above ticket sales). For others 2008 carries with it a lingering sense of loss. Road trips to Portland (and Vancouver) are now precious memories and precious few on the calendar.

It’s hard to say this, but May 10, 2008 could be the last-ever league match between Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers in Seattle. Unless, that is, Brian Schmetzer has his way.

The drama of 2008 will grow as the Timbers hope to exact the last say on the derby. Can they rip the Cascadia Cup out of Seattle’s grasp? Will the two clubs meet once again in the US Open Cup or perhaps the USL-1 Playoffs?

Last season we almost had a Seattle-Portland league final. Seattle’s semifinal penalty kick advancement over Puerto Rico was not quite matched by Portland, who fell at home to Atlanta in PK’s. Seattle went on to claim a fourth league championship. Portland Timbers fans undoubtedly are hoping for a reversal of that outcome this season.

We all have to wonder what 2008 and beyond holds in store, and how long the results of this year’s derby will have to ‘make do’ when it comes to bragging rights in the years ahead.

Photo 1: Sounders v. Timbers at Qwest in 2007. (Jenni Conner)
Photo 2: Sebastien Le Toux: Sounder now, FC in 2009. (David Falk)

Update: Another look at the goal courtesy of KPTV.

Miguel Guante scores his first goal as a Portland Timber to clinch the game 2-0.

You Call this MLS?

We are the Timbers

Screw the environment, let’s cut some wood

Audio of the Suzuki goal. Bruce Eaton on play-by-play. Annoying, yet-to-hit-puberty-voiced Bob Kellett on color commentary.
Takayuki Suzuki Goal

Audio of the Guante goal. Bob “needs to take up smoking” Kellett on play-by-play, Bruce Eaton with the commentary.
Miguel Guante Goal

Local news anchor Wayne Garcia (lower left) and the Timbers Army

Photo

Trialist mascot Joey Webber slices his first log

We’ll be coming down the road

There’s no pity in the Rose City

Shaun Higgins scores the game winner and the crowd is pleased

Those new logs aren’t the same as Timber Jim’s (note: Higgins might have sustained a concussion at the end of the game and it shows!)

Timbers Army

Chris Brown

The Last Log

The Lads Celebrate

A Great Slideshow of Timber Jim’s Last Night

It always starts with uncertainty. Am I really going to dedicate an ungodly number hours of my life to watching grown men in shorts kick a ball on plastic? Is the team going to wipe away the disappointments of years’ past? Are we even going to have enough players under contract to field a team? If the team disappeared would the local media even notice?

And then the signings come. Usually it begins with players coming back. They are announced in bunches. More times than not we celebrate their return because even if there are better players out there in this world, they are lads. They are our Portland Timbers.

The official news then dries up. Trialists are brought in, but no names are given. Some of us take a sneak at training sessions and we try to memorize their faces and hear their names being shouted so that we can rush home and dig up their identities on the Internet. Sometimes we are right. Often we are wrong. It doesn’t matter. These are the guys who are going to give us that extra edge we need to bring a trophy to the Rose City.

The exhibition matches begin and it forces us to go to places we usually never go. Milwaukie, Tualatin, Forest Grove…this is our education in the burbs. The quality of play often matches the quality of the landscape. It is rugged and ugly and beautiful because it is the Portland Timbers in action and we are Portland Timbers fans and we haven’t seen the Portland Timbers play in five months.

We see enough to put names with faces. We see enough to devise starting lineups and to know the pecking order of the depth chart. We see enough to worry whether we have enough quality at left back and whether our wings will be good enough to deliver us that trophy that we so desire. We see friends that we haven’t seen all winter. We stand next to them and catch up on their lives. Each year we are little older, a little grayer, a little fatter, but we are always the same. We are Portland Timbers fans.

The weeks seem like months. The club continues to hide information and we continue to discover it. They have the cheese, we are the mice, the maze is never that difficult. We learn about more players who are signed and our anxieties are soothed by names of athletes who have played in countries like New Zealand, Cote d’Ivoire, and Japan. We know not of their talents, but we know that they are going to be Portland Timbers and that is good enough. They are our lads.

The final week takes a year. We’ve seen the team take on local college kids. We’ve seen them play a pro team or two. We’ve read the painfully brief coverage in the Trib and we’ve heard the brief interview or two with the team’s boss. We sit at our desks all day hitting refresh on a message board, eagerly digesting any and all news. We can’t take it anymore.

It is time for the season to start. It is time for those friends we’ve stood by for years to gather again for 90 minutes, twenty or so times during the summer. During those 90 minutes we are one driven by a grown man carrying a chainsaw and doing backflips. All misery in the world is forgotten. All responsibilities are unimportant. The only thing that matters in on the pitch. The Portland Timbers. Our Portland Timbers.

Here’s to a memorable 2008 season. See you at the stadium.

Game and Season Previews

A Season in Preview (Oregonlive Timbers Blog)

Japanese Star’s Tour Ends in Portland (The Oregonian)

Timbers Start Season, Say Goodbye to Mascot (Portland State Vanguard)

A Bittersweet Timbers Opening Day (Dave Knows)

Interviews with our 2008 heroes (The 107 Report)

Timbers Preview (USL Soccer)

Puerto Rico Preview (USL Soccer)

The Pole Comes Down and Timber Jim Retires (Soccer City USA)

Puerto Rico @ Portland (Blue Sky Soccer)