The Plot has been Lost

By: Bob Kellett | July 8th, 2008

The decision to play an exhibition match in Seattle against a Mexican team seemed like an odd one from the beginning. I can buy Gavin Wilkinson’s bit about forming good relations with teams South of the Border. That will certainly make it easier to schedule future ~~money grabs~~ competitions. What I can’t understand is why the coach of the Portland Timbers would agree to play a player on whom the Seattle Sounders have first “dibs”.

Wilkinson says the player, whose name escaped him, was under the watch of the Seattle Sounders. “They have first dibs on him,” Wilkinson says, adding that it would be “at least a couple of weeks” until the Timbers could add him to their roster, if Seattle passes on him and provided Portland chooses to sign him.

Am I missing something here? When did the Timbers become a farm team of the Sounders waiting under the table to collect their leftover scraps of food? Are we trying to curry favors so that when the Sounders are in MLS they will lend us their third-string keeper who hardly even plays for their reserve side?

How about giving some of the players on the current roster a shot at playing forward instead of a guy who very well could end up playing for your biggest rival? Surely a meaningless exhibition would provide a good opportunity to see how Lawrence Olum, Arsene Oka, or fuck, even Scott Bolkan, could do up front. Lord knows the current team needs work at forward. A non-pressure game played in front of a few thousand fans would be the ideal time to try something new.

Last time I checked the Seattle Sounders have done the Portland Timbers no favors over the years. None. None are expected, either. If Wilkinson was so curious to see this unnamed player add a little offense to his otherwise anemic attack, he could have bought him a bus ticket to Portland and given him a run behind closed doors. Heck, he might even have learned the guy’s name that way.

Honest mistake or deliberately dishonest?

Match report from our man, Jagermeister:

The Timbers broke through just two minutes later, as a free kick from 39 yards off the foot of Bryan Little was nailed home by the ‘Mystery Man.’ It was a long ball from the left side, which was struck on a picture-perfect one-time volley near the top right of the 18. It drove into the far left post, and was the second-prettiest Timbers goal scored this year behind Taka’s magic vs. Shittle.

From the Trib:

In the second Morelia match, the Timbers got their goal from a trialist forward on a “great volley” off a kick by Bryan Little.

From the club:

Morelia scored again in the second half to give them a two-goal advantage before Timbers defender Cameron Knowles headed in a free kick from Bryan Little to pull one back.

It seems to me like the club tried to sneak one past us, and by us I mean the 100 or so people who obsess about the Timbers not the thousands who show up for exhibition matches and nothing else. I can understand not wanting to draw attention to the fact that the only goal the Timbers scored in 180 minutes against Morelia was from a player who is probably going to end up wearing a Seattle Sounders uniform, but this kind of thing reminds me of the Chris Agnello era. My bullshit meter is officially in the red zone.

Who was that masked man?
The unknown trialist with the wonder goal might have been Kenny Cunningham. A one-time forward for the Costa Rican club Alajuelense, he recently played for the Sounders against Juventus Primavera and has been getting a look from Seattle, presumably as a prospect for their MLS team.

UPDATE: According to a person in the know, the trialist was Sanna Nyassi, a Gambian U-20 player whose brother plays for the New England Revolution.

Attention Takayuki Suzuki fans
This shirt might make please you. Happy bidding.

Photo: ohhh_yeah/Flickr