Let the USL First Division season commence

By: Bob Kellett | April 12th, 2008

The task for Portland Timbers fans is to figure out ways to occupy themselves between now and 7:00pm Thursday night. That is when the Timbers 2008 season kicks off and if you are anything like me you will be spending this week in a restless and unsatisfying state. Fans of a few other USL teams are bit luckier than us. Their fun begins Saturday evening. The 2008 USL First Division season starts off with a pair of games that can be seen on USL Live. The Charleston Battery travel to Miami to take on the Blues (I guess that is what they are called.) Miami just announced Friday that they are “entrusting” their goalkeeping duties to former Timbers netminder Josh Saunders. In Josh they trust.

The evening’s other contest is a good one. The Montreal Impact travel to Vancouver to face the Whitecaps. The two Canadian teams are traditionally among the best in the league and I don’t see this year being an exception. Montreal starts the season with six road games as they finish up construction on their new, soccer-specific stadium. The Whitecaps play their first game under new boss Teitur Thordarson. Those of you familiar with Estonian football, and I know many of you are, will recall that Thordarson once was in charge of Estonia’s national team.

As this is a Timbers-specific blog, I will not cover the rest of the league in too much depth this season, but will gladly link to others that try to. What I will try to do is to provide a weekly recap (likely on Mondays) about what went down over the weekend and what is happening in the league in general. Sound good?

Now, back we go to nervously awaiting the Timbers season…