No Pity Land (March 2023)

When about a foot of snow fell in Portland in the days leading up to the 2023 Timbers season opener, it meant the previously scheduled Saturday home match against Sporting Kansas City had to be postponed two days. It also meant the season-opener Timbers Army tifo would have to wait until a later match. As per the email from the Timbers Army Tifo Committee, the unpredictability of the weather meant the group would not be able to safely pivot and guarantee the people power needed to deploy the tifo. “We haven’t had a ‘normal’ year in a while,” the Committee’s email read, “so let’s keep it weird and do things a little differently this year, too.”

No big deal: Not being “normal” is in our soccer DNA. This is a historically tough club that endures and succeeds, sometimes through unconventional situations, but we eventually get there in the end. Together. This month’s matches show 2023 should be no different.

The opener against Sporting Kansas City was as monumental and American and 2023 MLS as one could want: Juan David Mosquera’s sixth-minute game winner was his first goal for the Timbers, the 600th for the MLS era of the club—and it was a goal that secured Timbers MLS win number 69 for Giovanni Savarese, making him the winningest Timbers coach.

There’s more MLS history in the game. Savarese got the win against his New York/New Jersey MetroStars teammate Peter Vermes (who is the winningest Kansas City coach). In the inaugural MLS season, Savarese’s April 13, 1996, goal was the first in MetroStars history—in front of a then-US-professional-soccer-record crowd of 69,250, while counterpart Vermes (with a torn muscle picked up in the match) scored the first MLS playoff-game-winning 35-yard-shootout goal later that season.

“Great win,” Savarese said in the post-game press conference, one diametrically opposed the last time the Timbers played at home. (See “Heartbroken. How can I say anything else?” in the first installment of this series, “Wherein The Quest Begins.”) After analyzing the game, the head coach praised the team’s full performance. “Being able to get full points on a clean sheet [especially to start the season at home] was excellent.” The Timbers had not won a season opener since 2017, so starting with full points is always welcome.

But, the discussion then turned to what would become the theme of the month. “Unfortunately, Yimmi [Chará] got hurt, with the hamstring. That’s one thing that’s disappointing about this game,” the coach continued, “because we need everybody. Everybody is very, very important.” The Timbers would need everybody. Chará joined would-be starters Sebastian Blanco, Felipe Mora, and Dairon Asprilla on the early season injured list.

The next week, Portland traveled to face defending 2022 MLS Supporters’ Shield and MLS Cup champions LAFC, who were playing their first match of the season because they, too, had to face delays. A Los Angeles weather anomaly of heavy rain kept it weird for them as well, as their planned season opener was canceled because of the unusually large amount of water falling in Southern California.

Week 2 for the Timbers then was Week 1 for LAFC, who received their 2022 MLS Cup championship rings before the match, then received three unanswered goals in the first 52 minutes of the match. The Timbers pulled two back to make the last six minutes at least interesting.

No shame in the fight. Things were fair, if not looking up, and coach Savarese rightfully took positives. “We were able to cause them a lot of problems,” he said, “and with a few more minutes, I think we tie it.” In other good news, the six-player pre-match injury report added no new names. The Timbers were 1-1-0, on 3 points having won at home and competed admirably on the road against the defending MLS-double winners, and they were headed home to welcome an expansion MLS side in St. Louis City SC.

The very first time a St. Louis professional soccer team played in Portland was August 17, 1975, when the NASL St. Louis Stars visited the Timbers in Civic Stadium for a chance to play in the first Soccer Bowl. Portland emerged victorious, as a NASL-playoff-record 33,503 crowded into Civic Stadium to witness the 1-0 win, courtesy of a Peter Withe 56th-minute goal.

The ’70s soccer landscape was as unforgiving as its Astroturf fields, and, a few seasons later, St. Louis moved to Anaheim and became the California Surf, where memorable visits to Portland would keep it weird with oddities like a Clive Charles penalty-kick-goal-within-a 35-yard-shootout in a 2-1 Timbers 1978 win and a 1980 NASL indoor tilt at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the Timbers’ match advertisement featured, for reasons I can’t explain, an excited nun.

In 2023, however, with the season-opening tifo finally featured, the Timbers looked proactive on and off the ball, quickly turning an entertaining start into a third-minute Zac McGraw goal. Those waiting for the Timbers to take off were so close to being rewarded.

Then Cristhian Paredes went down with a no-contact hamstring injury in the ninth minute. St. Louis willed a win through a first-half added-time goal and a second-half redirection header.

“Credit to St. Louis,” both Savarese and Eryk Williamson said in the post-match press conference, where each also voiced support for their team and their ability to control their own fate in games like these. “Guys have to be ready to play,” Williamson said. ”We’ve got a roster full of guys that are ready to step up and make their mark on the team.”

There are 28 teams in MLS that won’t feel pity for the Timbers having to cross the country the next week with an eight-player unavailable list. One of those 28 is Atlanta United FC, who beat the Timbers 5-1 in a match where two Timbers highlights included 19-year-old Tega Ikoba becoming the youngest Timber to score a goal, and Diego Chará surpassing 30,000 minutes with the club.

Back home to end the month, it might be quicker to list the Timbers’ six available subs than it would the litany of unavailable players due to injury and an international call-up. One of those six subs was back-up goalkeeper Hunter Sulte. Just one month shy of his 21st birthday, the 6’7” Sulte is the tallest and youngest keeper to play in MLS, and a Timbers “homegrown player,” despite being born in Anchorage, nearly 2,500 miles from Providence Park.

With a short (no pun intended) roster of available subs, it was possible the “Oregonian” could find time if injuries again reared their heads for the Timbers. And injuries did. But, here’s why field player Justin Rasmussen was in goal at the final whistle to secure the Timbers’ 100th MLS shutout and not starter David Bingham or backup Hunter Sulte: The Timbers used all of their available subs, the last an 80th-minute swap of Justin Rasmussen for Marvin Loría who went down with the Injury of the Month Club selection hamstring. So when starter Bingham also injured a hamstring in added time, the Timbers were forced to play with 10, putting a field player in the official last-man-back-can-use-his-hands role.

While we’re keeping it weird and doing things a little differently, it’s worth pointing out that this is not the oddest goalkeeper substitution in this park’s history.

In the 1978 NASL National Conference first-round series, the Timbers hosted the Washington Diplomats at Civic Stadium, eventually winning 2-1 when Portland’s NASL all-time leading goalscorer John Bain finished a rebound past Diplomats’ GK Bob Stetler, who subbed on for Bill Irwin (who was then with Washington) in the 77th minute because Diplomats’ coach Gordon Bradley, according to Steve Kelley’s August 10, 1978, report in The Oregonian, had “inserted [South African attacking midfielder] Andries Maseko for American Carmine Marcantonio. That left Bradley with only one North American on the field,” so the Pennsylvania-born Stetler made his only career NASL-playoff appearance, replacing Northern Ireland international Irwin in goal to keep the NASL-minimum of North Americans in the match.

Look, injuries happen in sport. But keep in mind that though many in number, what the Timbers have as injuries are pretty run-of-the-mill. There is a path, there is a program to a full squad.

And we’re not really keeping it that weird in the larger picture, especially compared with the Portland Soccer DNPs of our past:

For one, Sebastian Blanco’s 2023 knee injury offers a more diagnosable timeline than his 2017 absence for boiling water spilled on his foot. Blanco’s cooking incident came in the week leading up to the start of the MLS playoffs.

On August 19, 1993, Portland native Meredith Vanden Berg refereed the Portland Pride/Los Angeles United Continental Indoor Soccer League (CISL) game, becoming just the second woman to officiate a CISL game, a few days behind Rosalie Kramm’s debut in an Arizona/San Diego fixture. However, Portland Pride defender Ralph Black missed it because, and you can look this up if you don’t believe me—I wouldn’t blame you, he ran over his foot with his lawnmower. Nothing on the litany of unavailable Timbers players listed as “questionable” or “out” at any point this season will, knock on wood, rival the absurdity of Black’s 14-match landscaping-induced spell on the IR. Black did return in time for a one-game playoff against eventual CISL runners-up, San Diego Sockers, a match the Pride lost 9-1.

And how would the 2023 Timbers training staff handle Brian Gant’s 1980 in-match injury of a fractured larynx? In a 4-1 win over the Edmonton Drillers, Gant was inadvertently kicked in the throat and suffered what appeared to be a season-ending injury, as the 1980 Timbers had just a few games left to try and salvage their dwindling playoff hopes.

Give me a few first-month hamstrings over these late-season absurdities any day. Because though four of the next five 2023 Timbers matches are on the road, Gio Savarese’s April outlook is more Chaucerian than Eliot’s cruelest month: “It wasn’t perfect, but when you have the desire, the heart, the commitment, and determination to give everything you have, what else can I ask?” Savarese said in the post-Galaxy-match press conference. “In the end…we have a group of players that, though we’re limited, the guys put up a good fight…and you saw right away Rasmussen ready to go into goal in a moment of crisis. He just said, ‘I’m going, that’s it.’ This is what you want. We are in a good place in regard to our mind and our hearts.”

This is the DNA of a no-pity club.

A club that, 43 years ago, had Brian Gant, who in actuality didn’t let a fractured larynx end his season—let alone his week. “They took me to the hospital,” Gant told me, “and they were talking about surgery.” When Gant asked why surgery, the doctor replied that he could end up with a gravelly voice. “Doc,” Gant said, “I’m not going to be a singer… . I don’t want surgery on my throat.” Just seven days after the injury occurred, Gant returned to the field for the Timbers, in a match against the Rinus-Michels-coached LA Aztecs, coming off the bench and scoring the game-winning (and at that point season-saving) 35-yard-shootout goal from the seventh spot, after John Bain and Gary Collier also netted their chances past notable Timbers favorite opponent, Croatian-born Canadian international Željko Bilecki (see the forthcoming fourth installment of this series: “Hvala Hrvatu”) who himself was a second-half injury substitute in goal.

“A fellow fractured his larynx a week ago, and tonight he gets the game-winning goal. It’s like we wrote the script,” Timbers coach Vic Crowe told The Columbian’s Tom Vogt.

The spirit that runs through Soccer City, USA is the same as it’s always been.

If the MLS playoffs started at the end of March, the Timbers would be in, above the line, at the ninth spot. They’ve also been here before in their MLS iteration: Seven times now having this few points after four matches. In five of those previous six, they made the playoffs (and all three MLS Cup Finals seasons started with this low tally).

Further signs point to life: in the second minute of added time against the Galaxy, there was a moment where the turf thawed, instinct took over from tactics and availability-induced formation band-aids. Diego Chará saw his shadow under the Providence Park lights, which means, in soccer lore, the end of the drought is nigh. Here’s how it manifested itself: between the defensive half of the center circle and 18, Chará quickly broke up a play on the east side of the field, distributed the ball, and cleaned up an errant movement on the west side of the field, almost before it happened. It was seven seconds of old-school Charáesqueness in the last moments of a game where nothing else was going to happen—but it could be everything for the next eight months.

So, yeah. We’ll be fine. There is time. There is hope. Look at the science, listen to those who know: We haven’t had a “normal” year in a while, so let’s keep it weird and do things a little differently this year, too.

(Just to be safe, let’s maybe keep Diego Chará from mowing his own lawn.)