Timbers vs (Caribous of) Colorado
Just kidding, I know it's the Denver Dynamos.
Look, none of that really matters because Clyde Best is here tonight!
This sort of worked last time, so if you have Twitter/X, follow us at @greenitcolor. We’ll live* tweet this match and share the amazing influence Clyde and his contemporaries have had on Portland and all over the world.
If you don’t have that app, no problem: we’ll update this story here with all of those.
*As usual with Green Is the Color, “live” touches on our culture since Day 1.
Starting lineups:
19’ | 1 - 0 Timbers!
Goal by Anthony:
22’ | 1 - 0
Apropos of nothing, former US International Conor Casey scored 50 career goals for the Rapids. (Photo: Mile High Sports)
24’ | 1 - 0 Noel Caliskan is booked for Portland.
The previous tweet mentioned Conor Casey because he is a former University of Portland Pilots player, for Clive Charles and Bill Irwin (More on Irwin and Charles to come).
30’ | 2 - 0 Timbers!
Goal Moreno (watch everything here—over and over—from Antony’s face-to-face, Caliskan’s assist, Moreno’s run and finish):
30’+ 2 - 0 Timbers
Which brings me to Clyde Best. I got to talk a little with him yesterday—in a near-empty Providence Park—about West Ham and Portland. He mentioned Moreno specifically and said he likes watching him play. That one’s for you Clyde Best!
31’ | 2 - 1 Timbers
Caribous quickly get one back via Diego Rubio.
You’ll see the highlights of that goal at the end of this post. I’d rather talk about why Clyde Best is here. The Timbers unveiled a mural of Best yesterday. The mural, seen here throughout the process, was painted by (Instagram handle) hernamewaskyra:
39’ | 2 - 1 Timbers still
This is from the unveiling yesterday. Absolute legends: Timber Jim Serrill, Bill Irwin, John Bain, Clyde Best, Willie Anderson, Mick Hoban, and Brian Gant. (More coming on each on each of them.)
40’ | 2 - 1 Timbers still.
Ref checking VAR (No red card but still a yellow for Portland’s Mora)
I want to talk about each of the people in that picture with Best. Starting with the far left, Jim Serrill’s Timber Jim origin story starts with this match, which Jim and his siblings attended because their dad wanted them to go see Pelé play:
43’ 2 -2
Colorado gets one back via Gutman. (See end of post for match highlights that will show the equalizer.)
From those pictured with Clyde Best, the one player on the field that day when Jim and his family went was Timbers Original Mick Hoban, who has his own special history with Colorado. Hoban played for the one-year Denver Dynamos (the Caribous’ predecessor) and scored in the Dynamos’ first ever match:
Hoban also has his own special place in Timbers history as the first player (and quite a long history of building soccer in Portland, the US, and globally). You can learn so much about his amazing journey and contributions at Episode 1 of the Green Is the Color Podcast.
45’ + 3 | 2 - 2 Leyva is booked for Colorado.
That will pretty much take us to halftime. I’m heading down to the field for the Clyde Best presentation, so we’ll just call is 2 - 2 at the half.
Clyde Best Halftime Presentation
We’ll get to the second half eventually, but this was a big night. There’s a documentary film crew here, telling Best’s story. It will come out in 2025. Please follow: Transforming the Beautiful Game: The Clyde Best Story
They were at the unveiling yesterday, and they were on the field for this. I was fortunate enough to get grabbed by them and taken to a suite where another West Ham legend was watching. When I wrote a three-part essay about Clive Charles, I interviewed Clyde Best AND Ade Coker. I never thought I’d meet either of them, but Ade Coker was here, and I got to have a talk with him after the halftime presentation.
Please take a moment and watch the below video to see just how significant the contributions of Clive Charles, Ade Coker, and Clyde Best are:
Second Half Starts | Timbers 2 - 2 (Caribous of) Colorado
Three more things on Timber Jim:
He’s a legend here and deservedly so:
I highly recommend his TEDx talk:
He’ll be the next guest on the Green Is the Color Podcast.
48’ | Still level at 2
Claudio Bravo is booked for Portland.
Next to Timber Jim in that photo from the mural presentation is another Portland Legend, Bill Irwin—who helped build the University of Portland and FC Portland programs with Clive Charles.
Like a lot of NASL players, Portland was not Irwin’s only team. And like a lot of NASL players, Irwin faced some of the very best in the game, like in this 1980 35-yard shootout between Irwin’s Washington Diplomats and the New York Cosmos:
64’ | Still 2 each
Dario Župarić is booked.
One of my favorite videos of Bill Irwin also involves Clive Charles and Willie Anderson (seen in the group photo from the unveiling) while playing for Cardiff City away to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge:
70’ | Still 2s, but Rubio is booked for Colorado
RE: The above video, I love watching Willie Anderson slice through Chelsea to create the opportunity for the Cardiff City goal. I also love that Anderson was the first sub used in Association Football, for Manchester United:
71’ | GOAL Felipe Mora, 3 - 2 Timbers
The assist by Asprilla is worth taking a moment to appreciate, and Mora’s goal comes at the North End, which has seen some important goals over the years.
Exhibit 1: 1975 (Willie Anderson to Tony Betts)
Exhibit 2: 1987 (University of Portland beats Notre Dame in a signature win for the growing program)
From part 2 of my three-part Howler piece on Clive Charles:
“On today’s turf, Osterhage’s post-goal knee slide into the corner would have had him gliding over the surface cleanly until a natural inertia took over. Thirty-five years ago, however, the stadium’s AstroTurf surface, the kind NASL Timber Willie Anderson succinctly called “terrible,” failed to provide the physics Osterhage expected. “I went to slide on my knees, you know, celebrate, but it was dry,” he remembered. “And so I didn't slide. I just stopped, and it ripped my knees up. I'm bleeding and all the guys are just laughing at me.”
Semantics mattered not to the goalscorer. “I was so jacked up,” he said. “I went flying by and gave Clive a hug, and he says, ‘Damn, that was a good goal.”’
Exhibit 3: 2015 (7-6 Timbers - Sporting KC in Penalties, Double Post, ‘keeper Penalties)
79’ | Still 3 -2, but Župarić is down momentarily. He’s back up.
I’ve been giving The Caribous of Colorado a hard time, but I’ll move forward with their proper contemporary name—in a moment.
Follow me on this one: Timber Bernie Fagan played part of one season for the Caribous of Colorado.
The Caribous’ had awful kits. Here’s the front and back of Brian Tinnion’s. (Tinnion, while with one-season Team Hawaii scored the NASL’s first 35-yard shootout goal.)
82’ | 3 -2 Non-Caribous
The one-season Caribous of Colorado ended things by giving up the first Timbers hat trick to John Bain (from the group photo at the mural unveiling, between Bill Irwin and Clyde Best).
There’s so much to Bain’s story, and you can listen to that on Episode 2 of the Green Is the Color Podcast.
88’ | 3 -2 Timbers leading Rapids
As the Timbers see this one out, there’s one person I have not mentioned yet from that photo. Canadian International Brian Gant is the person on the far right of that photo. He’s one of the nicest guys and great historians and storytellers of Timbers history.
Gant, shown above with the Canadian National Team (middle row, fourth from left) has given a lot to soccer in Portland.
In 1992, Oregon high school soccer started a division that included 3A, 2A, and 1A teams. At the time, Gant was coaching a school in Portland called Catlin Gabel. Gant’s team won the first girls’ state championship at that level. Then, 11 of the next 12. That’s over a decade of winning the state championship.
90’ | Still 3 -2, with 6 minutes added.
That lets me tell you one more thing about Gant. I’ve written about him in a few places here (“This Cascadian Life” and the last section of “Hvala Hrvatu”). He’s such a great story teller. I’ll get him on the podcast soon. But, last match, when I was talking to him about the Chris Dangerfield podcast episode and Krazy George bringing a bengal tiger on the field (there’s video of it there), it didn’t phase him a bit. Gant told he’d been in San Jose and had to dodge KG and an elephant and one time KG riding a horse-drawn chariot (Gant, 11, with the Whitecaps):
90’ | 3 -2 Colorado’s Diaz picks up a caution.
There’s not much time left in this match. Timbers will win. There’s a lot of soccer history in Providence Park tonight, and we’ve covered a lot of soccer history in this match. But there’s so much more to the last 50 years. We’ll keep working on that in Green Is the Color.
Until then, you can spend an hour with Mick Hoban and the Oregon Historical Society’s “We Are the Rose City: A History of Soccer in Portland” via virtual tour:
90 + 6’ | Same score, Boli gets booked
it doesn’t matter
Final: Timbers 3 - 2 Rapids
Timbers win, time to Tetris
Full match highlights: