PORTLAND, Ore. - Here's something you might not know about Portland Timbers forward Maximiliano Urruti:
The Argentine striker, who played in 32 games but started in just 12 of them last season, was one of the most efficient goal scorers in MLS in 2014 scoring a goal every 118.1 minutes.
The only player with a better strike rate?
MLS Golden Boot winner Bradley Wright-Phillips of the New York Red Bulls.
"This last year was a good year for me," Urruti said via a translator after a recent preseason training session. "I felt really comfortable and am hoping that this year, it’s just going to be better."
Urruti’s soccer education began in central Argentina, when as a three-year-old, he first began kicking a ball around on the futsal courts of the city of Rosario.
As Urruti grew, so too did the sizes of the fields he played on. By the time he was ready to sign as a professional with Newell's Old Boys in Argentina's Primera División, Urruti already had been playing on their youth teams for most of his childhood.
Between 2011 and 2013, Urruti made 57 appearances for his hometown club, scoring 12 goals and capturing the interest of clubs outside of Argentina. That early success brought with it some painful choices.
"There was a time when I had to come to terms with making the hard decisions because I had to leave my family behind and that was not an easy thing to do," he said.
"But I have no regrets," he added. "It's been a great experience [coming to MLS] and it's brought me here to the Timbers, which is good."
Coming from the Primera División to MLS proved even more seamless than Urruti ever imagined it would be.
"It wasn't that hard of a transition," he said. "I always thought that [the Timbers style] was a similar type of soccer. It's fast. It plays at a good pace and I always knew when I was coming here that that was what I was going to be facing.
"I always thought that the way of playing soccer in Argentina and [the way of playing] here are very similar."
Since coming to Portland via a trade with Toronto FC late in the 2013 MLS season, Urruti has scored 11 goals. Of those 11, four were scored as a second-half substitute and none perhaps more dramatic than his 94th-minute game-winning strike against D.C. United last May.
Heading into Wednesday's Simple Invitational match against the Chicago Fire (7:30pm PT,
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), the charismatic and
popular among his teammates
Urruti says he's willing to help the team any way he can. He also feels that keeping the same core of players together will help the club make a strong push for the MLS Cup playoffs.
"I think just having that [roster] continuity helps everybody," he said. "We have a great group of people here that we want to maintain. It helps us a lot and it's important just to do what we want to do which is to get to the playoffs."
