PORTLAND, Ore. – Caleb Porter said the “evidence” that the Portland Timbers were on the verge of something special has been right in front of his eyes all year long. Now he’s starting to see the results.
Even before Portland rattled off three wins in a row – culminating Saturday night with a thrilling 2-0 victory over the New England Revolution thanks to two late goals from Fanendo Adi – Porter said the quality, minus a few things here and there, has been present. That quality was on display throughout the night against the Revs, with the Timbers firing off 19 total shots to New England’s four – and this time Adi’s two late goals made it translate into three points.
“I don’t think we’ve really turned anything around,” Portland’s head coach said in his postgame comments. “We’ve played well all year. We’ve not finished our chances in a few games, and it looked to be similar today, but again finding a goal and then a second goal just shows how far we’ve come. We’re staying with what we’ve been doing, and I think that’s the key. We’ve never deviated, we continue to push, we’ve made tweaks, but ultimately I’m proud of the guys for keeping doing what they’re doing.”
While Porter hasn’t tweaked his system, the first three-game winning streak in the franchise’s MLS existence has been sparked by a few “tweaks” to the starting lineup – namely the insertion of Maximiliano Urruti at striker and Gaston Fernandez replacing the injured Diego Valeri at the attacking midfield position. The Timbers have scored five goals in the last three games, including one each from Urruti and Fernandez, and it’s led to a palpable energy in the attack.
It also, apparently, lit a fire under Designated Player striker Adi, who came off the bench in the 67th minute against the Revs and scored the game-winner in the 86th minute on a set-piece header and then added on three minutes later with a coolly-struck goal to cap off a counter attack.
“It does a lot,” Adi said when asked of what the win does for his confidence. “Of course, you can see that we are rotating forwards and for me it’s nothing bad. When a striker is in a groove he needs to play, so Maxi and Gaston have done a great job recently so all credit to them. … We all have the confidence that whoever starts, whoever comes in can help the team.”
It’s also the second consecutive game that Portland have pulled out a win in rather dramatic fashion. Last weekend in a 2-1 win away victory over the Colorado Rapids, Jack Jewsbury hit the game-winning goal at the death. This time around, after dominating the game but not finding anything out of it for nearly 90 minutes, the Timbers were able to celebrate in front of their frothing home crowd.
All this after Portland came into a mid-week matchup with D.C. United less than two weeks ago with the second lowest points-per-game average in the league. A 1-0 win that night proved to be the catalyst.
“This team has a lot of character and will to win and all the intangible things that you want in our team, and we’ve shown that for the last three years,” Porter said. “… Good teams have that, our locker room is very tight, spirit of this team is very good and I know we have a lot of confidence, which you see today, that little bit of extra confidence made the difference at the end of this game.”
Dan Itel covers the Timbers for MLSsoccer.com.
