TUCSON, Ariz. — It will be an epic matchup with minimal consequences. Such is a Portland-Seattle derby in preseason.
On Wednesday night at Kino Sports Complex in Tucson, Arizona at 6pm PT, the greatest rivalry in Major League Soccer will be renewed, but for the Portland Timbers and Seattle Sounders, the match will be the first step on a longer path. January 26 will mark the teams’ first day of the 2022 season, and if either team has their way, Cascadia will represent the Western Conference in an eight straight MLS Cup final, ending one team’s season on November 5.
“One thing that we have learned in Major League Soccer is that you have to the right balance with the players,” Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese said last week as his team opened preseason in Oregon. “You want to start very strong. You want to have a strong preseason. You want to be sure you're as steady as you can be from the beginning.
“But also you cannot make the players get to a point in which you're pushing so much that, by the middle of the season, they're done.”
The Timbers walked that line last season. The team was primed for 2021’s onset by their place in Concacaf Champions League, readying themselves for matchups against Honduras’s CD Marathón and Mexico’s Club América. When their part in the competition came to an end, though, the team endured an avalanche of injuries, with Portland’s injury report reaching 11 players at one point last spring.
That avalanche forced the team to slow down and pace itself into the summer months. Perhaps it wasn’t the type of pacing Savarese would have chosen, but those demands positioned the Timbers for a stronger fall. Portland ended up fourth in the Western Conference and would host three playoffs games before falling in a penalty-kick shootout at the end of MLS Cup.
“It’s how you find the right balance so you start strong, and you can finish strong, as well,” Savarese said. “We have done very well to pick it up at the right times in the past four years, to always have been able to make the playoffs, always be competitive in every playoff game that we have played, and make a final three times in four years.”
This year brings new obstacles to a strong start, thanks largely to centerback corps are thinned out by injury. Starting tandem Larrys Mabiala and Dario Zuparic are recovering from hernia surgeries, while Bill Tuiloma is on international duty with New Zealand. Zac McGraw is the only centerback from last year’s team active in Arizona, while the team has questions at other positions, too. Josecarlos Van Rankin’s return to Chivas de Guadalajara leaves the team deprived of last year’s starter at right back, while contract negotiations continue with Portland’s attacking talisman, Sebastián Blanco.
Combined with three other international absences (Yimmi Chara, Cristhian Paredes, Andy Polo) and Portland’s team will look like what it is: one that still searching for solutions at the beginning of a preseason. With the Sounders dealing with a number of notable international absences, too, both teams could prominently feature its depth, academy prospects, and recent draft picks.
The goal is on Wednesday isn’t to address all issues. If anything, it’s to explore them. Each team has over a month until results count in the standings. Instead, Wednesday’s game is part of a process that builds toward February 26’s opener, as well as the part of the season that will truly define 2022.
“We're ambitious,” Savarese concedes. “We are a team that wants to make sure that we can do better every year, and we want to start very strong against New England at Providence Park.
“We want to make sure that the feeling is the same as in the [last MLS Cup] final, just that the result is different, because we want to start with three points.”
