From the club's founding in 1975 through 2006, the Portland Timbers had only played international friendlies against teams from Great Britain or North America. Fourteen different friendlies had come and gone but never had a team taken on the Timbers from soccer powerhouses such as Argentina, Italy, or Spain. That changed eight years ago Friday when Portland hosted AC Milan Primavera on June 19, 2007.
AC Milan Primavera, which was serving as the U-21 team for 2007 Champions League winner AC Milan, came to Portland as part of a three-game trip to the United States. The Tuesday night match, at what was then called PGE Park, was played in front of 11,092 fans. It was the third highest attended match of the 2007 home campaign for the Timbers, trailing only the home regular season finale against Charleston and the club's semifinal playoff match against Atlanta.
The game took place just two days before the Timbers were to play a league match against the Montreal Impact. Due to this, head coach Gavin Wilkinson rested eight of his usual starters. The move to the bench paid off 24 minutes into the match when midfielder Tom Taylor turned a give-and-go with Jaime Ambriz and beat goalkeeper Daniel Offredi to put the hosts out front. The strike gave Taylor the lone goal of his Portland career, which spaned just 133 minutes in league play.
After Andrew Gregor received a red card near the beginning of the second half, the Italian club was able to tie things up when Enrico Traviani beat Bayard Elfvin in the 66th minute. Despite the goal, Elfvin showed well in his second start of the season. Elfvin had four saves on the night including one-on-one stops on both Traviani and Alex Guerci.
When the full-time whistle blew, the match went into a penalty kick shootout, where the Timbers prevailed 4-1 thanks to Elfvin and succesful PKs from Leonard Griffin, Luc Harrington, Kiki Lara, and Lee Morrison. The win served as a turning point to Portland's 2007 season. Heading into the match, Portland was coming off a 2-1 loss against Rochester. But after the club's victory over Primavera, Portland reeled off an eight-match unbeaten streak that included seven straight wins on the way to a second place finish in the USL regular season.
While most of Primavera's players never became stars, starting at centerback that day was 17-year-old Matteo Darmian. Darmian started all three of Italy's 2014 World Cup matches and has played 133 league matches for his current club, Torino.
