Two games, two wins and the Portland Timbers find themselves atop Group F with a ticket to the knockout rounds following their 2-1 win over the Houston Dynamo Saturday night in the MLS is Back Tournament Group Play presented by Heineken.
For a team that started their 2020 season somewhat unevenly back in March with a loss against Minnesota United FC and a 1-0 win over expansion side Nashville SC, these two wins in Orlando seem almost like a breath of fresh air.
“It feels good to be able to win these two matches,” Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese said after the match. “First because it put us in a situation right now that we’ve qualified, we’ve clinched, so that’s something that we were looking to do as a first goal in this tournament. Second, we’ve been able to win these two games so that’s six points for us in the season which is very, very important for us as well.”
Savarese rotated some of his team bringing in midfielders Yimmi Chara on the wing, defender Bill Tuiloma for the suspended Dario Zuparic and giving rookie Pablo Bonilla his first career MLS start. Though the Dynamo fired 24 shots, only four of them were on target with Portland blocking 11 of them.
The six points from the two tournament wins put the Timbers in a tie with Sporting Kansas City on points for second place in the Western Conference regular season standings. Forward Jeremy Ebobisse, who scored in his second straight match, believes the team is in a different place now than it was four months ago coming off its slow start.
“You don't come to this kind of tournament unless you expect to be in a top position coming out of the group, adding points to the regular season tally and then pushing on into the knockout round,” he said. “I think it's been acknowledged that we didn't have a perfect start to the season, with one win and one loss and maybe not playing as well as we could have.
“But this past quarantine break everyone's been real serious, and we've regrouped and I think that that's shown in the first two games.”
Savarese points to the work put in by the team during both the league-wide quarantine and in the individual and team trainings that followed. That work not only prepared the team for the MLS is Back Tournament, but also created a hunger for soccer that everyone – players and staff alike – have certainly missed.
“Two months ago we were locked in our houses looking to come and play soccer, looking to a competition like this,” Savarese said. “We had to remember that. We cannot forget where we were a couple of months ago.
“For us, it’s important when we step on the field we appreciate every single minute we have on the field. I think the guys understood that from the beginning and they worked very hard to get a very important result against a very good team [in Houston].”
The Timbers will now turn their attention to Thursday and Los Angeles FC (7:30pm PT, ESPN2) who demolished the LA Galaxy 6-2 in the other Saturday evening match and sit second in Group F.
“LAFC is an excellent team,” Savarese said. “[The match is] going to be very difficult. Right now, we analyze this match that we played today. We see what things we could have done better and then we’ll start planning for the next match.”
