Portland promoted to the MLS in 2011?

By: BoriQa | April 23rd, 2009

The Portland Timbers will be the 18th MLS franchise in 2011. This was announced this past March by MLS headquarters just a few days days after the announcement that Vancouver was awarded the 17th franchise also in 2011.

So next year will be the last season for the Vancouver Whitecaps and the Portland Timbers; the 2008 USL Champion and the team that placed dead last in the regular season. Funny way how the “top tier” MLS “promotes” teams…

But, was the move to allow Portland into the MLS and get rid of the USL-1’s North-West quadrant a wise one? Is Portland ready to rush and make things happen by the start of the 2011 season?

There are some indications there may be trouble in Timber land. A fellow blogger asks the MLS Commissioner: What’s It All About?

As part of the Portland MLS deal, there is a need to build two new stadiums. The team owners proposed to turn the downtown PGE Park, home of the Portland Timbers and the Portland Beavers (a minor league baseball team) into a soccer stadium that meets MLS requirements, and erect a brand new park for the Beavers. City planners recommended that the stadium be built where the Portland Memorial Coliseum sits in the Rose Quarter.

It sounded like a good plan, except that now that the MLS has awarded Portland the franchise, the city council may be having second thoughts. In a town hit hard by recession there may be other more challenging issues and priorities than building two new stadiums. Now the Portland Memorial Coliseum’s fate hangs in the balance.

According to city projections, based in a 25-year guarantee by the Timbers’ owners on rent payments and ticket taxes, the extra income that the city would generate by renovating the Coliseum for soccer and building a new baseball stadium would cover about a sixth of the $64.5 million in new debt that it plans to take on. Only this week the Mayor called a time-out on the Coliseum’s demolition, to study other options. We’ll wait and see how this story develops…

Regardless, the Timbers now want to play with the big MLS boys, where the other North-West USL-1 teams are going to (Seattle Sounders gone in 2009, Vancouver to go in 2011). Although with Portland’s storied tradition of mediocrity, they are lucky they were actually not relegated to the USL-2…

Last year the Timbers had an alltime record of 97-44-82 [W-T-L] (308 GF, 271 GA, +37 GD), numbers that don’t look too bad until you look at their record in games with clubs other than Calgary, Edmonton and California: 77-42-81 (255 GF, 257 GA, -2 GD), a losing record. On the other hand against the former three expansion teams Portland fared very well: 20-1-2 (53 GF, 14 GA, +35 GD)

Don’t get me wrong, I think Portland is a far better than average team, and didn’t deserve to finish dead last in 11th place last year (3 points behind the 10th place Atlanta Silverbacks, a team that chose to take a timeout this season). The Timbers actually lead the Islanders alltime series 4-1-5, and have been close to unbeatable at home in Portland.

The Timbers last defeated the Islanders 1-0 in Oregon on April 17, 2008, in the Islanders 2008 season opener. But that Timber win was before the Islanders championship-form train took off in June 2008.

Prior to June 1st 2008, the Islanders were 1-2-3 [W-T-L], a .167 average, that included a loss and a tie to the Timbers. From June ‘08 on, the Islanders went 14-7-3 in the regular season, a .681 average, which included the first win ever for the Islanders in Portland. The Islanders are undefeated 4-1-0 against the Timbers at home in the Juan Ramón Lobriel in Bayamón.

This season the Islanders will play the Timbers in back-to-back home games in Bayamón on May 22nd and 24th. The teams third game of the season will be in Portland on July 23rd.