we love you sounders, we do, we beat the timbers, 1-2

well, as promised, some thoughts about tonight. just got back to my house and i would be lying if i said i wasn’t tired. but i am such the professional, how can i keep my promise.

the thing is, you probably have a better opinion of me on the match and the play by play b/c sitting pretty much at field level, in the middle of flags and smoke bombs down at the corner, well i had little chance to analyze much of the game. but as for the trip it self, well i wax on about that.

the trip

with traffic, multiple stops, a bus driver who didn’t know exactly where to go…. well, we got to the match at 7pm on the dot. luckily the match started late by about 20 minutes… not sure why.

the atmosphere

PGE was electric. we were getting boo’d the whole time walking to the park and in the concourse. that park has ‘personality’ but i can see what they mean by it not being MLS ready. you could barely move in trying to get to the bathroom and getting a beer.

the sounders fans were in full voice. hardly a stop in the singing. they say 500 of us showed up, but i am not exagerating when i say it looked more like 1000. sounders jerseys everywhere you could see in the councourse, it was fantastic.

one thing that the the timbers will need to fix before they get in the MLS is seperating the fans. maybe for any other team, it won’t matter, but when the sounders travel there, and we bring as many fans as possible, we will need to be seperated.  we were seated in the stadium at one end, but there is this beer garden down in front of the stands that anyone enter and the entrance was walking right through our section. a constant stream of timbers walking passed made for a constant stream of yelling and sh*t talking.

this one guy, i will never forget… he was getting a pretty good ribbing and you could just see him steaming. someone grabbed at his scarf and gave it a little tug and he stopped, with his jaw clenched so hard, i thought he was going to crack some teeth. he got super red in the face and started talking to himself. whatever he told himself was enough to calm him down and then keep walking down to the beer garden. with the little self help talk that he gave himself, the clenched jaw, red face and steam coming out of his ears,  just couldn’t help but wonder what type of anger management this guy went to. anyway, enough about him.

the goals

oh what a start. portland didn’t know what hit them. that was the best single play i have seen from nyassi. the leave off, the run, the cross which i am pretty sure was from the outside of his boot…. it was just beautiful. levesque’s header was no easy task. that ball came in hot and he could have easily missed.  our section went mental and i choked down more than one smoke bomb during the celebration. the scarf has never been so handy.

the second goal came at the end of some very good passing, but it wasn’t the passing that opened up the timbers defense. they collapsed on jaqua and caused a little pinball action with the ball which fell to king. he one timed it with some wicked spin away from the keeper into the side netting…… mental celebrations ensued.

their goal. honestly, i have no idea what happened. it was at the far end of the pitch…but even from there the defence looked a little suspect. it was a lot of pinball/keystone cops etc etc and the ball fell to a striker in a spot that strikers just don’t miss.

second half

i don’t know if the second half was just not that memorable, but i find myself with very little to talk about. well, ok, i have a few things.

Timbers fans…and i know there are a few of you that have been reading this. the way your keeper, and some of your fans reacted to nyassi being hurt in the 75th minute was pretty piss poor. he was truly hurt and had to be subbed because of it.  i spent a lot of time reading timbers message boards last week and it was amazing how much you liked to talk about how much better behaved your fans are. the bottle thrown at wicks a few weeks back was mentioned over and over. and then a player gets hurt and your keeper, no idea his name, starts yelling at him and acting all dramatic. this stirs up the crowd and down came a bottle almost hitting him as he laid on the ground. yes, i know you will say ‘well this is just one jack ass’, and that may be true, but i doubt i will see any apologies in your forums tomorrow.

where the hell did you get 5 minutes of extra time from? nyassi was only down for 2 minutes. talk about some home town advantage.

a few last thoughts

every team has traditions, some are good, some aren’t. i can’t stand our golden scarf ceremony. it isn’t that i don’t think that some of these people don’t deserve recognition, but i just don’t like the whole scarf ceremony thing… anyway, this brings me to timber joey…that has to be the stupidest thing i have ever seen. i am at a loss for words at home lame that is. you guys can’t possibly think that it is cool at all can you?

all in all great game and i am so happy i was able to go. it would have been a long ride home if we didn’t win. have to give the timbers players some credit, they had some decent chances and weren’t afraid to come out and try and play. having said that, we had a bit of a mish mash team so i don’t feel too bad about the scoreline.zakuani, ljundberg and montero had played the whole game, i would have expected a few more goals.

ok, it is late.

COMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEE ONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN YOU SOUNDERSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS