Timbers vs. Sounders: A lucrative rivalry

The Portland Timbers lost to their “arch-enemy,” the Seattle Sounders, tonight in what could be the last game of their “bitter rivalry.” Next season the Sounders move up from the United Soccer League’s First Division to Major League Soccer.

The bellicose quotes are courtesy of Boaz Herzog, Oregonian sports writer, who can write martial clichés with the best (or worst) of them.

While there were more than a few injuries and there was one ejection, no one actually died of wounds. The only person in danger of hooliganism injury was the roundly boo-ed ref for his quick-on-the-draw red carding.

At game’s end, the scoreboard read Timbers 0, Sounders 1, but the most significant tally was 12,332, the evening’s attendance, a record for the season. More than a few fans seemed to be commuter rooters from the north.

“Bitter rivalry”? I’d call it lucrative.

A passing note: the Timbers seemed to play better with 10 men on the field than with 11. Significantly, the one Sounder score came against Portland when they were at full numerical strength.

When soccer isn't soccer

The way playoff soccer matches are settled in case of a tie after regulation and overtime is, in a word, absurd.

The absurdity was on full display tonight at Civic Stadium (aka “PGE Park”).

I left the stadium with a shrug. In my view, the Timbers didn’t lose the United Soccer League Division One semi-final game, nor obviously, did they win it.

No, the soccer game was a tie.

What the Timbers lost was some anemic contest remotely related to a soccer match.

The home team lost to the Atlanta Silverbacks in a penalty kick shoot-out.

The Timbers had clearly outplayed Atlanta during the game. Portland had 23 shots on goal to Atlanta’s 12 — and that’s just for starters.

The problem was that lads in green failed to put any of those shots in the net.

So what happened? The dread penalty-kick shoot-out got wheeled in to decide the "winner." The shoot-out tests just two mano e mano skills — the ability of a striker to score a teed up ball and the ability of a goalie to defend against it.

That’s a great little match-up, but it is hardly soccer with its passing, dribbling, trapping, tackling, heading, teamwork and — grace.

If this kind of resolution were used in American football, tied games would be settled by opposing place kickers exchanging free shots at the uprights from mid-field.

So here’s my suggestion: If a soccer game ends in a tie, the teams are reduced to a goalie, two defenders and five attackers. The five offensive players could only play at their offensive end, where they would be opposed by the other team’s outnumbered three-player defense, which would also be limited to half the pitch. Likewise the opposing team’s offense would have to stay at its offensive end and be opposed by the similarly restricted, three-player defense of the other team. The ball could pass freely from on side of the field to the other.

All the soccer skills still would be involved, but the teams would be reduced in size and limited so that there would likely be a decisive “golden goal,” sudden-death score in very short order.

We would then leave the stadium knowing that the better team had won — playing soccer.

A whole lot of Red Bull

Recently I suggested that Portland's professional soccer team just go by the sponsor's name on the team jerseys and call itself the "Toyotas" since the real name, rumored to be "the Timbers" is nowhere to be found on the uniforms.

Now a Portland soccer fan near and dear to me has alerted me that a Major League Soccer team already has made the leap by actually naming itself after a sponsor.

That would be Red Bull New York. Red Bull, the sponsor, is also an energy drink. So when New York fans chant their team's name, they are also chanting an ad, which in turn is piped out over the TV and radio to thousands, free of charge.

And if that isn't insidious enough, there's an entire soccer league in England that has sold its name to none other than Coca-Cola, hence Coca-Cola League 1.

Before long we may well see cities and even states selling off their names. Beaverton becomes "Niketown." Oregon becomes "Nikeland."

This isn't as bizarre as it sounds. Remember the little eastern Oregon hamlet of Halfway that dropped its name for a year and called itself Half.com, the name of a dot-com company — all for a price?

Then back in 2005, EchoStar Communications Corporation (Nasdaq:DISH) and its DISH Network satellite TV service offered free satellite TV dishes and service to residents of any town choosing to rename itself, ready?: "Dish."

And sure enough, a small community in Texas, formerly Clark (pop. 125), cashed in on all those dishes by dubbing itself "Dish."

Another way to put it is that it traded its real world heritage for free access to fantasy.

If I could accept the principle of such a trade (and I can't), from the point of view of both benefit and name, I believe the residents of Dish would have been better off approaching the folks from "Red Bull."

A Beautiful Game

A soccer game like the one on a balmy Tuesday night could make Portland Timbers matches habit forming.

I joined my son, daughter-in-law and two of their friends to watch the Timbers play AC Milan’s under-21 team at Civic Stadium, aka PGE Park.

We were joined by a reported 11,000 others. Not bad for a week night in the city.

The senior AC Milan club is one of the best in Europe so the AC Milan Primavera youngsters, many destined for stardom, had a tradition to uphold. The Timbers, undefeated at home this season, had a streak to defend.

At that, the exhibition match had an almost convivial cross-cultural, diplomatic feel to it.

The game was close and fluid. A dance of quicksteps and turns, feints and lunges, lobs and leaps.

So much of it is what Hemingway called “grace under pressure.”

You can see why soccer played this way is called “the Beautiful Game.”

As the sky darkened and a finger-nail moon rose over the city, the match wound ever tighter.

Portland was ahead by a goal when a red-carded Timber player put the team down a man. Milan soon scored the equalizer. The Timbers, back on their heels, fended off Milan probes, volleys and assaults, hoping to struggle to the end-of-regulation tie-breaker when the game would be settled on penalty kicks. Portland knew the shoot-out would even the teams again.

The strategy worked.

The Italian team fell into a malaise as its first three penalty shots missed the goal every which way. The shooters were like basketball players throwing bricks from the foul line in the closing minutes. While Milan missed; Portland was dead on with four goals in a row.

In the celebration that followed, the score seemed an afterthought. The Portland victory and Milan loss were laid aside as the two teams mingled and strode around the field together, waving to the crowd.

Together, they had given us a treat.