Editor's Note: With the Portland Timbers set to play in their first ever MLS Cup on Dec. 6 against Columbus Crew SC (1pm PT, ESPN), we take a look at some of the key moments in the Audi 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs that got them to this point.
The moment is now etched in Portland Timbers lore.
Sporting Kansas City's Saad Abdul-Salaam stepped up to take his penalty with the chance to win the shoot-out and send his team into the next round of the playoffs.
The ensuing penalty kick ran Timbers fans, as well as goalkeeper Adam Kwarasey, through the entire gamut of human emotion in a fraction of a second. As Kwarasey dove to his left, Abdul-Salaam sent his kick the other way. The ball careened first off one post and then the other, before dribbling harmlessly away from Kwarasey's prone body.
In an instant, terror turned to elation, sadness to joy, and uncertainty into confidence.
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“Our crowd, our fans, our supporters, the Timbers Army, I think maybe they were the ones that kept that last ball out of the net,” head coach Caleb Porter said after the game. “It was either them or it was God because the thing bounced twice and I don’t know how it didn’t go in.”
As Kwarasey later put it, Abdul-Salaam's miss imbued the Timbers players with the sense that this was nothing less than destiny.
“'We're going to win this game,'” Kwarasey remember his teammates telling each other after Abdul-Salaam's miss. “'There's no way we can lose this game when this happens.'”
Of course, it was Kwarasey himself who then helped send the Timbers through to the Western Conference Semifinals match-up with Vancouver Whitecaps FC, burying his penalty kick past KC 'keeper Jon Kempin before going back in goal and denying Kempin's own effort from the spot.
It was the longest PK shootout in MLS history.
The Ghanaian international rose from his stop with a rare display of emotion, pumping his fists in elation and cajoling the sold-out Providence Park crowd with a roar of satisfaction.
Porter could only shake his head in disbelief after the match and breathe a sigh of relief.
“I’ve been part of a lot of crazy games, but yeah I think this was probably up there,” he said. “No doubt about it. Just glad to be on the winning end.”
