Forty years after the club began, the Portland Timbers won a league championship, defeating Columbus Crew SC 2-1 in the 2015 MLS Cup at MAPFRE Stadium on Sunday. The championship is the third by a pro team in a top division in the city's history joining the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers and 2013 Portland Thorns FC. Here are three #StatMan takeaways from the match.
:27 Midfielder Diego Valeri scored the quickest goal in both MLS Cup and Timbers MLS history, when he turned a Steve Clark turnover into a goal. The Argentine midfielder is the first Timbers player to score in two different postseasons (2013, 2015).
1 The staunch Portland defense held Crew SC to just one shot on goal. That is tied for the fewest shots on goal by a team in an MLS Cup final and just the second time in the Columbus' 39 MLS games this season that they held to one or fewer shots on target.
34 Portland registered 34 tackles in the match, which is the third-most by a single team in any MLS match this season. It also the most tackles the Timbers have ever recorded in an MLS match.
