Portland Timbers quotes
Portland Timbers head coach Caleb Porter
On the team’s performance…
“It’s hard to tell because Vancouver had a few guys out. It looked like they were down shifting quite a bit, maybe for Champions League. Our team looked good. How good I don’t know? Hard to tell because the opponent’s a factor. I thought in that first half, possession, control, obviously something we have been working on was definitely the best we’ve had in terms of a preseason game. Two goals were great. Good combination. The first was a 15-pass sequence. I thought defensively we were rarely threatened. Obviously we gave up a goal on a dead ball. That was the only shot they had on goal the entire game. I believe we had nine shots on goal, 16 or 17 shots, so we created a ton. Should have had more goals. I thought the second half things kind of disintegrated a little bit. Part of that was we made some subs. I felt like it was important to get some young guys some minutes. Protect a few guys. Ridgy’s [Liam Ridgewell] calf was tight. [Fanendo] Adi we had always planned to play 60 minutes because he’s a little bit behind some of the others because he missed a couple of games in preseason. But saying that in the second half there was still some really good stuff we should have capitalized on and scored. Still need to get a lot better but I was pleased.”
Notes:
- Portland has scored seven goals in their last three preseason games, ranking as the most goals scored by the Timbers in any single preseason tournament since Portland started hosting the tournament in 2012.
- Fanendo Adi scored his fourth goal of the 2017 preseason. Since joining the club, Adi has recorded six career preseason goals for the Timbers, which is most in club history.
- Diego Valeri scored his third goal of the preseason. Valeri now has five career preseason goals for the Timbers.
- Vytas and Darlington Nagbe each assisted on both Timbers goals against Vancouver.
- The attendance for the match was 10,286. Each of the Timbers’ 18 matches in the six-year history of the Timbers preseason tournament have had attendances of more than 10,000.
- Portland finished the preseason tournament undefeated and was the only team to win a match in the six games played.
