LENEXA, Kansas – The ice and snow that greeted the Portland Timbers on their Tuesday night arrival in Kansas City, Missouri, forced both Sporting Kansas City’s Thursday opponent and the host side themselves indoors on Wednesday, where preparations for the second leg of the Audi 2018 MLS Cup Playoffs Western Conference Championship (6:30pm PT, ESPN | Presented by Oregon Lottery) cast both teams in the city’s suburbs.
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There, amid a district of warehouses and other commercial endeavors, the Timbers completed their last training session of the week, the certainty of their indoor environs separating the team from what’s become the week’s biggest question.
“Whenever you have a match played in these conditions, the weather is going to affect it, profoundly,” Timbers captain Diego Valeri explained, in Spanish, when asked about the ice and snow’s role. “But more important than that, when you begin a game like this, one that gives you a chance to win a cup, you have to have the fortitude to overcome anything.”
The Spanish word Valeri used became a theme, when talking about Thursday’s challenge: superar. To do something great, the team would have to overcome: overcome Sporting; overcome the weather; overcome whatever challenges might present themselves before Thursday, or before a potential MLS Cup final.
“On the field, the ball isn’t going to behave the same as it normally world,” Valeri said, when thinking through how Thursday might play out. “But we’re also going to have to wait and see. We’re probably not going to be able to run as fast or cover as much distance, but that also could prove a defining part of our journey.
“We have to overcome all things, whether it’s the cold or the other things we’re preparing for.”
While some Timbers have never played matches in what, come Thursday night, may be freezing temperatures, others have performed in these conditions before. As Sebastián Blanco reminded the media on Sunday after leg one, the weather “is okay, because I played in the Ukraine” for three years.
“It will be cold, but at Akron, we played games in the snow,” Timbers fullback Zarek Valentin said, issuing a reminder of his college days in Ohio, as well as his childhood in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “I’m a Pennsylvania boy. It’s nothing; nothing much at all.”
Like Valeri, Valentin sees Thursday playing out differently because of the weather, saying the field “will be a little but harder, but it’s still probably softer than a lot of the turf around the league.
“[The conditions] will definitely be an issue, but from what we’ve heard, it will probably be somewhat unfamiliar to both parties. We’re just going to have to adapt and get used to it.”
As much as superar was Valeri’s focus, no excuses was Valentin’s. Perhaps that’s because his Pennsylvania roots give him a certain perspective. Perhaps that’s because he’s trying to set a tone. Ultimately, that tone, as well as Valeri’s, is going to have to settle through the team, because no matter how the Timbers, Sporting, or anybody else feels about the conditions, they will have to be overcome.
“Again, no excuses, here,” Valentin reiterated. “I don’t want my teammates to use that, as well. We’ve just got to take care of business; whether it’s cold or whether it’s snowing; whether it’s turf or whether it’s 100 degrees; whether it’s on grass or not. It doesn’t matter. We’ve just got to go out there and play our game. That’s all.”
