Photos by Diego Diaz, Captions by Diego Diaz & Toby Dunkelberg
The Portland Timbers hosted the Seattle Sounders on Saturday. Both sides were coming off of midweek matchups, but with the Sounders traveling back from Philly and with all their DPs out, it was Portland’s game to lose from the get go. The Timbers Army really brought it with this multi-leveled tifo.
The Timbers attacked from the first minute with great work from Gaston Fernandez running the Portland attack, but it was Darlington Nagbe who opened the scoring in the 12th minute with a wonderstrike from 30 yards out. It’s the Liberian’s first goal of the season.
It was all Portland for the first 30 minutes as they forced Sounders keeper Stefan Frei to make five saves to keep it at 1-0. At times, Portland blatantly did whatever they wanted and consistently had a numbers advantage going forward.
After the Timbers attack was continually thwarted at the last moment, Seattle started to get more and more possession. They pushed up and were rewarded in the 38th minute. It was a great goal but it came completely against the run of play. The Timbers were dominant in the first half and the 1-1 scoreline was only due to the ability of the Sounders centerbacks and goal keeper to come up huge when needed.
The first 15 minutes of the second half were Seattle’s best, but an inability to convert and generate chances led to Portland getting back in their dominating stride. As the match wore on, Nagbe used his speed to draw Seattle out of position and in the span of two minutes Adi made it 3-1, putting the cap on his brilliant play.
After the second goal, this time assisted by Rodney Wallace, for his celebration, Adi climbed onto the stand and picked Timber Joey’s chain saw to the delight of the Timbers Army.
Substitutes for both sides came in including Andy Craven making his MLS debut, but there was a clear difference in quality between each teams subs. The Timbers substitutes were just on a different level, and that led to Portland seeing may more chances late into the match. 
Rodney Wallace added a fourth and final goal in stoppage time to put the final stamp on the game. A pass from a streaking Urutti was calmly deposited past Frei for Wallace’s first goal of the season. Final: 4-1, Timbers.
As it is tradition, the players lift their trophies bringing and end to a statement game from the Timbers side. As it stands right now the Timbers are in third place in the Western Conference and only one point behind Seattle.
