You don’t have to go back far in time to see a similar final to the one we’ll have this Sunday. Try 2013.

That year, Sporting Kansas City hosted Real Salt Lake in MLS Cup, in what turned out to be one of the most dramatic finals in the competition’s history, with the game eventually won on an agonizing penalty shootout.

But just like this year’s final, it was a match-up damned with faint praise before a ball had been kicked. The sight of small-market, model MLS citizens visibly succeeding may be the best indicator of the health of the league, but in terms of moving the ratings needle, there’s no doubt that more than a few marketing folk were hoping not to travel too far from New York or LA that year – just as they were hoping to still be in New York this weekend.

Just as in 2013, the Red Bulls were Supporters’ Shield champions this year and seeded to host the MLS Cup. And just as in 2013, they fell to better-organized divisional opponents in the playoffs, while on the other side of the draw, another preferred TV destination in LA, disappeared off the playoff map early. The league is in the first year of an eight-year playoff deal and has experimented with regular TV time slots this year, as well as making a series of overseas deals, including one with Sky Sports in the UK, to grow awareness of its brand.

But domestically and internationally, having a showpiece final to capture the imagination, ideally with some name recognition sprinkled throughout the teams in the form of storied designated players, is an ideal for MLS.

Yet the league has other ideals too: parity, competitiveness and a growing corps of teams playing in their own stadiums under ambitious young ownership groups. And just as in 2013, they’ve got a final between two sides squarely shaped by those ideals.

The 2013 final, despite the frigid conditions it was played in, was a fascinating game, as much for what it symbolized about where the league was headed as anything that happened on the frozen field. The 2015 MLS Cup will be a similar parable of the league.

Because just as Kansas City were an MLS charter team reinvented for the millennial-driven advent of MLS 2.0, and RSL were a team who’d advanced on a fiscal and technical prudence defined by the rules and culture of MLS and their own small-market status, so Sunday’s two finalists typify different aspects of MLS culture that the league office consistently emphasize as unique selling points.

Columbus Crew’s reinvention as Columbus Crew SC has not been quite as dramatic as Sporting KC bursting out of their directionless Kansas City Wizards incarnation at Arrowhead Stadium to playing and winning trophies in front of sellout crowds at the state-of-the-art Sporting Park. But you can bet that when current Crew SC owner Anthony Precourt took over the club from the Hunt family, as one of a wave of such young entrepreneur acquisitions that have transformed the ownership demographic within the league, he had the Kansas City story in mind.

Until Precourt’s arrival, the Crew, the one-time innovators who had built the first soccer-specific stadium in MLS, had looked in danger of being left behind in the rapid expansion era of MLS. The Hunt family had played a big role to keep the league from folding in 2002, but the conservatism of the remaining league ownership triumvirate – represented by them, Robert Kraft and Phil Anschutz’s AEG group – was already beginning to feel restrictive by the time Toronto burst on to the MLS scene in 2007, closely followed by the arrival of David Beckham in LA.

And by the time the Cascadia teams, including Portland, arrived at the end of the decade, to help take supporter culture to a new critical mass, Columbus faced the challenge of reinventing or managing their rate of decline.

Fanendo Adi celebrates his goal against FC Dallas. Photograph: Tim Heitman/USA Today Sports

Under Precourt, they chose the former – and the rebranding of the team and stadium has been accompanied by the technical vision that brought Gregg Berhalter in as head coach, and an exciting team that has reconnected with the fans.

The idiosyncratic Mapfre Stadium, as it is now known, may not be perfect, but it holds a special place in US soccer history, not just for being first, but for being the site of a clutch of memorable victories over Mexico. It was perhaps the first stadium in the country where the US had enjoyed an atmosphere of home advantage when playing Mexico. It’s fair to say that several moments in that stadium have been bellwethers of the growth of the game in this country.

And, of course, there’s Portland — a team that appear both retro and futurist. Studiedly playing to the traditions and local associations of their four decades of NASL, then USL, incarnations, and playing in a converted baseball stadium that can look like an English ground from the Victorian era, Portland arrived in the league with a fully formed fan culture, and sense of their own history.

Paradoxically, that’s what also made them appear like visions of a successful future for MLS, since the Timbers offered a glimpse of what the current rash of expansion teams might start to establish in their respective communities in the coming decades. Seattle might have had the numbers at their games, but Portland’s fans were proud of the fact that they weren’t new to this: “Quality not quantity” as one banner pointedly reminded visiting Sounders fans during one MLS clash.

They were committed to supporting the women’s game too — their sister club Portland Thorns average 13,000 fans per game, and have inspired other MLS sides to start their own teams. MLS commissioner Don Garber this week told Sports Illustrated that he had come round on his thinking on the subject and hoped to see every MLS side eventually fielding a women’s team. Timbers owner Merritt Paulson can be a polarizing presence for his social media persona, but on this issue he has definitely put his money where his mouth is.

As for the wider perception of the club, the “hipster” tag that characterizes Portland’s support contains superficial elements of truth, but glosses over the deeper and genuine roots the club has within the local community, and the region’s role in producing soccer players for the national team program – phenomena that are hardly the result of affectations. And the game-day experience at the Timbers’ perpetually sold-out stadium is consistently among the best in the league.

And just as Columbus have Gregg Berhalter, Portland have a young American coach in Caleb Porter, who has built an even and well-drilled roster combining veterans, youth and flair.

It’s no slur on Columbus to suggest that, secretly, more than one MLS executive might be wishing Porter had got that combination working just a few weeks earlier than he did during their strong regular season run-in. The Timbers’ regular-season finish was not good enough to seed them above their opponents on Sunday, so the Timbers Army will be traveling to Ohio rather than hosting this weekend.

Regardless, it promises to be a fascinating game between two teams with more than a few qualities in common, and displaying many of the virtues of team-building, identity and being institutionally nimble that the league continually advocates for. Perhaps, just as in 2013, MLS has not got the final it wished for, but the one that it asked for.