The Timbers were given a hero’s welcome after clinching their first ever MLS Cup, and in ‘Soccer City, USA’ there’s much more celebration to come

Why Portland is beaming with pride: 'The Timbers are part of who we are'

By the time Justin Zoradi showed up at Portland international airport, hundreds of people were already there. Word broke out on social media that the Timbers would be returning to the city with the MLS Cup soon, and everyone had the same idea.

To get a better view, Zoradi climbed up on a stop sign in front of the arrival terminal, trying to get a glimpse of the city’s first top-five league champions in nearly 40 years. The Timbers aren’t just a team in Portland, he said – they are part of the city.

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“The team, especially this year, embodies the values of what Portland is all about,” said Zoradi, a Portlander of 10 years. “Our team doesn’t have the flash and the glitz these other big cities have, and yet we’ve been able to build an awesome team based on grit. We’ve battled our way through the season and the team has made a great connection with how people here see themselves.”

For anyone who arrived in Portland on Monday and didn’t know the Timbers had won the MLS Cup, they quickly found out. From the recorded audio announcement at the PDX airport welcoming travelers to the “home of the MLS Cup champion Portland Timbers” to the green and gold lights splashed along the Morrison Bridge, the city was beaming with pride.

Soccer City USA, as Portland is unofficially known, was living up to its nickname. It even exceeded the expectations of the man who has recently played a large role in helping the city hold on to its namesake.

“It was better than I could have imagined,” said Timbers owner Merritt Paulson of the airport turnout. “I had tears in eyes when I saw the thousands who had gathered. Our fans deserve this.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Portland fans prepare to welcome their heroes back.

Although Portland’s soccer culture is driven in part by the ultra-organized, super-loud Timbers Army, fans seem to come from everywhere. Count Mayor Charlie Hales among them. His current profile picture on Twitter shows him and his wife standing back-to-back wearing Timbers scarves and holding axes, a symbol of the club.

The Timbers have been a boon for the city, and the MLS Cup only figures to add to it. Hotels, restaurants and pubs feel the impact of the team’s draw, Hales said, and the population in Portland is booming, too, as people move in from out of state.

The Timbers effect may be the strongest locally, but it spreads well beyond the Pacific Northwest. In countries overseas with deep footballing cultures – places that may often be dismissive of the American game – Portland tends to be the city that is known for getting it right.

“We’ve gone from being a provincial city to a world city, not because of the increase in our population, but because we’ve been discovered,” Hales said. “The Timbers, the Thorns and soccer are a big part of that.”

Portland’s place in soccer folklore has been 40 years in the making, even despite not being able to claim a trophy until Sunday, when the Timbers beat the Columbus Crew in Ohio.

Back in 1975, the Timbers played their first-ever match against the Seattle Sounders in the same stadium where the Timbers play today. Rebekah Helton, then just almost 10 years old, was there with her dad. She doesn’t remember why exactly, but she quickly fell in love with the sport and the team, which then played in the North American Soccer League.

There were many like her and her family – people who initially didn’t know anything about soccer, but kept coming back to see the Timbers play anyway. That iteration of the club eventually dissolved, but it left behind a generation of Portlanders who knew what soccer was and wanted more of it.

“There’s always been this solid base of people who fell in love with the sport or the Timbers, and found something about it that stayed with them,” she said. “The seed that was planted by the 1970s team eventually grew into the soccer culture that we have now in 2015.”

In other words, what Portland has can’t be replicated overnight in other cities, whether they are winning championships or not. MLS owners probably want to copy it, though. Since joining the league, the Timbers have sold out every match for 90 straight home games. The season-ticket renewal rate last year was 99%, a league record.

Longtime Timbers Army member Don Cox was also at the team’s first game in 1975 and he has seen the team’s impact on the city grow over the years. It started as a novelty, but now it’s hard to imagine the city without the Timbers, an organization that is just as active off the field in the community, he said.

“The team is part of the fabric of the city and who we are,” Cox said.

Today, Portland is celebrating the team’s MLS Cup win with a parade through the city’s downtown in the afternoon – something, for instance, the LA Galaxy has never gotten in five MLS Cup wins. At night, city officials will honor the team at a celebration rally at Providence Park. The airport turnout may be only a glimpse of what’s to come.

Hales, the mayor, recalls standing next to MLS Commissioner Don Garber at a game last year. The fans were, as they do in Portland, waving banners and chanting loudly. Garber shook his head, the story goes, and said he wished he could bottle whatever the fans have in Portland and ship it off to the other cities in the league.

Garber has figured out some of the elements that work in Portland. The downtown stadium is what Hales calls the city’s “secret sauce” and it has become part of Garber’s criteria for new MLS expansion cities. Providence Park is in the heart of Portland and it forces people to walk to the stadium, organically creating the “march to the match” that supporters groups in some cities deliberately organize.

That wasn’t by design, of course. That stadium was built in 1926 without any aspirations of being a major league venue. Yet again, it’s a piece of a long history in Portland that serendipitously created the soccer culture that exists today – the fan support that makes winning the MLS Cup such a huge deal.

“Portland is Soccer City USA, with or without the MLS Cup,” Paulson said. “That dates back to the NASL era. But it’s special to be best on field, as well as off it. Our fans who have bled for this team for years and been the best support in this country deserve a Cup.”