The Portland Timbers joined MLS in 2011 and failed to reach the playoffs in their first two seasons, but this year the club are heading towards the postseason and chasing the Western Conference title. The successful season has been under new manager Caleb Porter, who spoke to the Guardian about his hopes, dreams and fears.

Graham Parker: So let's start in general terms — when you came to the job (before the start of the 2013 season, though Porter's appointment was announced much earlier, while he saw out the college season in Akron), what did you see as the biggest cultural change that you wanted to make at the club?

Caleb Porter: Well, there were a lot of things. It was club that had, I think, a pretty healthy infrastructure, which I thought was a real positive. You had an owner who was willing to invest, an owner who had a vision, an owner who wanted to win, an owner who was passionate and was willing to support the team financially — that's a huge thing.

There was a decent staff in place as well and the best supporters in the league in my opinion, but we needed to get a philosophy in place, so I think the biggest thing that I tried to do was create a philosophy in the club, of how we were going to go about our business on the football side: training methodology, sports science, obviously system of play...start to create something of an identity in terms of style in terms of how we wanted to play. With that being adjustable as well — you have to be able to adjust in this league to win games.

And creating a locker room where there's responsibility and accountability. There's a behavior that we expect...so all those little things. It's hard to put it into a nutshell but there's a blueprint. I have a blueprint for what I want to do with the club from a soccer standpoint, what I expect from each role, the way I go about training and my methodology there and a way of going about building teams — I've done that for many years as a head coach. Obviously that was at college and you have to tweak it at this level, but I had been building teams for seven years as a head coach, so I had a way of going about those teams and that's basically what I did here.

GP: With the college experience in mind, you mentioned responsibilities and part of what you're doing in the college system is obviously not just shaping talented individuals but making them aware of their responsibilities to those around them. And thinking about the Timbers in the past, it wasn't as if they hadn't tried to play some of the same formations you've used, but perhaps some of the work those formations ask people to is particularly unforgiving if people aren't living up to their responsibilities within them

CB: Yeah, I mean if it was just as easy as just throwing out your players in a formation and you'd win games, then everybody would win, so you have to have a clear vision of what you want to look like in the game, and then you have to have a process to get it to look the way you want it to look in the game, through training. The process of getting your team to play the way you want them to play in the game, and execute a gameplan and play individually in the roles that you want and collectively play in harmony — it's all trained behavior throughout the week, through what you do in training, the concepts that you're imprinting on them day after day after day. So, again, I have enough analogies that I've followed, a blueprint, and I've just done the same thing here, with some tweaks because these guys are different to some extent.

I think that (the college thing) is played up a little bit more than it should have been probably. It's not that big of an adjustment. I think it's overplayed to be honest with you. Somewhere between 65 and 70% of MLS is college soccer players, and over the years I've had a lot of guys, even though they weren't pros at the time, they were guys who eventually became pros, who were very good players. And they weren't easy to coach, you still had to manage them the right way, you still had to psychologically push the right buttons.

So I think it's overplayed this whole college thing — "If you've coached in college it's such a big difference and adjustment..." — the reality is that if you're a leader you're a leader and you adjust to people. I don't cookie cutter my approach to every team. Every team is different, every player is different, every level is different and if you're a player and a coach you adjust and make tweaks. But you do have to have a philosophy of how you approach things, and how you build a locker room and how you hold players accountable and how you manage them and how you piece the team together in terms of formation. I'm real clear with that and I laid that out , started laying that out, from game one — the vision that I had and what I wanted from each role, and again it goes back to the training and it goes back as the week goes on the final details in terms of how you're going to gameplan and how you're going to scout and all those little details. And that's basically all we've been doing.

GP: I suppose i was bringing it up as much in relationship to the mentoring role that is just a given part of working with young players. I agree that the talk about the levels of play (college/MLS) is not as relevant as people have made it out to be. But I'm interested in how your experience in that environment (the college game) really helped you when coming into this scenario at Portland

CP: I think the thing for me that was really positive, and some people saw as a negative because I'd been a college coach, was that I'd been a coach for 13 years — six years as an assistant coach where I had to learn how to put the pieces together. I had to learn and grind in the office and figure it out and run sessions and make mistakes and go and study. It's not just studying tactics, it's studying leadership. Because being a manager is not just knowing tactics — you have to know tactics, but you have to know how to lead. And the common thread in most successful managers is they know how to manage people. You're coaching football but you're leading people.

And I learned a lot from those years an assistant coach and then I went and became a head coach and I had a chance to execute what I now knew, and while I was a head coach I was continuing to learn as well. I spent time overseas. My blueprint is not a college blueprint, it's a professional blueprint. I spent time studying pro teams and my training is from not coaching education courses, it's from going and spending literally weeks at a time with some of the top clubs in the world. And I stole a lot of little ideas, because coaching is stealing — you steal ideas, you incorporate them into your beliefs and philosophies and you take bits and pieces from all your experiences and all your studying and you continue to throw them into your blueprint and that's basically what I did.

So I think it helped me to transition to this level because I had been coaching. I'd delivered team talks, I'd run training sessions, I'd stood in front of my team pre-game, half-time, post-game. I was doing things that were professional things, they weren't college things. I was running Akron pretty much, from a soccer standpoint, like a pro team, because ultimately I wanted to be a pro coach. It just so happened that the right opportunity didn't become available. The reality is that being a college soccer coach is a really good job. There's a lot of stability and security and from a family standpoint it's hard to beat that. But when Portland came available for me it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up, and I jumped at it. And I was biding my time for the right moment to be ready to go, and I was preparing for several years for this move.

GP: A number of players have had key influences on the campaign. I'm not going to ask you to single out any players but I am going to name a few and ask you to comment on their contribution... So let's start with Donovan Ricketts (Jamaican international goalkeeper)

CP: Yeah, he was actually the first move we made. Obviously I wasn't here, but as soon as I got the job, obviously Gavin (Wilkinson, GM) and I — we work hand in hand on all the player additions and subtractions, because we have a great relationship, and when I got the job we started talking about the team immediately. Even though I wasn't here. Because we wanted to start transforming the club and we didn't want to wait until the season was done. We wanted if we could to start to make moves that would move us a little further along in the off-season. And we had the opportunity to get Donovan Ricketts and he fit the idea of the kind of goalkeeper that I like, and Gavin loved him and asked if i'd be interested in him and I said, "Yeah!" and we jumped on it. And he hasn't disappointed. It took him a little bit of time to get comfortable and acclimatize - as always when you change clubs. But he's been tremendous this year. Good teams always have a good goalkeeper and he's gotten a ton of credit and he should because he's definitely made saves to help us get points in games. I wouldn't trade him for anybody in the league.

GP: Will Johnson (Canadian midfield international)?

CP: Will Johnson's a guy, again, we had pretty much a common theme that we wanted in the players that we were going to keep at the club and going to add to the club, and that theme was "good character, good mentality"...and experience. We needed guys that had been in a winning locker room if possible. Now obviously with the guys that were here, some of those guys hadn't had a ton of success but we knew they were capable of contributing, but we thought it was important to add some pieces that had been at winning clubs and been professionals and been through the MLS season — which is unique. It's not an easy league to manage. You see that with some of the overseas players who come over — they take time to transition and it's because it's a long season; there's different climates; there's a lot of travel; it's a very athletic league, a physical league; there are a lot of little things you have to get comfortable with and get used to.

So we knew that in adding a guy like Will Johnson — he'd been in a winning locker room, he'd played in a similar style, and we knew that he'd step in and help us build our culture. To some extent he'd be an extension of us inside the lines — reinforce the same things we ere reinforcing; be a leader; hold guys accountable; be a professional for the younger players. And basically send the same messages we would sending, but it's more powerful in some ways of you have a player side the locker room and inside the lines in games that's been there, done that, and can drive the team internally. He's our workhorse, he's our ball-winner, he's capable of stepping forward and scoring goals; he's a smart player in terms of how he manages games. He's a competitor, he's a leader, and he brings that so important presence in the middle of the park — and you need that. Every good team has a ball-winner. The guy that makes you go. And he and (Diego) Chara are our engine room.

Seattle Sounders' Clint Dempsey is tackled by Portland Timbers' Diego Chara at JELD-WEN Field. Photograph: Ken Hawkins/ZUMA Press/Corbis

GP: I was going to mention Chara (Colombian midfielder). People have talked about him having a particularly good season. But it seems that as well as he's played, he's having as good a season as the players around him, and that's been the difference with him this year.

CP: Yeah. Everybody has a job to do and I've been real clear in laying out what I want out of each position and what I want out of each player and everybody has to do their job in the position that we play. The key is to make sure that you've got guys who are in a spot where they're comfortable, where really "doing your job" is just being who you are and doing the things you're good at. And i think that's what we've got going right now, is we've got guys that are in sync. Everybody knows their role, and everybody's chipping in, and we're playing like a cohesive, well-oiled machine. And that's the way you want it to be. You've got eleven moving parts and you want those parts to fit together and be in sync and play in harmony. And that's what we've got right now. They're just doing their job.

GP: Looking at a player like Darlington Nagbe (Liberian winger), because of your past relationship when you were his college coach, people were wondering what you were going to get out of him, and as the season has progressed, it seems as if one of the changes is that he's still capable of producing the inventive spark within the team, but he's also a much more integral member of the side.

CP: Yeah, he's...you have to have the right mix of players. Winning teams have to have guys that do the dirty work and bring the grit, but you have to have guys that bring special playmaking ability: game changing, attacking, flair, creativity...whatever you want to call it, he brings that. He's one of the players on our team who makes us go on the attack. He's dynamic, he's very skillful and he's capable of unlocking the game at any moment. And yet he's unselfish and he plays within the team, and he shares the ball and he's a one and two touch player, very good in possession. But in the final third he's proven to be a much more ruthless player than he's been in the past few years. He's had a career year in terms of production.

GP: Can we talk about the emotion of that recent win over the Sounders and what it meant?

CP: Well, we've had a lot of big games this year, and we've really tried to... I'm not a coach that likes to hype up the big game, because I always say that for every peak there's a valley, so if you're hyping up some games, what about the other games? So I try to keep the players focussed on every game being important. No game's bigger than the next — it's three points. And I think to some extent that's why we've been so consistent this year. It's probably why we have the least losses in the league and why we've only lost two games in a row once, because we're very consistent and I think that's what winning clubs do.

But, in saying that, I knew this was a very important game, not only for this season, because obviously winning meant that we'd be top of the table and for the most part put us in the driving seat for the playoffs and obviously top three. But for me it was bigger than that, it was for our supporters, for them to be able to leave that stadium and feeling proud of our club beating our rival. You know we've been called "the little brother" and for good reason, because we had performed like the little brother. But moving forward there's no reason why we should be the little brother. We respect Seattle — great team, great club — but for me, I think it's important that we're not inferior and it was big for our fans to be able to leave that stadium and feel superior for that game.

And obviously we have to keep doing that — it's not a case of we've arrived and we're better than them. It's nothing like that. But there have been a lot of painful results over the years for our supporters and win, lose or draw, they've shown up and been passionate and through thick and thin they've stuck with the club, and I know it brought a lot of joy to them so that was meaningful.

And then even beyond that, for me it's pivotal for us to get these type of results because for me it says everything about how far we've come as a club. We're getting results, not just pinching them, but results because we've earned them and we deserved them. And they're not results where we're leaving the game going, "Wow, that was a miracle". We're leaving these games going, "You know what? We expected that, and we believed we'd win, and we did." And yet we still have to keep doing it because football's cruel, and MLS, with so much parity, as much as you can be on top one week, it's the old "one minute you're drinking the wine, the next you're picking the grapes".

So we've tried to really remain very humble and stay hungry through...we've had a lot of highs this year, and we've had some lows, but we've remained humble through those highs and lows. And I think that's again why we've evolved this club in a short amount of time to where there's a lot of good players. We're a pretty experienced team, believe it or not, and throughout the season we've looked mature and come playoff time I like our chances, because we've shown that we can win at home — we've built a fortress — and we've shown on the road that we're the toughest team in the league to beat. Now, we have a lot of draws, but we haven't played for those draws, we've played for wins and there've been a few draws that have happened because we've given up late goals or given up early goals and chased them and pulled those goals back. But in 16 road games we've gotten a result in 12 and at home we've been virtually unbeatable, so if you look at that rhythm in a home and home series, that puts us in a good position, hopefully, because we can go on the road and get results but also at home we're performing very well. We're looking forward to the post-season and depending on if we take care of business in the next two (Portland drew their next game 0-0 with RSL and still lead the West going into the final day's play), maybe even a Supporters Shield. We're not going down without a fight for that.

GP: And then depending on if things go by the seeding, I think the Red Bulls were your first MLS game. You two could be fighting it out on the last day.

CP: Yeah, that would be a little irony there. That game was a barnburner. That was 3-3 and we were down two goals early, so that was a pretty electric game and here we are, the two teams at the top of the table. Game at a time though...

This interview was conducted between the victory over Seattle Sounders and the 0-0 draw against RSL that kept the Timbers top of the Western Conference