I saw this news earlier today and immediately though “why haven’t other expansion clubs done this before?” Well really only Seattle could do it since they were basically being “promoted” to the big show last year.

The Portland Timbers still have a year before they enter Major League Soccer but they are already making sure their roster will be MLS-ready. Today they signed veteran keeper Adin Brown. MLS fans will remember Brown from his time in New England back in 2002-04, he lead the Revs to a MLS Cup final in 2002.

I love this move for a couple reasons, not only do the Timbers get a quality veteran keeper this year but they also completely skip over the crazy MLS allocation process to get Brown. You see, Brown would normally go through the MLS allocation system to be placed with a club. Now Portland will have one of the first cracks at a player next year (along with Vancouver) meaning they still have a shot at a quality player. This is in a way almost a two-for-one deal.

Now Brown isn’t fully healthy yet but reports suggest he will be good to go by the middle of June. Even more important he should be 100% for the first MLS season in Portland.

Very smart of Portland to get this deal done if you ask me. It makes them better now for their USSF Division II season and for next year.

Merritt Paulson signs the official expansion letter with MLS. (photo via Portland Timbers)

The final hurdle to bring Major League Soccer to Portland was cleared on today when the Portland City Council voted 4-1 to approve $31 million in funding to renovate PGE Park. The vote means the Portland Timbers expansion team can begin play in 2011 as planned.

As we all know Portland and Vancouver will join the league next year to put MLS at 18 clubs. Portland had a long history of issues with getting the proper money to renovate PGE Park but with that all now out of the way the club can focus on getting everything in line for next season.

Great news for the Rose City.

Both Vancouver and Portland may be a little over a year away from putting a Major League Soccer club on the field but both took a big step forward this past week in hiring technical directors.

Vancouver hired former DC United coach Tom Soehn while Portland announced their current head coach Gavin Wilkinson was getting the position.

Why are both hires good? It is a matter of getting a head of the curve as expansion teams. Basically both are taking the Seattle route here and are getting on top of things before it gets too late. With the league expanding like it has these past few years, new clubs like Portland and Vancouver are able to see how to do things and how not to do things.

We saw this sort of thing out of Seattle before they entered the league last year. They set out early to hire a staff that would get the ball rolling quickly for them. They made a former MLS star Chris Henderson their technical director and really they haven’t looked back since. It was a move that helped set them up to where they are now, which is no doubt a reason why both Portland and Vancouver got the ball rolling on these hires this week.

Both Soehn and Wilkinson have plenty of time to help build these clubs going into next year. I’d take it that the hire of Wilkinson means that Portland is probably set on hiring someone else as a head coach, like Houston’s John Spencer.

Its going to be interesting to see how these two clubs handle things moving forward. Its funny that both hired technical directors right around the same time. No doubt both will probably make a point of trying to out do one another which can only mean good things for their fans. Nothing wrong with some healthy competition here as they take the proper steps forward at becoming the next MLS clubs.

PGE Park renovation renderings. (Portland Timbers)

Details of PGE Park’s $31million renovation for the Portland Timbers’ move to Major League Soccer in 2011 was released Monday to The Oregonian. Renderings show exactly how they plan on making PGE a soccer facility for good.

The biggest transformation will be the stadium’s east side. A public plaza at the corner of 18th Avenue and Morrison Street will form the main entrance, extend toward the field and include a team store open even on non-gamedays.

A sit-down restaurant will serve 1,444 midfield seats, a community meeting room will be built next to the restaurant and three group and family decks will be built for events and extra seating. A cover will jut over most of the roughly 4,000 east-section seats, echoing the existing wooden overhangs in the 83–year-old stadium.  Additional restrooms and concession stands will serve the new seating areas.

Work is expected to be done started in January in time for the 2011 season.

Timbers owner Merritt Paulson said the capacity will be expanded from it’s current 16,000 to somewhere between 20,000 and 24,000, including a north auxiliary area that will be closed for most games.

PGE Park Renovation renderings. (Portland Timbers)

The only real bad news is the field, it probably won’t be grass like most MLS fans would want.

The renovation details come with a concession: Though hard-core soccer fans wanted the Timbers’ re-vamped home to include grass, the playing surface almost certainly will be artificial turf, Paulson said.

The stadium’s reality is rainy springs and falls, and the need to accommodate the Portland State football team, high school games and other events. Crisscrossing field lines for football and soccer when those seasons overlap would be far more difficult to manage on grass, Paulson said.

“We’re going to have days where we play soccer right after football games, and on a rainy day, the field would be utterly destroyed,” he said.

I guess we can let the complaining on PGE Park begin out of fans and players. I know FieldTurf is an eyesore to most but it isn’t the absolute worst thing in the world and it’s come a long way from its AstroTurf days.

I think overall it’s exciting news to hear and see details of their plans for this stadium (finally). Hopefully the work gets done on time and things work out for Paulson and company.

PGE Park renovation renderings. (Portland Timbers)

The holiday season is in full force here as we have (gasp!) nine days until Christmas! Yikes. Anyways it seems like a perfect time to sit back and look at what each team and the league in general should be putting on their Christmas shopping lists this year.

Now I will admit some of this is purely for fun while the rest may be serious wishes that people out there probably want for their teams. I’m being reasonable too because not every team can get a star player for Christmas here.

Feel free to join in on the fun with your wish lists for your club.

Major League Soccer:

• A new CBA. – Easily the biggest thing on all of our minds this winter is the CBA discussions. Let’s hope for both sides the deal gets worked out and all will be happy with it. Its the perfect time of year for the two sides to put aside their differences and get to work for real on this issue.
• Stadium deals. – Let’s face it to get the league where we all want it the league needs to help each club out that is currently working on a stadium deal. So your KC, Houston, San Jose, DC and to a lesser extent New England get their deals worked out. Sometimes a league stepping in more can help things out. More soccer-only stadiums lead to better scheduling for the league.
• A good run in the WC by the US. – 2010 should be a big year as a whole for the sport of soccer in the US. The deeper the run by the national team in the World Cup next summer the more the league will benefit from it.
• Montreal. – The league wants to be in Montreal and they will get there soon enough. It all comes down to the money from the local government now.
• Portland and Vancouver. – Just a general getting all their ducks in a row kind of thing here. Both have stadium situations that need ironed out in the coming months.

Continue Reading…

Thanks to a couple Portland readers for sending this link my way from OregonLive.com. It seems like damage control in Portland has gone into full gear after Wednesday’s comments from Merritt Paulson who said there would be no MLS in Portland without a new baseball stadium.

Well now it appears the Paulson is once again a “100% committed” to Portland’s MLS efforts.

Portland Commissioner Randy Leonard said Paulson is back on track with where things were already going before Wednesday’s comments.

“We’re back on track, given his willingness to recant,” Leonard said. “He asked me what he needed to do, and I said, ‘Shut up.’ He said ‘OK.’”

Now the fun still remains in Beaverton where Paulson is attempting to get a new baseball stadium built. Apparently the town has a couple sites in mind for the stadium but they aren’t giving any official word as to where yet. But at the same time there seems to be some growing opposition for the new stadium.

But back to the MLS and Portland side of things. Paulson still has a few things that he will have to get to keep folks there happy, though most of these are in the long run. The city wants a written guarantee that Paulson will complete the stadium renovations along with confirmation from MLS officials that they accept the delay in the construction project and approval from the Pacific Coast League to move the Beavers out of Portland.

Just like I said the other day, Portland will be in MLS in 2011. Make no mistake about it but this baseball stadium situation is starting to put a very dark cloud over the expansion bid.

I guess Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson is just playing some hardball with the city of Portland now. According to Oregonlive.com, Paulson told Beaverton officials that the future of Major League Soccer in Portland hinges entirely on whether he can find a new home for his minor league baseball team.

So no new baseball stadium means no MLS in Portland huh Merritt?

“Yes,” Paulson responded. “But it’s conditional on finalizing the deal with Portland. And if I don’t get a baseball deal done, I’m not going to finalize the deal with Portland. So MLS will not come to Portland unless I do a deal for a new baseball park.”

Paulson is working on two deals with two cities, which won’t be easy from the sound of it. To me this just sounds like some hardball to get two different cities to do what he wants. MLS has already stated that they plan on having Portland in 2011 no matter what and from the sounds of things the city of Portland seems to be right on board for the soccer side of things.

More than likely the Portland side of things won’t matter for Paulson. He’ll still get MLS in the city but his baseball team just may not be going to Beaverton if a deal doesn’t go through. I don’t see him hanging a MLS bid out to dry over a baseball stadium in another town.

But as we have seen with this bid nothing is as clear as it sounds in the press. We’ll probably continue to see more of this story in the coming weeks.