Alvarez back with Timbers — for at least one more game

Team's all-time scoring leader excited to don the jersey Tuesday, hopes to sign for rest of season

By Zach Stratton

The Portland Tribune, Jul 14, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

DAVID PLECHL / THE PORTLAND TRIBUNE

Byron Alvarez takes a shot in a 2006 Timbers game against Vancouver.

For most of the Portland Timbers, Tuesday night’s exhibition game against Mexico’s U.A.N.L. Tigres is a chance to test their skills against some of the top players in the world.

For forward Byron Alvarez, a native of Mexico City, it’s much more than that.

Two years after playing his last match for the Timbers, Alvarez is returning home.

“I call myself from here [Portland] now,” Alvarez said Monday morning, after a workout with the Timbers at PGE Park.

Alvarez is excited, because he has been invited to play Tuesday for the Timbers in a tryout of sorts. If all goes well, he’ll finish the season with them.

“I own a house here, I reside here, every time I go somewhere my point of coming back is here,” he says. “This is my home.”

Alvarez, 29, made his first appearance for the Timbers in 2003. Four seasons later, he was a fan favorite and the franchise career leader in goals (41) and points (91) after 96 appearances with Portland.

When the 2006 season came to close, however, Alvarez decided it was time to part ways.

“We went through a hard time,” he says. “Not just me, I mean the organization — players, coaches, everything.”

That offseason, Alvarez became a free agent. And when the Charleston Battery, also in the USL First Division, contacted him, he packed his bags and headed for South Carolina.

Playing for Charleston meant that Alvarez would have to play against the Timbers in Portland.

As the Battery prepared to take on the Timbers at PGE Park on Aug. 23 last season, Alvarez found that playing against his former team was not going to be easy for him.

“It was hard. I didn’t want to play at first. I didn’t want to show up,” he says. “I knew I had family and friends coming out to watch me play so I didn’t want to let them down, but at the same time I didn’t want to hurt the team that I was part of for four years.”

In Alvarez’s only year with the Battery, the team finished 8-14-6 and missed the playoffs.

From there, it was off to Monterey, Mexico, where Alvarez played for the Monterey La RaZa of the Major Indoor Soccer League. By the time La Raza’s season ended with a loss in the championship match, it was the end of April 2008, the USL First Division season had already begun, and Alvarez, a free agent, did not have a team.

1 | 2 Next Page >>

Facebook	Digg	Del.icio.us
Newsvine	Stumbleupon	Reddit