Final Timbers-Sounders league match gets all fouled up

First-half goal enough for Seattle to win 1-0 at PGE Park

By Tony Schick

The Portland Tribune, Aug 11, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (4 Reader comments)

On a muggy, 82-degree August night, one that potentially marked the end of an era, a season-high 12,332 fans piled into PGE Park to watch the Portland Timbers take on the Seattle Sounders … perhaps for the last time in league play.

The possible end of the rivalry was expected to be a bittersweet game, but instead the Portland fans just got bitter.

Seattle took a 1-0 lead in the first half and never gave it up to beat the Timbers in a match full of fouls and cautions and one in which coach Gavin Wilkinson felt his team was cheated.

“If anyone were to sit down and watch the game film with an unbiased opinion they’d probably feel sorry for us,” Wilkinson says. “Unfortunately, it’s another game where the officiating is under question.

“Referees are supposed to come into a game unbiased and unopinionated,” Wilkinson says, noting that two of his players were warned to watch their elbows before the match began.

Seattle seized the momentum early, controlling the ball deep in Timber territory for much of the first half. The Sounders managed six shots and got their first goal within the first 24 minutes of the match, in which the Timbers only mustered two shots, neither of which were on target. The Timbers also spent much of the first half scrambling to defend as the ball bounced back and forth within their goal area.

One such occasion resulted in Sounders midfielder Nikolas Besagno emerging from the scuffle with a one-on-one with Brad Knighton. Besagno sent the ball toward the lower right corner of the goal, and Knighton made a diving save. But as the ball ricocheted off the post back toward the middle of the goal, Sounder forward Sebastien LeToux rebounded it and punched it in for the game’s only score in the 20th minute.

As the Timbers tried to fight back throughout the first half, emotions mounted, resulting in 12 first-half fouls (six for each team), two yellow cards and one ejection. Seattle forward Josh Garner received the game’s first caution at the 15th minute for fighting too roughly for position, and Portland’s Cameron Knowles received the second in the 31st minute after Gardner and Besagno went down.

Two minutes later, Gardner hit the ground and drew a foul call on Portland’s Scot Thompson, who was ejected for the shove, inciting argument from the Timbers’ Knowles, Justin Thompson and Tom Poltl.

The Timbers totaled five shots in the first half, one a header from Poltl that glanced off the near left-side post. They couldn’t tie, however, and both teams exited the first half to boos from the Timbers Army.

The second half began as heatedly as the first had ended, with a yellow card to Seattle forward Jason Cascio that resulted in an injury to defender Leonard Griffin in the 52nd minute. Griffin left the game, and Shaun Higgins came on to replace him.

Portland forward Bryan Jordan also went down, clutching his foot in front of the Sounders’ goal at the 60th minute, but he recovered and finished the game.

The two teams amassed 15 more fouls in the second half and four more yellow cards: one each to Cascio, Sounder goalie Chris Eylander in the 72nd minute, Portland forward Byron Alvarez in the 83rd minute, and Seattle’s Zach Scott in the 85th minute.

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