After pizza and sleep, Timbers ready for 'final' against Club America

Portland remains perfect in Leagues Cup action following 1-0 win over Querétaro.

PORTLAND – It was 10:36 p.m. inside of Providence Park when Phil Neville found rare form. He paraded into the media room with a box of pizza, insisting everyone have a slice. He loudly expressed disappointment when learning the Leagues Cup communications representative in the room wouldn’t be following the team next week to Austin.

“You have to be. You’re our lucky mascot,” the Portland Timbers coach said.

He said the match that just finished “wasn’t a great game,” said Portland’s opponent didn’t make an attempt to win, and a few times looked at the massive watch on his wrist and loopily complained, “I don’t like the eight o'clock kickoffs. I’m normally like an hour of sleep by now, so that was a difficult one.”

But regardless of the time, the quality of the match and of Neville’s alleged sleep deprivation, the Timbers manager couldn’t feign poutiness for long.

Portland had beaten Querétaro 1-0. The Timbers sat atop the Leagues Cup table. And after a July where the Timbers weathered some of the season’s toughest moments, Neville’s club is rounding into form yet again, with 23 players contributing to three clean sheets in eight days.

“We could have scored a few more but a clean sheet, three in three games, is what we are building our success on,” Neville said. “We’re going onto Wednesday night with something to play for.”

The Timbers will arrive in Austin later this week for a massive game against Club America with a 2-0 record in Leagues Cup group stage play thanks to Cristhian Paredes’ goal in the 36th minute. After scoring for the first time in two years eight days earlier to lead Portland past LAFC 1-0, Paredes again found the back of the net on a set play, banging home an Ariel Lassiter corner that had ricocheted off of teammates Zac McGraw and Dario Zuparic.

“I’m very happy. Most of that is thanks to the confidence of my teammates and coaches, but very happy about it,” Paredes said.

The rest of the match wasn’t pretty, but it was easy work for a Timbers squad that played up a man in the second half with the orders to stay out of trouble against a chippy Querétaro side.

“I didn’t think they showed any kind of endeavor to win the game,” Neville said of Querétaro. “I was proud our boys kept their discipline. I talked to (Kevin) Kelsy and (Ian) Smith at halftime. Kelsy was getting a little bit emotional, and I didn’t want Smith to be missing on Wednesday night either, so I had to make that substitution at halftime.”

Cristhian Paredes after his goal.

With Santiago Moreno and David Da Costa out of the lineup, much of Portland’s offense ran through Ariel Lassiter, who scored his first goal for the Timbers in Wednesday’s 4-0 win over San Luis. He didn’t score on Saturday, but he played well enough for Neville to get introspective as the clock ticked toward midnight.

“He is part of one of my biggest mistakes as a manager when I traded him from Inter Miami and it probably cost me my job,” Neville said. “I thought at the time it was the right thing to do, but I didn’t really realize what he brings to the locker room, the training pitch and the games. You just cannot put a value on what he brings every single day. He trains every single day he comes in and doesn’t moan. He’s the nicest kid ever, he works so hard, he’s an incredible professional….I think when you look at successful teams, everyone looks at the top end of the roster, but you don’t have successful teams without people like Ariel Lassiter, Eric Miller, Zac McGraw, Cristhian Paredes, who just go out there every single day, they are the heart and soul of the culture of this team.”

And they’ll all be fighting for minutes come Wednesday. While no, these Leagues Cup matches don’t count in the MLS standings, Wednesday features Club America, one of the giants of Liga MX whose fans will certainly pack Austin’s Q2 Stadium.

“It’s going to be helter-skelter. Go for it. It’s going to be a proper, proper Cup game,” Neville said. “The second game was always going to be the game that people rotated, or those that were out were not going to play as well, but for me the game Wednesday night is a final for us. We’re playing against the biggest club in Mexico, it’s a game that every single player has told me they want to play in. And we’re going to go down to Texas and have some fun.”

But first, it was time to sleep.

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor