When it rained, it poured for the Portland Timbers in season-opening loss to Vancouver
On the bright side, there were no tweets after this one.
PORTLAND — On the bright side, there were no tweets after this one.
But following Portland’s latest loss to Vancouver, a 4-1 season-opening defeat at Providence Park that came on the heels of Portland’s 5-0 loss to the Whitecaps to end last season, Timbers manager Phil Neville didn’t spend much time searching for the positives.
Sure, the Timbers played nearly all of Sunday’s match down a player after Kamal Miller’s red card in the 11th minute. And yes, that red card was questionable. So, too, was the non-call on a handball that set up Vancouver’s third goal. But after an offseason of trying to move forward, after retooling a roster to be younger, faster, more athletic and supposedly better defensively, well, the only real positive the second-year manager could conjure up in his postmatch presser was this:
Unlike last year’s season-ending implosion, there’s still 33 more games to go.