Under fire, Porter turns a spark into a flame

Published 12:00 am Thursday, December 17, 2015

Before he was given a hero’s welcome by thousands of fans chanting his name back in Portland. Before he hoisted the MLS Cup trophy with his team in a champagne and beer-soaked locker room. Before a whirlwind run through the MLS Cup playoffs.

Before any of it, Caleb Porter was a coach under fire.

Just two months ago, the Portland Timbers — the team Porter inherited in 2013 for his first professional head-coaching gig — sat out of playoff position with three regular-season games remaining after a loss to Sporting Kansas City on Oct. 3.

Had the Timbers not gone on a torrid run, winning their final three games in epic fashion — beating both Real Salt Lake and the Los Angeles Galaxy on the road before clinching third place in the Western Conference with a home win over the Colorado Rapids on the final day of the season — Porter’s team would have missed the playoffs for the second year in a row.

For an ambitious front office and rabid fan base, that would have been a disastrous turn of events.

“I expect in this job that you’re going to get criticism when you don’t get results,” Porter said as the celebration began to die down after the Timbers beat the Columbus Crew 2-1 on Dec. 6 to clinch their first MLS title.

Sunday’s historic triumph — with the Timbers becoming the first Cascadia team to advance to the title game and win the MLS Cup — came validation for a coach who was touted as one of the bright, young leaders in the game when he was hired.

The championship also highlighted Porter’s evolution from a coach who preached ideals of playing a “beautiful” game of possession and high-pressure attack to one who was willing to adapt, adjust and, at times, go against what comes naturally.

“If you look at the body of work over the last few years, it’s pretty impressive, and I don’t say that for me, I say that for the team and the club,” Porter said. “… I think the fans are always going to criticize coaches and players when they don’t win, and I have no problem with that. I expect that. I took this job knowing that, I don’t really read it, but I also don’t get mad at it, either.”

In Sunday’s title game — Portland’s ninth straight match without a loss since that Oct. 3 defeat — Porter displayed how he has evolved in three years in the league.

A goal from Diego Valeri 27 seconds into the match, the fastest goal in MLS Cup history, came when he pounced on a mistake by Crew goalkeeper Steve Clark and was a byproduct of Porter prodding his team into immediate high pressure in hopes of nabbing an early goal.

Once Portland grabbed a 2-0 lead six minutes later on a Rodney Wallace header, Porter and the Timbers knew they’d face a relentless onslaught for the remainder of the match. But Porter was confident in their abilities to absorb, having played a low block often this year in an effort to develop comfort defending and looking for the counterattack.

“When the game calls for that, you have to be able to do it and get your guys to do it comfortably, and my teams have never been able to do that. So I’m pleased that we were able to do that when the game called for it and then use the counterattack,” he said.

Porter also made a tactical adjustment after Oct. 3, shifting Darlington Nagbe into the midfield from his usual right-wing position into a 4-3-3 formation. It gave one of the league’s most talented attackers a larger role both on offense and defense and resulted in a rejuvenated attack while also maintaining a strong defensive spine.

Nagbe said it gave the team confidence that they could control the game, saying that holding on to an early lead against a team frantically trying to spark a rally was something they likely wouldn’t have been able to pull off earlier this season.

“Everyone stepped their game up, even Caleb, everyone started demanding more of us, and we started demanding more of ourselves,” Nagbe said. “The biggest thing I saw is we were just excited playing for each other and working for each other.”

At any point, however, it would have been easy for Porter to question his path.

The tactics, the roster he and general manager Gavin Wilkinson built — having invested in reasonably priced designated players, including at center back in Premier League veteran Liam Ridgewell, bucking the trend of allocating the most resources into the attack, with the goal of building depth — all were coming under scrutiny.

“I think when I first came in last year, people questioned a DP center-half, as they call it, and trying to shore up the defense in the team,” said Ridgewell, who has taken the armband from former captain Will Johnson as he recovers from injury. “And we missed by one point last year to get into the playoffs, and I probably took that as hard as anyone. They took me in to try to make the playoffs, and we didn’t. So this year, to win it, and win it the way we did, is a really good thing.”

Porter said it was faith in the team he had built, while also being willing to adapt, that led to the MLS title.

“Did I think it would happen in three years?” Porter mused. “I think you always believe. You never win something like this unless you believe, unless you expect it. It doesn’t just happen. I think you saw true belief in this team every single game in the playoffs. We weren’t just happy to be in it; we actually believed we would win it.”