Timbers, Sounders build on historic foundation to fuel continuing discord

In the beginning, there was rain. Lots and lots of rain. In fact, there was so much rain that the amount of precipitation in Portland on that fateful day somehow exceeded any of the familiar and tired clichés about the weather in the Pacific Northwest.

The first match between the Portland Timbers and the Seattle Sounders did not carry any of the expectations or any of the frills attached to the meeting ahead at Providence Park tonight (live, 7:00p.m. ET, FOX Sports 1, FOX Sports Go). There were no Designated Players, no marching bands and no tifos in place then. There were no discussions about recent Open Cup incidents or suspended stars. There were more fundamental, footing-related concerns at hand during that first encounter at Civic Stadium back on May 2, 1975.

“They say there was 8,000 at that first game, but I don’t think it was that many,” former Timbers midfielder/forward and current San Jose Earthquakes analyst Chris Dangerfield recalled. “It poured rain. It rained for about five days before. It was one of those situations where it looked like there was only 1,200 people there. [Civic Stadium] had an infield at the goal end. You actually had the third-base line on the goal line. It was full of mud. It was kind of a weird game where we pounded them and lost 1-0. The players looked at themselves and said, ‘What have we got ourselves into here?’”

Back in those days, the old NASL relied on imported players to carry the league. Many of the Timbers hailed from the English Midlands -- Dangerfield and future Aston Villa legend Peter Withe joined the Timbers from Wolves, for example -- and most of the Sounders were transplants from the United Kingdom, too. They took a leap of faith to continue their careers in the United States and stumbled into something special in the process. They did not expect all of the rain (.71 inches, the most precipitation ever recorded on May 2 at Portland International Airport) on that first day or all of the shared distaste to follow.

Familiarity, interest and proximity laid the groundwork for contempt. The small crowd at that rain-marred first game grew to 31,000 or so by the time the Timbers eliminated the Sounders from the playoffs at Civic Stadium in August. The relative success of the two teams -- Portland and Seattle finished second and third in NASL attendance behind the San Jose Earthquakes in 1975 -- fostered some of discontent that still lingers between the sides today, according to Dangerfield.

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“It was definitely a rivalry from the start,” Dangerfield said. “It was a rivalry not only from the players’ perspective, but from the fans’ perspective as well. Even back then, there was a group of very loyal Portland Timbers fans. I remember most of them being Scottish lads who liked a beer. They would certainly travel with us to places like San Jose, Seattle and Vancouver in their thousands. I mean, three or four thousand of them would show up in Seattle, like they do with the Timbers Army [now].”

The links created during the eight years together in NASL (1975-82) through today frayed as the state of the game unraveled. Both teams exited NASL before it finally folded in 1984. They renewed hostilities with different names (F.C. Portland and F.C. Seattle) and different players in the WSA in 1985 and sustained them through league changes, name changes and mergers until the Timbers shut up shop after one season in the APSL in 1990. It took until 2001 for the reconstituted versions of the Timbers and the Sounders to meet again in a competitive fixture.

“I think the competitiveness and the spirit of the rivalry lived on through all of the different iterations of professional soccer in the Northwest,” former Seattle forward Roger Levesque said. “The roots date back to the NASL when the teams first took the field against each other. When I think about it, it’s one of the things that makes this rivalry so special in professional soccer in the States: There is such a long history, there are so many iterations of what this rivalry looks like.”

As the two teams returned to the field together once more, they grappled with the tenuous realities of their situation. MLS operated on shaky ground at that time with the contraction in Miami and Tampa Bay ahead a year later. Portland and Seattle played in the A-League at that time, the division perched right below MLS.

Instead of attracting players from the top divisions in England, the two clubs relied on developing American prospects willing to chase their dreams of playing professional soccer. The two teams cultivated local talent, identified potential diamonds ignored elsewhere and landed other players on loan from MLS teams to form their squads. They scraped through the best they could as they shuffled up and down the I-5 to meet each other in those first few years.

“You’d drive up the day of the game,” former Timbers mainstay Scot Thompson said as he recalled the early days of his tenure (2004-10) in Portland. “You’d play. You’d create your own atmosphere. I think the biggest attendance for one of the games [in Seattle] was 5,000. And it was just tough. We got hyped up because we wanted to win and we wanted to beat our local rival. But it was a lot different than it is now.”

Some of the rancor and all of the history existed during those days, though. Those games between the Timbers and the Sounders mattered for all of the reasons they once did in the 1970s and the reasons they do now. But the scope remained modest until Seattle received a MLS expansion team in 2007 and eventually joined the league two years later.

The leap to MLS rallied Sounders supporters to back the club in vast, unprecedented numbers and stung the Timbers as they waited for their chance to make their own jump to MLS. All of the energy and the enmity rose to the fore when the D-2 Timbers hosted the MLS Sounders in the third-round of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup at a sold-out PGE Park in 2009.

“The Open Cup game down at our place was probably the first time where you were on pins and needles,” Thompson said. “Everyone was really anxious. Both supporters’ groups were sold out. The stadium was sold out. We lost, 2-1. They had scored in the first [45] seconds of the game. That was the game for me: It felt like a huge rivalry game, like this was on the cusp of being something really important.”

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Levesque -- a figure so hated in Portland that Timbers fans once raised a banner proclaiming ‘True Fans Hate Levesque’ after he turned out for the Timbers as a guest player -- marked his early opener by falling like a tree when Nate Jaqua chopped him down. The celebration concocted on the bus ride down to the game emerged as the lingering memory from that electric occasion, preceded the Timbers’ ascent to MLS in 2011 and served as the first step toward the current, heralded reality.

Both teams boast passionate supporters capable of transforming a simple match into something beyond comprehension 40 years ago. Their rivalry is known across the country and around the world over for its passion and its vigor. Those identities highlight their differences as cities, as clubs, as supporters. They search for any and every way to measure themselves against each other and obtain some measure of superiority.

“I think both Portland and Seattle have shown they have some of the best [clubs] in MLS,” Levesque said. “With that comes that competitive spirit, that competitive nature. Our two cities in the Pacific Northwest are always looking for ways to differentiate one from the other. And soccer seems to be a catalyst in that.”

Soccer holds that cherished place in the accounting because it tracks through the decades. These cities and these clubs rely on their pasts to inform their present. They revel in the context created anew through these boom times and forged during the many lean years that preceded them. They understand the importance of those common and persistent threads to their story.

It is why they treasure the opportunity to take the field together once more. This match marks the 91st meeting between the teams in official competition. Seattle holds a 46-32-12 lead in the series. Portland will try to slice into that advantage in the same -- albeit substantially renovated -- ground that hosted the first game 40 years ago. There is no rain in the forecast, though. In this moment, it is expected to be broiling hot instead.