BEAVERTON — As he did before his Portland Timbers went to Kansas City and won in the fourth round of the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, coach Caleb Porter this week said the road to a tournament championship is not level.
When Portland takes on the Seattle Sounders on Wednesday at Starfire Stadium in Tukwila, it will be the Sounders third home match in as many games in the 2014 tournament.
The Timbers, by contrast, will be on the road for the second consecutive round. And it would be their third consecutive road match had the Orlando City under-23s not pulled off an upset earlier in the competition.
“It’s hard because it’s not equitable,” Porter said. “If a team gets thee home games in a row it’s a huge advantage.”
If Portland beats Seattle in this quarterfinal match, the Timbers will host a semifinal on Aug. 13 at Providence Park against the winner between the Chicago Fire and the Atlanta Silverbacks of the North American Soccer League. That was announced late Monday, after Porter addressed the media that morning and expressed some frustration with the system.
Porter said he didn’t have a perfect solution to the flip of a coin determining home field.
“But there’s got to be some way to even that out. Because if we get all road games and they get all home games, it’s not really a fair competition,” Porter said.
Facing the Sounders at 4,500-seat Starfire Stadium in Tukwila — where this match will be played — has been a losing proposition for every visitor. The Sounders are 19-0 all time in Open Cup matches at Starfire, 11 of those against MLS teams. On June 24, the Sounders needed a penalty-kick tiebreaker to dispatch the San Jose Earthquakes after the teams played to a 1-1 draw over 120 minutes.
Porter said that playing at the intimate Starfire Stadium might be more intense than playing in the 60,000-plus crowds at CenturyLink Field, where the teams will gather on Sunday for an MLS showdown.
“Believe it or not it might ramp up the intensity even more because it’s intimate. It’s not going to be as big, but the fans are going to be on top of you. Supporters are going to be in amongst each other a bit more than they are at CenturyLink,” Porter said.
“I expect it to be lively and I expect it to be edgy.”
And the Timbers coach believes his team is up for the challenge.
“We beat a very good team in Sporting Kansas City on the road and we’ve been extremely good on the road, so we’re going to go in there with confidence,” Porter said. “But clearly we’re the underdogs because we’re on the road.”
