With a new and highly regarded new coach and a crop of young talent, the Portland Timbers are an enigma heading into 2017. One on hand, Giovanni Savarese is roughly inheriting the same Timbers players who won the Western Conference just a few months ago. However, without Darlington Nagbe, it’s an entirely different team.
With that in mind, when trying to read the tea leaves for 2018 perhaps the best way to predict the immediate future of the squad is to look at what Darlington Nagbe provided and how the team will compensate the loss of the versatile playmaker.