PORTLAND, Ore. – Slightly more than half of the Portland Timbers team trained fully on Thursday. The rest recovered from their U.S. Open Cup game the night before. Whereas a normal times give the team plenty of time to avoid such harshly divided groups, these are not normal times in Portland. Wednesday started a four-game, 11-day stretch that forced players onto different schedules.
The reality of that was already apparent against the LA Galaxy. The Timbers rolled over their hamstrung opponents, 4-0, but they did so without the full services of midfielder Diego Valeri, who only played 12 minutes.