The Portland Timbers have gotten their share of love from MLSsoccer.com’s young player lists over the years, whether we’re talking about the current incarnation (the 22 Under 22) or its previous version, the 24 Under 24. Before this year, four different Timbers have found their names among those rankings, including Darlington Nagbe nabbing the top spot in 2013. Andrew Jean-Baptiste (2013), Lucas Melano (2015, 2016) and Alvas Powell (2015) have also been honored by these lists, before.
But forecasting players’ careers is difficult, and while the 22 Under 22 doesn’t explicitly claim to be reading players’ futures, its desire to look at talents without much MLS experience and try to evaluate them against players with first-division minutes requires some speculation.