The Portland Timbers practiced this morning at the team's Beaverton training facility. With a number of players still away on international duty, today's training was compact and intense for the Timbers' first team.
After warming up the Timbers broke into three groups: a seven man group of first team players, a seven man group of second team players, and a trio consisting of Diego Valeri, Ned Grabavoy, and Ben Zemanski. Deploying those groups on half of the Timbers' grass pitch, the Timbers worked their way through several permutations of a seven on seven plus three; first running a standard possession drill, then a possession drill focused on breaking lines and getting the ball quickly from the defense into the attack, and finally bringing on the goalkeepers and finishing out training with a short field match emphasizing the team's wing play.