This isn’t a game that, on paper, those outside the team should have expected the Portland Timbers to win. Yet there they were, in stoppage time against the New England Revolution, generating a chance that would have given them an unlikely one-goal victory at Gillette Stadium.
That the Timbers didn’t get that 2-1 result when Lucas Melano failed to redirect Sebastián Blanco’s late cross into an open goal, though, may be the only lament from a well-earned, 1-1 draw in Massachusetts.
“This is a very difficult place to play because they press the entire match,” Timbers head coach Giovanni Savarese explained, his team having extended New England’s winless streak to nine games.