PORTLAND, OREGON -- From the moment FC Cincinnati got off the bus at Providence Park in Portland Saturday night, it was clear they were walking into hostile territory. The bus pulled to the entrance of the stadium, the players stepped off – most with headphones on or some other kind of distraction to keep them preoccupied – and the Portland Timbers fans who had gathered early in anticipation of this game made their voices heard through the distractions.
A rain of expletives came down on FC Cincinnati in the brief moment they could be seen between the bus and the gate. And while yes, they were technically booing the team, the ire of the local supporters was drawn, really, to just one man.
Evander.
The FC Cincinnati superstar midfielder made his first return to Portland, the club he had played with for two years prior to joining FC Cincinnati and made the 10:30 p.m. kickoff the spectacle of the MLS weekend. With a chance to go top of the Supporters’ Shield table on the line, and the hatred of the home fans turned his way, Evander rose to the occasion and helped deliver The Orange and Blue a hard fought 3-2 victory on the road.
From the moment Evander and his FC Cincinnati teammates arrived on Saturday night, the Timbers fans booed him. When he came out for warmups, they booed. When his name was announced in the starting XI, they booed. When the team marched out ahead of the national anthem, they booed.
This was not, according to Evander himself, unexpected. He didn’t expect cheers or admiration. He was now an FC Cincinnati player and wanted to represent his club the best he could. FCC is always booed on the road and this was no different.
But when the national anthems had been sung, and the teams began to line up for their starting XI photos before heading out to the middle of the field for one final circle up and pep talk, the volume got turned up to 11 and the hatred in the crowd got more specific.
The Timbers Supporters Section at Providence Park, known as a group by the name “The Timbers Army,” began their pregame chant of “Hail Portland Timbers” but then added a second, explicit line in the chant directed specifically at Evander.
The chant went on and on. With each repeated verse the crying out got louder, more of the crowd joined in, and the wall of sound began to cast an oppressive shadow on the game.
It’s then when Evander said the noise from the fans started to get to him. Started to hurt. Postgame Evander reiterated that fans could do whatever they want, that’s the nature of the game and their right, but he always felt like he treated the fans, and his teammates, and his coaches with respect during his time at the club and during his exit from Portland. That his desire to leave was never about them, it was about something above all that. So, when that level of explicit vitriol became louder and louder, he understood, but it did hurt and affect him.
That feeling wasn’t exclusive to Evander though. His teammates, while not the specific targets, could sense it and knew what they needed to do.
“I think tonight just showed that we are together as a group. Like a team for real, because I think they felt the same way that I did, like, I think that they had the same feelings,” Evander said of his team. “Even before the game where we were together on the pitch, they're like, ‘Let's do this for Evander, let's play, let's win this game’ because I think (the chants) was a little bit too much.”
In the huddle prior to the match, a team leader had the group to listen to the crowd for a second and really take it in. They then broke the silence by saying “let's win this for Evander.”
That was all the motivation they needed.
“We always want to make sure our guys are at their best and know we have their back,” defender Nick Hagglund said after the match. “I think any player that's going to play against their former team, there's a little extra energy that goes into it for them. As a team, we want to support them, and we want their opportunity to play against their former team to be a positive experience. So I think there's a little extra energy that the team puts into it to fight for that player. Obviously Evander was a big player for them, and a big player for us. So I think stakes are even higher, and so I think we wanted to go and allow him to do his thing, but also put on a good performance to show that he made the right choice.”
Evander took that support and showed he was ready to be his best for his teammates.
There’s a clip from a documentary on the Team USA Men’s Basketball squad at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics that makes the rounds every once and a while on social media. It depicts a moment in the match where the late, great Kobe Bryant explains to his teammates that he knows exactly what play their opponents, Spain, will run in the first possession of the game. Bryant shares with the other NBA legends on that team, now known as “The Redeem Team,” that his Lakers teammate, very close friend and Spanish center Pau Gasol would look to set a pick on him and Bryant was going to run as hard as he could into Gasol’s chest and knock him flat over. He would take the foul, but the tone would be set.
Evander made his Kobe moment in the second minute.
After hearing his teammates rally behind him in the huddle, Evander went full speed to close out on former teammate and Portland Timbers Goalkeeper Maxime Crepeau as he was kicking the ball away and gave an extra shove to the keeper, sending him to the ground.
The foul was called, the crowd outraged, but the tone was set. The group was united in their focus to win this one for Evander, and Evander was ready to do what he needed to win.
“The guys always play for each other, and they know how important Evander is to our group,” Pat Noonan explained simply. “He's been what he's been all year for us, and that's a difference maker and then when we needed to see out the game, he put in the work defensively to help us see it out. So a good team performance.”
“To be honest, I feel like the way he went out there and played the way he did, for me, he's always so confident and I feel like there was just like an extra edge to what he was doing,” Hagglund said of his teammate Evander. “He's like, I'm gonna prove to you all that I made the right decision. He was gonna do everything tonight to put the team on his back and carry us in a way to victory. I saw that in his eyes from the beginning. He's always cool, calm and collected, but as the game started, I felt like there's an extra energy. He was sliding, he's getting into tackles, and when he was on the ball, he was extra confident to try to make something happen. I think he wanted to make a statement, and we wanted to make sure he knew we had his back the whole way.”
With that tone set, in equal parts by the home crowds’ demeanor and FCC’s resilience in the face of it. FC Cincinnati went out and dominated Portland in the first half.
Fueled by Evander, Kévin Denkey and Pavel Bucha, who each had goals in the first 35 minutes of the match, FC Cincinnati raced out to a 3-0 lead and never looked back. Portland would score once before halftime to keep things within striking distance, and again on a penalty kick in the second half to make it a one goal game. But the FC Cincinnati defense held steadfast and turned away shots all night on route to the 3-2 victory.
The first goal of the game came from an excellent combination of passes and decisions where Bucha centered a pass from the right flank with both Evander and Denkey running toward goal. Evander, the first player in the ball's path, drew all the attention of the Portland defenders and collapsed in on him. But the Brazilian midfielder let the pass slip right on by him knowing Denkey was there and unmarked. Denkey then put it away with gusto to score in his return to the starting lineup.
The second goal had Evander passing a ball through the defensive line to Bucha, who took a well placed shot from an unlikely angle but put his foot through it and he scored.
The third goal was pure Evander magic.
Matt Miazga intercepted a pass near midfield, took a few dribbles forward and made a pass that earned him his third career assist with FCC by handing it off to Evander who turned, dribbled and uncorked a laser beam of a shot to the upper corner to make it 3-0.
“I thought, after a relatively slow start for him on an individual level, he really grew into the game, and of course, had the impact on two of the goals,” Pat Noonan said of Evander. “Which is nothing new. So it was nice to see him, after a slow start, be able to make such a big impact. And I think that was in large part because of how we were able to advance the ball through pressure, how we were able to get him in dangerous spots.
Ignoring some of the language chosen by the Timbers Army, all of which rang into the homes of viewers loud and clear all over the world on MLS Season Pass and even bothered many Portland fans for various reasons, the energy and atmosphere at Provenance Park was some of the finest the league had to offer.
Pat Noonan called the match “extremely entertaining,” and Portland Timbers Head Coach Phil Neville called it “the best of what MLS had to offer.”
“Credit to the fans tonight, the energy in the stadium was outstanding. It makes the game more enjoyable and more meaningful, because they were in it from the beginning, even when we took the lead, even when we got the third goal. Of course, they get a quick response to get the energy and the momentum back before the break, but the second half was what a road game feels like in a great environment,” Noonan said of the Portland environment. “So it's a good experience for us. I'm sure they're enjoying that experience as well, despite the result. But I hadn't been here since 2018 and it was really nice to be back to experience a game like this.”
It was loud. It was dramatic. It was fast paced and most of all, for every touch of the ball every second of the game felt like it was the most important thing going on. Portland collectively was desperate to prove their old player wrong and get the best of him, and Cincinnati collectively was dead set on protecting, backing up their guy, and winning.
It felt like, for lack of a better or more pertinent term, a playoff game.
“That was a playoff environment,” Noonan said. “It's good for us to experience a game like tonight on the road. Every game is going to feel like this for us if we want to be in the same position when it ends. Good learning experience, as always, we'll look at the game and see how we progress. How do we use this experience and a game like this to be even better in certain moments down the stretch and into the playoffs."
FC Cincinnati, with the win, catapulted itself to first place in the Supporters’ Shield table. With matches to play on Sunday across MLS, the worst FCC could be by the weekend is tied for first in the Shield and top of the Eastern Conference. With seven games to play, every match is going to ramp up in intensity and every match, home or away will have escalating stakes.
If FCC want to win the Supporters’ Shield, they’re going to have to do this over and over again. If they are going to win MLS Cup, as is their goal, they’re going to have to be downright comfortable.
Saturday night in Portland was a step in the right direction on those fronts according to Noonan. Both for showing they can, and for getting further experience in doing so.
“It's good pressure. The players understand it. I've said this through the whole process, when we were at the top, when we dropped off, it's going to be that way all the way through. There's so many strong teams that are pushing for a Supporters' Shield. The margins are small. You can see with results tonight just how difficult it's going to be for teams going on the road to get results, teams fighting for playoff spots. This is what the games are going to feel like all the way through,” Noonan reiterated. “So, how do we use this experience and a game like this to be even better in certain moments down the stretch and into the playoffs.”
FC Cincinnati continue their journey next against NYCFC but do so from the comfort of their home grounds as they return to TQL Stadium. Kick off is set for Saturday, August 23 at 7:30 p.m..
