All We Really Want Is Goals: Cascadia Cup Edition

The Portland Timbers are headed up north to take on the Seattle Sounders this weekend in the latest match up between North American soccer's two most bitter rivals. So, to get in the spirit of the weekend, let's take a look at five of the best goals scored by the Timbers against the fishing village to the north.

May 14th, 2011

The first meeting of the two teams in MLS was a rain soaked battle that showed the rest of the league what they were in store for with both teams back at the highest level of American soccer for the first time since the original NASL. With the expansion-side Timbers down a goal to the well-thought-of Sounders, things were not looking great for the visitors as the oppressive atmosphere of what was then called Qwest Field.

Then Sal Zizzo was taken down as he made a bursting run through the center of the pitch in the 64th minute. None other than Captain Jack Jewsbury stepped up to the ball and served a long, dropping free kick into the Seattle box. Casey Keller came off his line for the ball, but he was beaten to it by beloved Futty Danso, whose flicked on header nestled nicely into the back of the net.

(Watch the goal at 11:55 of the video below.)

June 24th, 2012

The Timbers' first MLS win over the Sounders came at home at Providence Park and what a win it was. With the 2012 season off to a rough start, the Timbers were in need of points when this one came about, so it is no surprise that this match produced not one, but two of the best ever celebrations by a Timbers player.

The Timbers came out of the match the 2-1 winners and it was David Horst's headed goal (and subsequent berserk celebration) that would ultimately give the Timbers all three points, but Kris Boyd's point-and-laugh celebration after scoring the opener in the 16th minute as he fired home a pin-point cross from his countryman Steven Smith.

March 16th, 2013

Coming off the disaster that was 2012, the Portland Timbers had a new coach and most of a new team as they got the 2013 season underway. We have gotten to know the style of a Caleb Porter coached team since then, but at the time the concept of a team that only got stronger as the game went on was new to Timbers fans.

So, when the Timbers found themselves down a goal on the road against the Sounders with stoppage time approaching in just their third game of the season, there were probably some who did not expect much from the Timbers. Thankfully, those people were wrong.

In the 90th minute the Timbers put a furious barrage on the back line Sounders, keeping the pressure on until they found a crack. Just as it looked like the Sounders might have cleared the ball following a sustained Timbers attack, Andrew Jean-Baptiste floated in a chipped pass toward the Sounders' near post. With Ryan Johnson carrying his man toward the far post, Rodney Wallace was able to put a header on the ball in acres of space, heading the ball just inside the upper 90 of the goal and salvaging the single point that at the end of the year put the Timbers into first place in the Western Conference.

November 2nd, 2013

In the Timbers' first ever MLS playoff match, who else should they come up against but the Sounders? Both legs of this one had goals that Timbers fans will treasure, but it was Darlington Nagbe's strike to put the Timbers up 2-0 in the first leg that convinced the Timbers -- and the Sounders -- that Portland was going to advance.

An incisive ball into the Seattle box in the 66th minute from Kalif Alhassan found Nagbe on the run and able to simply touch the ball around the lunging tackle of Djimi Traore before pivoting and firing home a low shot past Marcus Hahnemann.

(Of course, this was also the "Welcome to Your Nightmare" match. You can check out that infamous Seattle tifo here and the Timbers Army's reaction to it here.)

June 28th, 2015

In the Timbers' most recent match up against the Sounders, the team from up north were floundering, having just lost Obafemi Martins to injury and Clint Dempsey to suspension in the two teams' U.S. Open Cup match up one week earlier. The Timbers, meanwhile, were in the middle of their first good run of form of the season, getting wins against a series of respectable (if injury bitten) sides.

There were still plenty of questions about the Timbers coming into this one, however, not least of which was, when is Nagbe going to score again? Having notched a goal only once in his previous 52 matches coming into the latest Cascadia Derby, it was Nagbe who would open the scoring in this one, gathering the ball well outside the Sounders box then uncorking a rocket shot that sent Stefan Frei flailing for the ball but getting nothing but air. The goal was the first of four from the Timbers as they went on to take all three points in a 4-1 route of their rivals.