Portland Timbers owner Merritt Paulson likely summed up the thoughts of the club's fans everywhere in a recent interview after an up-and-down season that ultimately ended just short MLS postseason.
The interview - conducted Friday on the Timbers in 30 program - touched on a wide range of topics including Paulson's thoughts on failing to equal last year’s trip to the Western Conference finals, the team’s personnel and his ubiquitous presence on social media.
The Timbers fell a point shy of the fifth and final postseason spot in the West despite finishing with four wins in their last six games, ultimately doomed because they only managed five points form their first eight games of the season.
“It was a strange year, to be sure...” Paulson said. “The adage of 'it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish' didn’t hold true for us this year."
Paulson said that missing out on the playoffs for the third time in four years is “certainly not OK with me," regardless of the cirumstances this season, but added that the foundation is set for the club's future success.
“If you peel that back a little bit, this is a team that is very much a good team,” he said. “In many ways it’s a progression from last year.”
He pointed to certain games when luck wasn’t on their side - a 1-1 draw at New England on Aug. 16 when an apparent goal was ruled, perhaps incorrectly, offside - but he also said they weren’t without fault in other games, such as their 3-2 loss Sept. 27 at Toronto when they squandered a 2-0 halftime lead after losing captain Will Johnson with a broken leg.
“How on God’s green earth do you let a team like Toronto come back and get a result when you’ve got them two-nil at halftime?” Paulson said. “But again, there’s some real, real positives that I look at in the foundation of the team that’s being built. … Things didn’t go our way. There’s no question we made it hard on ourselves; we didn’t get a lot of luck. But this is a very exciting, very good team that is easily a playoff-caliber team.
"There’s no question in my mind this is a top-five team in the West. Are we as good as LA or Seattle, this year? Probably not. But we’re as good as anybody else, at least.”
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Paulson was also asked about his latest Twitter spat, when he responded to a tweet from the Timbers Army account after a 3-1 loss to Olimpia in Honduras sent the Timbers crashing out of the CONCACAF Champions League. Paulson later apologized for his reaction and deleted the tweet, saying it was intended for whoever was operating the account that night and not the supporters group as a whole.
“It wasn’t about the Timbers Army, it was about an individual peddling conspiracy theories from the Timbers Army account," Paulson said. "That individual has every right to those conspiracy theories, but use your own account. For me to be making any kind of news with the quick response there that is so easily taken out of context, sure I regret that.”
Dan Itel covers the Timbers for MLSsoccer.com.
