By Niall McCusker

The first goal in this year’s MLS cup final summed up a lot of what the Portland Timbers have been trying to achieve in the last 3 years and lot about the journey of the man generally recognized as their best player during that period.

But what did national and international media think?

ESPN: “goalkeeper Steve Clark’s mishap inside 27 seconds”

MLS: “A stunning misplay by Crew SC goalkeeper Steve Clark in the opening minute”

The Guardian: “1 min: Portland lead, and what a terrible error from Steve Clark.”

Poor old Steve Clark, did he take a bad touch? Of course he did. But would he have got away with it against most teams? He probably would have – not this time.

The Portland Timbers have been putting high pressure on opposing defenses since Caleb Porter arrived 3 seasons ago, so the opener was no fluke. It was the ultimate reward on the ultimate stage for aggressive tactics coupled with skillful players buying into a team-wide work ethic.

The team and Valeri deserve more credit for that goal than they seem to have received.

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It didn’t take the Argentine very long to serve notice that he was going to be a special player in MLS, 14 minutes into his debut saw his first goal in 2013 against New York Red Bulls. He was initially about great goals, passes no one else on the field (or off it) could see and a first touch that at times belied imagination.

But chasing down goal-keepers, contributing on defense and getting stuck into opponents with strong tackles were not initially high on his list of attributes.

However, as the 2014 campaign drew to a close Valeri seemed a man on mission, a flurry of goals in the second half of the season propelled an initially misfiring Timbers to the cusp of the play-offs. In the sometimes chippy world of MLS midfield he had started to give as good he got and at times even got his retaliation in first – all the while maintaining an aesthetically pleasing style with statistics to match.

But the Timbers didn’t quite recover from their slow start to the 2014 season, despite winning their last game in Dallas 2-0, they missed out on the play-offs by a point. But worse was the injury to Valeri 25 minutes into that visit to Frisco.

He went down pretty innocuously, as is the case with many serious knee injuries. But as Ben Zemanski turned away from his prone colleague his immediate reaction – “f%&k!”, turned out to be the correct diagnosis of the situation. Despite playing on until halftime Valeri had torn his left ACL.

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Diego Valeri has made 100’s of runs at opposing keepers this season.

Maybe you just make him hurry it, kick it where he doesn’t want it to go, make it a 50/50 ball instead of 60% in favor of his target. If it goes out over the touch line, a bonus, you get a little applause from your teammates – job done.

Then this time there’s a bad touch from the goalie, a smell of a chance encourages a slight alteration in the direction and intensity of the run followed by a dive in at full extension. He probably didn’t see much. Maybe heard that satisfying sound of the ball being blocked, then half a second later the roar of the Timbers crowd behind the far goal.

Not Valeri the genius, Valeri the worker. The team player, the man who was suspended twice in the last seven games for yellow card accumulation.

As well as the 100 runs at keepers, there are maybe a 1000 hours of physical therapy logged in a spreadsheet somewhere, that all contributed to that 27 second goal.

The knee surgeon has 2 hours of hard work – the player 6 months. A long process with a series of little milestones that aren’t as important as scoring an MLS cup final goal, but they seem close to it at the time.

The day he got back to running on the anti-gravity treadmill in the clinic at the corner of Providence park – he could see the field out the window, physically close but yet a long way off. Maybe he started at 80% body weight, 85% the next week, a steady progression back to full weight bearing – watching for any abnormalities in gait on the TV built into the machine – building strength up slowly but surely. Countless leg presses – push out with both, slowly control the weight coming back on the injured leg. That’s before the torturous agility work even starts.

A lot of boredom, time to think, probably a few doubts here and there on bad days. But mostly probably visualizing something like the first day back at training, the first game back on the field, the first pass where he’ll know he still has ‘it’, the first goal. And maybe, maybe a final like this one and lifting a trophy.

If he was gong have to start kicking a few people and picking up a few yellow cards on the way so be it.

Redemption.