MLS Season off to a Great Start at Jeld-Wen

To be at the Portland Timbers home opener Thursday evening against the Chicago Fire was to bear witness to something that is arguably new in its kind; a purely North American soccer match played before a crowd that stands comparison to soccer supporters in any country on the planet. With a well-eastablished and large supporters' group in the Timbers army, it was known that the opener at the recently enlarged and renovated Jeld-Wen Field would be a loud and gaudy affair, but even Timbers head coach John Spencer was taken aback.

A former Glasgow Ranger and veteran of many giant EPL matches, in a post-game interview, Spencer said of the Portland crowd, "I never thought I'd see an atmosphere like that in American soccer. I think it was tremendous. During warm-up we left the locker room doors open to get used to the level of sound; I thought it was electrifying."

And while Portland may have a unique venue in its small downtown stadium, it is not alone in having a rabid and rapidly expanding fan-base, which raises the question; is this year the turning point for MLS? Are Portland, its sister Pacific Northwest cities, Seattle and Vancouver, along with LA, New York and the handful of others who have made big strides and returned a profit in recent years, ready to drag the entire league into relevance?

The answer is a qualified yes; qualified because if by relevance we mean more than just profitability, MLS still has a long way to go. It is, for example, scarcely relevant to the larger soccer universe where it has largely seen its finest young talent siphoned off by higher-paying, more competitive leagues in Europe and elsewhere, and where it has something of a reputation as a retirement home for aging stars.

Nor will it soon become competitively relevant to the other major North American sports. Pending labor difficulties in the National Footbal League could potentially work to MLS's advantage in a big way in the short term, as could Major League Baseball's aging fan-base in the longer view, but neither the NFL, MLB or the National Basketball Association are in any immediate danger of having their fan numbers eclipsed by MLS, at least not outside the Pacific Northwest.