Last night's 1-0 win over Puerto Rico was an end of an era at PGE Park, as the stadium will be renovated for MLS next year, and will have a new name. Construction on the stadium will start next week, so Timbers home playoff games will be at Merlo Field at the University of Portland, or at Hillsboro Stadium.

Here are some photos and my match report from last night, which was a very memorable evening with another sold out crowd of over 15,000. The sunflower theme was the idea of Timber Jim, which goes back to the Timbers Army singing of "You are my sunshine" which is in honor of his daughter who was killed in an auto accident several years ago, and we used that as a theme to honor the team for this event.

http://www.soccercityusa.com/timbers/pr090210-pics.htm
http://www.soccercityusa.com/timbers/pr090210-morepics.htm
http://www.soccercityusa.com/timbers/pr090210.htm

class Allison. What you guys have accomplished up there over the last ten years is increadible.

thanks for all you have done with this site over the years as well. i hope you dont become a stranger to us lower division clubs!

I thought of you as I watched the game on Timberslive last night Allison. Great game and great support! Good to see as the Timbers head for MLS 2011! Will you be covering the Timbers U-23 PSL Championship team?

Thanks to both of you. It's been an amazing season and a great ride the last few years as we've had double-digit percentage attendance growth for four straight years. To average over 15,000 for our last four home games was just insane.

I will definitely continue to work with Dan on the board and the uslfans.com site. And yes I have already been covering the PDL Timbers U-23s, having covered 11 of their 20 games this year and covering the final four here in Portland, and will continue to do so next season.

http://www.soccercityusa.com/timbers/default-u23.htm

Panorama from the south end on Thursday of a sold-out PGE Park.



Click here for a much larger version: http://timbers.soccercityusa.com/pano2-090210-4000.jpg

Certainly one of my best Match experiences EVER was at this cobbled up Baseball configured & shoddily turfed but WONDERFULLY FANNED Stadium - Even as The Battery got hammered I & Timber Jim & A-llison were still having great fun - It was a privililedge to be there - Portland Fans well deserve the MLS ~!

I sure hope their stadium is better next year. It looks really dumpy on the WWWcast.

PGE Park is far from a dump. The patchy turf (3 different types) was because of the baseball team still playing there, and turf pulled up last off-season to accommodate new foundations for the renovation.

At opening day next year it will be a beautiful stadium, with the elements of the old stadium (PGE Park was built in 1926) but the new elements to make it a very nice new soccer specific stadium.

A nice 3d rendering of the new stadium here:

http://pgepark.io-media.com/

The renderings look great. To me, PGE has a lot of character. It is nice that the old stadium is still being used.

Allison -- were are your sitting at the new PGE?

FFS! The turf looked like [censored], yes. That will be fixed. The rest is fantastic. Once MN doesn't have a team next season, you should use some of the money you would've spent on the Stars and go check out a game in Portland. You will not regret it.