PORTLAND — There is plenty of work for Gavin Wilkinson and John Spencer in the next few months as they piece together the roster for the Portland Timbers’ first season in Major League Soccer.
On Tuesday, they took a ceremonial first step by introducing the first four players to sign MLS contracts with the Timbers.
Three of them — forward Bright Dike (Dee-Kay), attacking midfielder Ryan Pore, and goalkeeper Steve Cronin — played for the Timbers team that was recently eliminated from the second-division playoffs.
The fourth, Eddie Johnson, is a striker who started his professional career as a teenager with Manchester United.
“We think we’ve signed some quality players. While they’re labled as Division 2 players, next year they’ll be labled as quality MLS players,” said Wilkinson, the Timbers technical director.
The announcement came only nine days after the Timbers were eliminated from the United States Soccer Federation Division 2 Pro League playoffs. Wilkinson said he did not want to keep players hanging at the end of a 2010 season all understood was a long tryout.
“We’ve always said this was a year where people have to show well,” Wilkinson said. “And I think for players to show well and not be rewarded is detrimental to the organization. By rewarding players now who have done well, it shows the loyalty of the organization.”
Wilkinson and Spencer, the head coach, both said on Tuesday that at least two more members of the 2010 Timbers are likely to be signed for the 2011 MLS season. But the process of building a roster will this week send both the general manager and the coach to Europe.
Major League Soccer teams can carry 25 players this season, but Wilkinson said on Tuesday that number is expected to increase for 2011 and that the Timbers plan to acquire as many as 28 players in preparation of a season scheduled to begin in March.
“We will get 10 players out of the (MLS) expansion draft. We will get a couple of players out of the (college) Super Draft. We expect to maximize our foreign signings, that will be seven or eight players who will get onto the squad immediately. And we also expect trades,” Wilkinson said.
The Timbers’ budget for player salaries will be about $2.6 million in 2011, with more than $1 million additional money allocated by MLS to acquire players.
Pore, 27, led the USSF Division 2 Pro League with 15 goals for the Timbers this season. Prior to joining Portland in n 2009, Pore played in 58 MLS games, mostly in a reserve role, with the Kansas City Wizards.
“I had some real good players playing in front of me (in Kansas City), some guys who’d been on World Cup teams,” Pore said. “Once I got the games under my belt, my confidence rose a little bit. I always knew I had the ability. I just needed to be in the right situation, and I really feel I’m in the right situation now.”
Cronin, 27, played in 30 MLS games over five seasons with the Los Angeles Galaxy before joining Portland in 2009. He was the second-division goalkeeper of the year in 2009, and among the league’s top goalkeepers this season with a goals-against average of 0.79 and 12 shutouts.
Dike, 23, came to the Timbers this season after being drafted in the first round, then let go, by the Columbus Crew. He produced 15 goals in 23 appearances with the Timbers.
“He is a beast, and a phenomenal athlete,” Wilkinson said. “I think when he came on board he didn’t understand the requirements of the game at this level. … I think the first month or two was humbling for Bright.”
Dike was all smiles on Tuesday.
“I got a sense of consistency,” Dike said of his emergence as a scoring threat in the second half of the 2010 Timbers’ season. “I thought ahead of the play a lot better. And I worked on my touch, and a lot of things came together.”
In Johnson, the Timbers have signed a striker who signed with Manchester United as a 17-year-old— and a striker who Spencer said he targeted as soon as he was hired by the Timbers.
He scored 23 goals in 133 league games for various European clubs. He joined the Austin Aztex, an American second-division club, in 2009 and was second in the league in scoring this season behind Pore.
“The main ingredient for me is he puts the ball in the back of the net,” Spencer said. “When you give him the chance in the 18-yard box, he finishes more than he misses. We’re delighted to have him.”
Spencer also claimed to be delighted to be heading this week to Europe — as is Wilkinson — in search of players.
“We are really looking forward to the travel — for the first time in our lives — to go and try to pick up some players who can be major contributors to this roster next year,” Spencer said.
And what, besides skill, will Spencer be looking for?
“Desire is a massive ingredient,” the coach said. “That’s one of the first things that goes when players get too much money as a professional athlete is the hunger to play. It’s a blue coller worker mentality here in Portland. It’s young and it’s vibrant, which is what I think this team needs to be.
Continued the coach, “This team needs to be a reflection of the Timbers Army: They’re noisy. They’re aggressive. They’re in your face. That’s the way we need to be as a team.”
