COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Portland Timbers may be the away team in Sunday’s MLS Cup final (4 pm ET on ESPN, UniMas in USA; TSN1/4 and RDS2 in Canada), but for a select few on the squad, the trip will actually be more of a homecoming than any other road game.
The Timbers currently boast three University of Akron alumni on their roster, which is coached of course, by Caleb Porter, who managed the Zips for six years before taking the reins in Portland.
All three former Akron players on the roster also spent part or all of their youth in Ohio: midfielders Darlington Nagbe (moved to the Cleveland area at age 11), Michael Nanchoff (born and raised in the Cleveland area) and Ben Zemanski (born in Akron, went to high school in the Cleveland area). That fact was certainly not lost on Nanchoff, who posted a photo of the trio – plus Timbers player relations manager/video analyst Pablo Moreira, an Akron player from 2003 to 2007 – departing Portland, with a shoutout to Akron's most famous son.
“For sure it’s surreal,” Nanchoff said of his homecoming prior to Timbers training on Friday. “It’s a proud moment not just for myself, but for a lot of us that come back to the home state. Home for me is up in Cleveland, but we developed a lot of friendships at Akron and now going up against each other is super special.”
The Timbers' Akron alums experienced considerable success on the college level. They captured the Mid-American Conference regular-season title in every single one of Porter’s years at the helm from 2006 to 2012, won five of seven possible MAC Conference Tournaments, and qualified for the NCAA tournament in every season except Porter’s first.
Their crowning achievement, though, was winning the NCAA Division I title in 2010, with both Nagbe and Nanchoff in tow, a year after falling just short in the final. It’s an experience, Nanchoff says, that still sticks with them five years later in the professional ranks.
“It’s something you learn in school and then it becomes a common trend,” Nanchoff said of the culture of success established at Akron. “And it transitioned nicely to the pros, so I think we’ve been very well trained.”
Porter has stayed a little more grounded, noting that the surreal feeling of seeing his old charges in the Timbers locker room was there at one point, but has since subsided.
“I think initially [it was surreal],” Porter said of his arrival in Portland at the start of 2013. “When I took the job, the first couple training sessions, with the locker room, to see [Darlington] in there. There was a time when I never thought I’d coach any of these guys again. Or coach against them.
“It’d be real easy every game to get caught up in that and in the nostalgia of it, so I really don’t.”
It’s telling, though, that two of Porter’s first acquisitions as head coach of the Timbers were Nanchoff and Zemanski, who arrived in separate trades on the same day of the 2013 preseason, and he did admit that, “It’s real nice to be able to coach the guys again – guys that you have a great relationship with in important games. We’ve seen them mature as soccer players and people.”
It’d be impossible for Porter to acquire all of his old Akron players considering his program consistently produced MLS-level talent throughout his reign. Some notables include former Seattle Sounders defender DeAndre Yedlin (now at Sunderland in the English Premier League), New England Revolution forward Teal Bunbury, D.C. United midfielder Perry Kitchen and Colorado Rapids midfielder Dillon Serna.
“I’ve got a bunch of guys I’ve coached on the team and around the league,” he said. “I quietly root for them, unless they’re playing us.”
Porter will certainly not be rooting for another one of his Akron protégés on Sunday, though. Wil Trapp, who played for Porter in his final two years at Akron before signing a Homegrown contract with Columbus, will almost certainly be starting in the center of midfield when the opening whistle blows on Sunday. Trapp, now a US Under-23 international, admits the chance to face his old mentor is one he’s relishing.
“If anything it adds a little more motivation,” Trapp told reporters on Friday. “You would think that you don’t need any more motivation to win a final, but this just makes it even more fun.”
