The best football city in America

Portland, Oregon is a different type of city. It’s a national and international model for urban planning, public transit and sustainability. City leaders have never shied away from making visionary choices that have created Portland’s much vaunted liveability, and now they face another such transformational opportunity: do they want to help bring a second major league sports franchise to Portland in the form of Major League Soccer?

The answer should be an easy “yes”.  Soccer and Portland are a natural fit.

Portland is known as Soccer City, USA for a reason. Pele played his last professional game at PGE Park. The University of Portland’s soccer programmes are world class, and the Portland Timbers professional soccer team is one of the top franchises in the USL and possesses in the Timbers Army a famously devoted fan base. Simply put, Portland is the best soccer market in the US without a MLS team.

– Excerpt from guardian.co.uk