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The Portland Timbers will open the Major League Soccer season the same way they finished 2024, by playing host to the Vancouver Whitecaps.

The Timbers can only hope the Sunday match goes better.

The Whitecaps cruised to a 5-0 victory in a Western Conference wild-card game on Oct. 23 behind Ryan Gauld’s hat trick.

“We are really looking forward to this game,” said Timbers midfielder Diego Chara, who is set to become the first player in league history to appear in 400 regular-season matches for one club. “Now is different, but at the same time, I think the team knows what happened in the past and this is a great opportunity.”

The playoff loss led Timbers star Evander, who finished third in MVP voting with 15 goals and 19 assists, to rip team ownership and management in postgame tweets. That precipitated his departure in a transfer to FC Cincinnati last week for $12 million.

The Timbers used about half of that money to finalize a transfer for midfielder David Pereira da Costa from RC Lens (France) as the team’s new designated player.

“I’m building a team here and a culture to win,” said Timbers coach Phil Neville, whose club went 12-11-11 last season. “When you build something and you want to win, you need everybody on the bus heading in the same direction.”

Despite pushing Los Angeles FC to the limit in a best-of-three first-round playoff series, the Whitecaps (13-13-8 in 2024) fired coach Vanni Sartini and replaced him with Jesper Sorensen.

Gauld and forward Brian White, who scored a team-leading 15 goals in 2024, return to lead the Vancouver attack.

The Whitecaps could have another big move ahead, as the team is for sale.

“Obviously, that’s a big thing going on at the club, but it doesn’t really affect us in our day-to-day,” Gauld said. “We’ve still got a big season ahead of us, and, speaking to all the guys … it’s not really come up in conversation between any of us. We’re all here just to be focused on the football and make sure that we do our job.”

–Field Level Media