Just a month and a half after the Portland Timbers won the MLS Cup, the team was back on the training pitch at their Beaverton practice facility this morning, putting in their first workout of 2016.
Despite some rust on display and some fitness needing to be regained, the Timbers jumped right in, putting on a session that was structurally identical to what one would expect from the team in the middle of the season.
The Timbers started off training with some brief agility drills before moving into an evolving series of passing drills that saw some of the senior players forced to step in and direct traffic as the newcomers got used to Caleb Porter's fondness for overlapping runs.