By Jose M. Romero

Fall Sundays in America aren’t for soccer, right?

They’re for the NFL. Maybe the baseball playoffs. And if its soccer you want, the European or Mexican leagues. El Clasico from Spain. The best football in the world.

Anything but Major League Soccer. Especially when Sunday night’s Seattle-Portland match went head to head with the New Orleans-San Diego NFL game and two baseball playoff games.

Maybe the TV ratings for MLS weren’t there, but the people sure were. How about 66,452 to be exact?

There’s no more dismissing or ignoring or failing to mention MLS, though the ever-present critics will find some way to spin their ant-soccer rhetoric.  But the masses of folks who have bought in will grow because pro soccer in the USA is here to stay. It matters. It is the world’s game, with a North American flair.

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By Jose M. Romero / RomeroJoseM

For FOX Deportes

It’s hard to argue that the heart of professional soccer in North American beats in the Pacific Northwest.

When Major League Soccer placed expansion teams in Seattle in 2009 and in Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C. two years later, the league re-ignited the flame of longtime soccer rivalries between the three cities. It re-established Cascadia – the name that residents of the region gave to their part of the world – as the hotbed of soccer in the U.S. and Canada. Rivalries between the three clubs that began in the North American Soccer League heyday – the mid-to-late 1970s – were rekindled at an even higher level.

The stakes are always higher when the Cascadia clubs face each other, and there is no more fierce a rivalry in all of MLS than Portland vs. Seattle. The two teams square off for the first time this season – the first of three regular-season meetings in 2012 – Sunday afternoon at Jeld-Wen Field in Portland.

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By Jose M. Romero /@RomeroJoseM

For FOX Deportes

PORTLAND, Ore. – One member of the Portland Timbers’ Colombian crew is gone, part of a trade during the long hiatus for many Major League Soccer clubs recently.

But the leader of the group remains. Midfielder Diego Chara is the guy who has been in town the longest out of the four Colombian Timbers. He’s the one who has worn the  captain’s armband, as recently as May 20. And he is being asked to not only help guide the Portland attack on offense, but help his countrymen/teammates adjust to life in the Rose City and the U.S.

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By Jose M. Romero / @RomeroJoseM

For Fox Deportes

PORTLAND, Ore. – It takes more than a downpour, thunder and lightning to stop a Portland Timbers soccer match in the Rose City.

Just ask the 20,438 customers with tickets at Jeld-Wen Field, the hardest-core who sat through a soggy halftime period plus a 20-minute weather delay before the second half began at a recent match.

The Portland area is home for me. I spent almost 22 years of my life in this part of the U.S., but had long since left town when the Major League Soccer version of the Timbers debuted in 2011.

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