BEAVERTON, Ore. – Diego Valeri is back. The Portland Timbers, however, are still awaiting the return of the other half of their injured star duo that missed the first two months of the season while recovering from injuries.
That other half, captain Will Johnson, is drawing closer and closer to his first-team return from a broken leg suffered late last summer. He’s played in three games with the Timbers' USL-based reserve team, Timbers 2, and tweeted last week that Saturday’s game against Real Monarchs, in which Johnson played the full 90 minutes, would be his “final tune up match.”
That means, presumably, that Jack Jewsbury, who has lined up in Johnson’s place alongside Diego Chara in the middle of head coach Caleb Porter’s 4-2-3-1 formation, will return to the bench to make way for the two-time MLS All-Star. It’s a decision Porter isn’t quite ready to make – or at least not one he’s willing to publicly talk about.
“We have to cross that bridge when we get there,” Porter said at the team training facility last week ahead of Saturday’s away match against the Houston Dynamo, a 3-1 Timbers loss. “Obviously, once we get to that point where he’s 90-minutes ready to play and he’s able to then train the next week and he’s week-in and week-out ready, we have to evaluate the team and where we’re at and where he’s at. But we’re not to that point yet, but once we get to that point we’ll make decisions based on what we see out of Will, the team, the opponent.”
Porter has been very complimentary of Jewsbury’s role in Portland’s strong “back six,” helping to form one of the league’s best defensive teams prior to Saturday’s setback. With Jewsbury acting as a true defensive midfielder and distributor, Chara has been free to play to his strength as a box-to-box player.
Johnson is a player who likes to get forward, creating more of a pivot between him and Chara.
How that dynamic plays out upon Johnson’s return is anybody’s guess. A lot of it will have to do with Johnson’s health.
After his first 90-minute shift back in action with T2, a 2-0 loss to Orange County Blues on May 3, Johnson was too sore to train the subsequent week. It was not so much a “setback,” Porter said, but more an anticipated part of the recovery process.
“There’s a psychology, too, to going out and playing and not mechanically favoring, which happens with this injury sometimes,” Porter said. “His uninvolved leg was actually more sore than his involved leg, so funny enough, he was not able to train not because of his involved leg but because of his uninvolved leg was so sore because of compensation.”
Luckily for Porter, scheduling and other circumstances are setting up nicely for a possible Johnson return that could still involve Jewsbury’s veteran presence within the lineup. Starting with their away match on Saturday at Toronto FC – the place Johnson broke his leg last season – the Timbers play three games in seven days, allowing for some natural squad rotation.
Right back Alvas Powell will also likely miss a chunk of time in the coming weeks and months due to his role with the Jamaican national team in this summer's Copa América and Gold Cup tournaments, meaning Jewsbury could slide back to spot he manned before the Powell’s emergence.
“It’s going to be an every week process of evaluating that,” Porter said. “… We have to, like I said, manage him day to day and week to week.”
Dan Itel covers the Timbers for MLSsoccer.com
