They say nothing good ever happens after midnight, but Minnesota United’s 1-0 victory at Portland on Saturday proves otherwise.
Recently acquired Loons striker Adrien Hunou’s goal in the second minute stood the rest of the late night in a game whose start was delayed an hour because of a historic Pacific Northwest heat wave that produced a record 108-degree high in Portland.
The scorching heat forced an 8:30 p.m. start Portland time that meant the game ended with the Loons fiercely holding onto that lone goal — the fastest goal in club history — through nine minutes of stoppage time well after midnight back home.
Hunou’s goal and the Loons’ victory extended their unbeaten streak to six games, which at 4-0-2 includes four clean sheets by goalkeeper Tyler Miller after they started the season with four losses.
The Loons also won on the road for the first time this season after two losses and two draws.
The game was played at 80% capacity at Providence Park, where the Loons began MLS play in 2017 with a 5-1 loss and opened last season with a victory there just before anyone knew how COVID-19 would change their season.
Hunou scored his second goal in his third MLS game after leaving his French first-division team. It took him and Loons teammates Emanuel Reynoso and Franco Fragapane just two minutes to do so.
Reynoso was the only who ran a run with the ball into the Portland defense. He delivered the pass through the defense to Fragapane, who was making a run from the left. His clever left-footed crossing pass over the turf and just outside the 6-year box found Hunou alone for a shot he easily directed into an open goal.
It was the kind of chance the Loons have created often in recent seasons, but too rarely converted. The connecting play between Reynoso and Fragapane created a chance Hunou didn’t miss.
Timbers goalkeeper Steve Clark didn’t have a chance. Neither did the team’s record for that fastest goal in a game. Darwin Quintero and Christian Ramirez each scored a goal in a game’s first five minutes once upon a time Hunou did it in fewer than two minutes.
Timbers star midfielder Diego Valeri’s shot that just missed outside the right post just before halftime kept the Loons ahead into intermission. Out of it, Portland pressured the Loons’ defense and forced goalkeeper Miller to make at least two crucial saves when the Timbers themselves weren’t missing shots just wide themselves.
When the Loons countered that pressured, Clark stopped Hunou and then Hansen with two important saves in the 52nd and 54th minutes that keep it a one-goal game.
Loons coach Adrian Heath on Friday said Saturday’s heat and just two days’ rest since Wednesday’s 2-0 home victory over Austin FC might change the team he would choose.
It didn’t, not after he gave four starting attackers Saturday a rest late in Wednesday’s game. Heath started the same 11 in the same 4-2-3-1 formation that he did against Austin FC and placed Hunou up front with attackers Fragapane, Reynoso and Niko Hansen beneath Hunou.
Heath did so while his club waits for starters Robin Lod and Jan Gregus as well as Jukka Raitala to return from the European championship, probably before next Saturday’s home game against San Jose.
He also did so after he gave all the four aforementioned attackers a rest on Wednesday with a series of substitutions starting in the 65th minute and ending in the 87th.
Three nights after the Loons played before a sellout crowd at Allianz Field, they visited Providence Park, where the Timbers allowed 80 percent capacity on Saturday night.
The original 7:30 p.m. start local time was moved first to 8 p.m., then 8:30 p.m. to give accommodate a record-breaking heat wave in the Pacific Northwest that reached an abnormal 100 degrees by late afternoon.
That meant a 10:30 p.m. kickoff Central time for a Minnesota United team that took a chartered flight to Portland Friday afternoon and was scheduled to leave immediately afterward, arriving after sunrise Sunday morning in Minneapolis.
Players from both sides took periodic hydration breaks. Some emptied bottles filled with cold water over their heads. Other pressed cold-water towels against their foreheads or the back of their necks.
It could be worse: Sunday’s forecasted high is 115 degrees. The temperature was 95 degrees Saturday evening at kickoff.
“It’s a tough one,” Portland coach Giovanni Savarese said in a video call with reporters Friday. “It adds another component that shouldn’t be a question at home here. The weather in Portland has always been very mild, good. There’s always expectation that it will be pleasant to play.”
Each team has just two days to regenerate, study video and travel after each played on Wednesday. The Timbers brought back a 2-2 draw from Houston while the Loons beat Austin FC 2-0 at home and extended their unbeaten streak to five games.
The Loons held one of their shortest training sessions of the season Friday in Blaine and then flew West.
“Now with this variable, especially with all these things we have to manage, it makes it even more difficult to make decisions and do it in two days,” Savarese said. “The conditions that are coming to Portland this week definitely disrupt a little bit some of the things we wanted to do.”
The Star Tribune did not travel for this game. This article was written using the television broadcast and video interviews before and/or after the game.