BY ADAM SERRANO

The 2010 season may be only be a few days dead, but the 2011 season has already kicked off with the Expansion Draft.

The Vancouver Whitecaps and the Portland Timbers added ten players to their initial MLS rosters on Wednesday as their clubs began to take shape for the 2011 season.

For the first time, I think ever, the league has released the list of players graduating from the Generation adidas program ahead of the expansion draft. Boy that was nice of them huh?

Fans in Philadelphia can relax a bit as Danny Mwanga will not be graduating this year. None of the 2010 GA rookies will be in fact.

Things are really starting to get moving for the upcoming season. The Timbers continue the process of assembling a roster as they ready themselves for their debut in the USSF 2nd Division aka the USL/NASL arranged marriage league. The 2-day Open tryouts were held this weekend. Video highlights from those sessions are posted below - check it out and see if you can find any diamonds in the rough.

The 2010 roster so far contains 25 signed players, and 9 of those are from outside the US. The world map below shows all the nations that Timber players call their home country. We added Gabriel Obatola in the mix, because we expect him to be signed before the season starts. Also, we added Portlander Alex Nimo's place of birth Liberia to the list.

The current Timber's roster includes players from 10 different states and 8 different nations. The US map below shows all the US based players broken down by state. States with one player hailing from them, is represented by green, two players are yellow and rose city red for California which three Timbers call their home state.

Portland Vs Rochester 4/17/10
Kevin's Grades
Starters
Ryan Pore: B +
Man of the match. Although #23 would probably like another chance to put some of those shots away.
Steve Cronin: A-
Cronin said it himself. A shutout is a shutout. You can't penalize the guy because he wasn't forced to make any spectacular plays.

Portland Timbers
VS
Puntarenas FC
Saturday May 1st
7pm @ PGE Park
The Portland Timbers will play host to Costa Rica's Puntarenas FC this Saturday at PGE Park. Only 4 games into the season, the 1st place Timbers are coming off an exciting and hotly contested victory over league rivals Vancouver this past Thursday as they head into this international friendly.

Alex Nimo is the lead on Yahoo.com:
Dropping Timber posted this same video Thursday.
See the Yahoo story.

The good news was that the storms held off last night at House Park, but the bad news was that the goals did, too. The meeting of the league's top three leading scorers, Portland's Ryan Pore and Austin's Eddie Johnson and Jamie Watson, wound up being a defensive grudge match. The 3,241 fans in attendance saw no goals, and only a handful of threatening shots.

The Timbers soundly defeated the Sonoma County Sol of the NPSL in the first round of the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup. After a scoreless first half, the Timbers finally found the back of the net with a goal off Doug DeMartin's cross by Alex Nimo in the 58th minute. Takayuki Suzuki put the Timbers up 2-0 late in the game, and James Marcelin capped it off with a goal in stoppage time.

After a quiet first half, where they controlled the game to little effect, the Timbers sprang to life in the 58th minute. Alex Nimo scored with an assist from Doug DeMartin.

This Alex Nimo 2009 highlight video was posted on Tuesday night by bbright19.

The Portland Timbers (9-7-8, 35pts) played the Austin Aztex (13-3-6, 45pts) to a 1-1 draw in an emotionally charged match that would see a flurry of fouls, eight yellow cards, and multiple ejections, including one for the opposing team's manager.

Somebody please call Alex Nimo and tell him how single-entity and MLS work. Apparently dude is under the impression that he holds some sway and can possibly help facilitate his continued stay in Portland as the team moves up to MLS, even though RSL holds his contract, by claiming that he'll quit soccer if he has to leave the Timbers.

Somebody please call Alex Nimo and tell him how single-entity and MLS work. Apparently dude is under the impression that he holds some sway and can possibly help facilitate his continued stay in Portland as the team moves up to MLS, even though RSL holds his contract, by claiming that he'll quit soccer if he has to leave the Timbers.