Portland Timbers head coach Caleb Porter has admitted that he has not yet truly come to terms with the fact that his side are officially the best in MLS in 2015.
Timbers beat Columbus Crew 2-1 on Sunday to win their first ever MLS Cup championship thanks to early goals from Diego Valeri and Rodney Wallace.
Porter hailed his players after the win, but said that it was still hard to believe that his team had reached the pinnacle of US football.
"It is a great feeling," he told the club's website. "All that I could think about was sharing that moment with my players; we have been through a long season. We have been together through highs and lows and they deserve all the credit, they are the ones playing the game and they had belief.
"I do not think that it has fully sunk in yet. Good teams, when they make a run like this, they are so locked in, laser focus that there is a next game. I do not think that it has sunk in yet that there is no next game, we are raising the trophy and we are the best team in MLS this year.
"I think that you always believe. You never win something like this unless you believe, unless you expect it. It does not just happen. I think that you saw true belief in this team every single game in the playoffs. That we were not just happy to be in it, we actually believed that we would win it."
Timbers finished third in the Western Conference standings and fifth overall in the regular season, but beat Western Conference runners-up Vancouver Whitecaps and winners Dallas on their way to the final showdown with Columbus.
Tom Nightingale
