MLS Cup final 2015: Portland Timbers vs Columbus Crew - Final line-up is not quite what USA expected

It was supposed to be Frank Lampard vs Steve Gerrard, but instead the MLS reaches a climax with Portland Tombers vs Columbus Crew

Liam Ridgewell celebrates scoring for Portland Timbers (Getty Images)

It was supposed to be a final showdown between the great midfield rivals of England’s golden generation: Frank Lampard v Steven Gerrard, the US re-union.

However, neither Lampard’s New York City FC, nor Gerrard’s Los Angeles Galaxy, qualified for Sunday night’s MLS Cup, the climax of the US domestic season. Instead the Anglo angle will be the contest, probably a game-defining one, between Liam Ridgewell and Kei Kamara.

Ridgewell, who made a very respectable 252 Premier League appearances for Aston Villa, Birmingham and West Brom, but will be forever remembered for being caught on camera wiping his backside with £20 notes, plays for Oregon’s Portland Timbers. Kamara, who had largely unsuccessful stints with Norwich and Middlesbrough, leads the line for Columbus Crew, from Ohio.

Their teams, who have two of Major League Soccer’s smaller budgets, emerged from the competition’s play-off system to reach tomorrow’s final, played in Crew’s Mapfre Stadium.

It is not quite the showpiece hoped for when Lampard joined Andrea Pirlo and David Villa at Manchester City’s American arm, Gerrard linked up with Robbie Keane in LA, Kaka signed for Adrian Heath’s Orlando and Didier Drogba went to Montreal.

Orlando and New York are expansion teams, taking MLS up to 20 clubs, so it was no great surprise when they were among the eight that failed to make the play-offs. Less expected was the first round exit of defending champions Galaxy while Montreal lost in what was effectively a quarter-final.

Don Garber, the MLS commissioner, suggested this week that the fact Pirlo reached the Champions League final with Juventus in May, then struggled in the MLS, rebuffed “a perception that this league is easier than it is”. He said: “After some of those players are here for a while, the first thing they say when they go home is, ‘Man, this league is far more advanced than I thought.’"

Gerrard has said the travelling is tougher than he expected, but the presence, in the ten leading scorers, of Kamara, Keane (now 35), Bradley Wright-Phillips, Obafemi Martins and Jozy Altidore, suggests the quality remains moderate. Few star players arrive in their prime. One that did, Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco, easily stood out. He has just been crowned player of the year to widespread assent. With 22 goals the Azzurri striker finished joint top-scorer with Kamara – though the latter has added three goals in the play-offs.

Yet while doubts remain about the standard, and despite the final lacking glamour, this has been a good year for soccer Stateside. MLS is now profitable with gates averaging more than 20,000, and the competition continues to attract new teams with Atlanta arriving in 2017 and Minnesota in 2018.

Less certain is a return to Miami with David Beckham’s baby. The former England captain his finding neither his celebrity nor his cash can facilitate a venue. After six residents, whose houses were to be bulldozed, blocked the latest plan he is now seeking a fourth location. Today is theoretically the deadline for presenting plans to the MLS board but the league are likely to give Beckham more time even if one club executive admitted this week he was ‘worried’.

While the Miami Beckham United project stalls a rival rises. Miami FC, co-owned by Paolo Maldini and to be coached by Alessandro Nesta, have found a stadium and kick-off next year, albeit in the second tier NASL (North American Soccer League). That competition includes the revived New York Cosmos, but there is no promotion to MLS.

Further boosting the game the US women won the World Cup this year, attracting impressive TV audience figures and making a superstar of captain Carli Lloyd, who scored a hat-trick in the final. Even she, however, has been eclipsed by Loretta Lynch, the US attorney general, who has won global acclaim by exposing Fifa’s rampant corruption.

There has also been growing interest across the Pond in our Premier League, which is now given comprehensive TV coverage by NBC and attracts good ratings. This is a mixed blessing for MLS. It raises soccer’s profile, but highlights the disparity in quality. The executives will be hoping a goalscorer like Kamara, rather than a defender such as Ridgewell, is the star tomorrow.