Fans cheer Friday as the announcement is made that Portland will get a Major Laague Soccer Team. The team will retain the Portland Timbers name.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Portland has won its bid for a Major League Soccer team.

League officials joined new franchise owner Merritt Paulson on Friday for the widely expected announcement that the league will have a team in Portland. The team expects to begin play in 2011 and will be known as the Timbers, sustaining the name of Paulson's United Soccer League franchise.

"Portland has the most passionate soccer fans in the country, as we can see today," Paulson told a chanting, cheering crowd of fans decked out in the Timbers' bright green.

The Timbers will also keep their downtown home at PGE Park, but will no longer share it with the Triple-A Portland Beavers baseball team, which Paulson also owns.

Portland city officials approved a financing deal last week that would renovate PGE Park for soccer and build a new ballpark for the Beavers.

The city still must come up with a plan to raise $15 million of about $89 million needed for the project.

Paulson thanked Mayor Sam Adams and City Commissioner Randy Leonard for their roles in winning MLS approval for its 18th soccer club.

Leonard took the podium to lead fans in a chorus of one of their favorite chants before he gave credit to Adams for leading the effort.

"If Sam Adams had not been mayor, we would not be here today," Leonard said.

City Hall has been the stage for political drama since Adams took office in January and announced he had covered up a sexual relationship with a young male intern during his campaign, causing a public outcry and a temporary rift with some commissioners, including Leonard, an ally in his election campaign.

But Leonard called Adams "my friend" on Friday, and Adams returned the sentiment as both men praised Paulson and MLS Commissioner Don Garber for adding Portland to the league.

"This puts Portland on the international map," Adams said, noting the difference between "soccer" and "football," the more common name for soccer around the world.

"And now we speak the language spoken by more cities and more people around the world and that is the language of soccer football," Adams said to cheers.

Paulson, the 35-year-old son of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, handed jerseys to Adams and Leonard. He praised them and Commissioner Dan Saltzman, who was home sick. Saltzman provided the third vote among the five city commissioners to approve the deal.

Paulson called it a historic day for soccer in the United States, coming on the heels of the announcement earlier this week that the MLS had added Vancouver, British Columbia, as its 17th franchise. Vancouver and Portland join the new Seattle franchise, the Sounders.

Garber also called it a historic day for U.S. soccer and said the two other cities in contention for a franchise in 2011 - St. Louis and Ottawa - would be considered for 2012.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)