Month: March 2022

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Thorns Continue Challenge Cup With 1-0 Win Over San Diego: Takeaways

Photo by Matthew Wolfe

The Thorns look very different than when they stepped off the field in 2021, and two games into a preseason tournament, they are still finding their footing. Without being too critical of the team, there are plenty of bright spots to take away from the inaugural Thorns versus San Diego Wave game. 

Debuts!

Saturday night’s game marked the professional Thorns debuts of Abby Smith and Natalie Beckman. Both players appeared in the preseason games and showed new head coach Rhian Wilkinson that they had valuable skills. Although Beckman only played about 10 minutes coming in for Klingenberg, she looked confident on the wing as part of the Thorns’ five-back and should be an exciting prospect in the games to come. Smith has plenty of NWSL experience, most recently for the Kansas City Current, but had yet to make an appearance for the Thorns since signing mid-season in 2021. 

In her inaugural game, Smith registered seven saves and a clean sheet, making her the fourth Thorns keeper to record a clean sheet in a Challenge Cup match. The decision to start Smith over Bella Bixby, Thorns No. 1, was a collaborative one between head goalkeeper coach Nadine Angerer, Bixby, and Smith. Head coach Rhian Wilkinson  said post-game that it was Bixby’s suggestion to have Smith play so that Smith has the minutes and confidence to fill in when Bixby is unavailable. Smith also spoke highly of the Goalkeeper Union in Portland and how all keepers push one another and inspire greatness. With such a solid culture in goal, any of the Portland keepers should be able to control the backline. 

Sophia! Smith!

Saying that Sophia Smith is good at soccer is probably the understatement of the year. Her technical skill and ability to get in behind the backline has already proven to be crucial to the Thorns’s attacking strategies. Sinking three out of three shots on target, Smith is lethal in front of goal. However, in the game against the Wave, Smith showed that she is more than just a pacey striker. In the run up to the Thorns’s lone goal, Smith was able to draw out three San Diego defenders to surround her, leaving both Natalia Kuikka and Christine Sinclair with plenty of space on the wings to send a ball in that Smith hit one-time deftly around Sheridan. 

Post-game, Wilkinson had high praise for Smith. She cited that Smith not only has a high ceiling that she delivers on, but that she is able to quickly implement feedback. One thing that Smith and Wilkinson are working on is “when to go in behind defense on transition and when to hold back to create different types of scoring opportunities.” With the combination of skills she possesses, it is a no-brainer that Smith will be a crucial member of the Thorns this year. 

Young players!

Sam Coffey, Yazmeen Ryan, and Meaghan Nally all got the start on Saturday. With Becky Sauerbrunn out after undergoing surgery to repair her meniscus, Nally has been able to slide into a starting role on the backline. She didn’t look out of place in the slightest alongside veteran defenders Emily Menges and Kelli Hubly, registering the highest number of touches and completed passes of the three. 

Ryan and Coffey, alongside Hina Sugita, are working to rebuild the midfield that the Thorns lost in the offseason. Together, the two young players in their first full season with the Thorns have already impressed. As the holding midfielder No. 6, Coffey had nearly an 80% passing completion rate. She was able to exploit the wide open spaces left by the non-existent Wave midfield, and looked as though she controlled the field. As she gains more experience and confidence on the field, she will be a real force to be reckoned with. Finally, Ryan also worked hard in the midfield, completing several successful dribbles to bring the ball into the final third, playing in Smith. As both Sophia Smith and Ryan get more time together and their partnership solidifies, they should be a lethal duo on the left. 

The Thorns go again tonight at home for their inaugural match against Angel City FC as they continue their run to secure their second Challenge Cup championship.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Thorns Draw 1-1 at Lumen Field: Takeaways

Photo by Nikita Taparia

It’s Challenge Cup time again, and the Thorns opened their tournament on Friday with a 1-1 draw to OL Reign. Even with a couple missed chances, it wasn’t a bad start to Portland’s first non-preseason game of 2022—and it left us with a lot of positives for what this team can become.

The Thorns are generally a team that have high expectations for themselves—take just last year, when they set out with the goal to “win everything”—and they’ll want better than a draw. But with a new team and a new head coach and a number of key players out, I don’t think we can read the team’s performance or the game’s outcome as a bad result.

Thorns head coach Rhian Wilkinson put it best in the postgame press conference. “I thought the team put in a performance, in a lot of ways, that we can be proud of,” she said. Although she said that Portland has room to grow, and that they did miss a couple good opportunities, “they gritted out a tie, and winning teams get points on the road. I was really proud of that piece of it.”

Not only did the Thorns pick up a draw, but they did so without the likes of Crystal Dunn, Madison Pogarch, Rocky Rodríguez, and Becky Sauerbrunn.

Those absences—along with the temporary departure of Lindsay Horan and Angela Salem’s retirement—meant Friday night’s Thorns were in a very different position from last year. Instead of leaning on an internationally-experienced midfield that had at least a couple years in Portland’s system under their belt, the Thorns started relatively young midfield that hadn’t really played together before. Hina Sugita and Sam Coffey—while both clearly very talented—are new to the team, and Yazmeen Ryan played less than 400 minutes in the regular season last year.

It’s not surprising that it took the Thorns a second to settle in. In the opening minutes of the match, Portland looked happy to give the Reign time on the ball, sitting back using pressure to force OL to play out of the back.

In Sauerbrunn’s absence, the Thorns also started Meaghan Nally in defense, who had played 19 minutes for Portland in 2022. Despite a dodgy moment early on, she grew into the game and helped hold Portland to one goal against. Wilkinson called her “unflappable” after the match.

“It took us a second to get organized and communicate a little bit better,” Christine Sinclair said after the match, “but I think we figured it out pretty quickly.”

Even though it was fun to watch Portland’s midfield settle in and more effectively contain world class players like Jess Fishlock and Quinn, I’m not sure how much to read into that performance. Rodríguez, Dunn, and, presumably, Horan will be coming back into the fold as the season progresses, and I won’t be surprised if Wilkinson experiments with formations as she and the players get used to working with each other. Still, Coffey, Ryan, and Sugita all put in solid shifts on Friday, and I’m excited to see how they develop as the season progresses.

“We’re definitely up for the challenge,” Sinclair said, “and we’re only going to grow more and more each game.”

And as the Thorns grow into this new iteration of the team, they’ll still have the likes of a number of more experienced players to lean on. Sinclair, Natalia Kuikka, and Sophia Smith showed as much with the goal they worked to create against the Reign.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Quotes and Notes from the Spring Fling (Thorns Preseason Tournament)

Photo by Nikita Taparia

The Thorns have their first open-door match of 2022 on the books in the form of a 0–0 draw against OL “ol’ Reign” Reign. Rhian Wilkinson’s first game! The Thorns wore green! Let’s talk about it.

With Lindsey Horan gone, the Thorns have no choice but to come up with a completely new system. I’m not sure most fans are really prepared for what losing Horan means, which may be partially my fault and that of my media peers, since I don’t know that we’ve collectively emphasized enough how pivotal she was in the Mark Parsons era. So, to be clear: having Lindsey Horan is like having an extra player on the field. She’s a living cheat code. She was such a presence for the Thorns that she was almost easy to take for granted, like the sun.

It’s not that Portland never got results without her—the clashing NWSL and international schedules meant they had to do that plenty of times when she was on the roster—but I get the sense that the collective awareness of her importance was almost unconscious. Her contribution to the team wasn’t scoring worldies as much as it was that she’d show up and everything on the field would suddenly work better. The discourse when she was available wasn’t “Horan looked good today,” it was, “the Thorns looked good today.”

All this is preamble to the fact that Wilkinson is doing something very, very different with this team. The squad lined up like this:

Diagram showing the Thorns' formation, a 3-5-2

In a word, the game was unspectacular. Whenever they lost possession, the Thorns would drop straight into a neat block; Morgan Weaver and Hannah Betfort would pester a center back or two to keep things moving, but the counterpress of the Parsons days is long gone. Natalia Kuikka and, to a lesser extent, Meghan Klingenberg, played pretty defensively, spending more time cutting off Reign attacks up the wing than looking to go forward themselves. Sam Coffey sat in a sharply defined No. 6 role, using none of the creativity she displayed at Penn State. Postgame, Rhian Wilkinson had this to say about using Coffey in that role:

Sam, even when I first brought her in, her calmness on the ball—she’s got ice in her veins. She’s been like that since day one, just like, “give me the ball.”… In that way, I really believe in midfield strength and connection. And I like her at the six, I think that she really comes alive, and she connects our team. We have a number of players that can do it. But I wanted to put her in the fire really, and see how she did. And I think she gave you all a glimpse of the talent that she has.

Thorns attacks were sparse, with a handful of chances in the first 15 minutes, then another handful in the last half hour. An early goal by Betfort—a header from close range off a corner by Weaver—was waved off for a foul. Most of the chances came from exploiting the spaces left open by Seattle’s press, with Kelli Hubly and Becky Sauerbrunn both connecting directly with the forwards a few times.

Betfort is listed as a defender, but Wilkinson says she sees her as a striker, and had this to say when comparing her with the other forwards on the roster:

Morgan and Sophia Smith are pure athletes. They’re incredible with their feet, technically, as well. Hannah has also got a lot of speed… the other two have a little bit more quickness, she has pure speed. And she’s very obviously a big strong woman who holds the ball out well for us. And she’s got clean feet for someone who is sort of one of those air quotes “old-school” kind of nines, as holding the ball up, she’s got really tidy feet. And I think she likes to play in a different way, where the others pull the line back, she often comes off the front.

The Thorns haven’t had a good old-fashioned shit-kicking nine in some time, and I enjoyed watching Betfort in that role.

In the midfield, Portland often looked outmatched. They were visibly frustrated with the Reign’s press, and Rocky Rodríguez and Yazmeen Ryan struggled to get past Quinn and Jess Fishlock. They’re both excellent creative players, but with a No. 6 who isn’t tasked with contributing much to the attack, no No. 10, and two forwards who tend to stay forward more than drop back to connect play, they couldn’t build much out of the center of the field.

But what we saw last night is not Portland’s best XI. Hina Sugita got about ten minutes in the No. 8 at the end of the match, about which all I have to say is: everybody new to the NWSL has to get that initiatory “why are they like this” moment out of the way. Smith came on in the 74th minute looking sharp as hell and immediately improved the connection between the midfield and the forward line. Also, Crystal Dunn will not be pregnant forever.

The defense was last night’s strong point. Hubly, Sauerbrunn, and Emily Menges are an outstanding central trio and contained just about everything the Reign threw at them. Whatever hiccups happen with the front five as the season gets rolling, Portland will be able to lean on that defensive foundation for results.