Month: March 2025
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The Portland Thorns started their season on the wrong foot when they lost 3-1 to Kansas City Current last Saturday. It was an expected result, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.
A new season has begun and with it a new reality for the Thorns. Gone is the mighty team that was feared by other clubs, gone is the experienced roster, and gone is Portland as one of the top spots in the world for players.
Of course, this piece is not meant to be a depressing one, but if you watched the club play in this 2025 season, you know what I’m talking about.
So, despite the loss, how did the Thorns do? Let’s see.
The backline
After Becky Sauerbrunn retired and Kelli Hubly went to Bay FC in the offseason, Portland’s backline ended up with a serious lack of experience.
Coach Rob Gale chose Reyna Reyes, Jayden Perry, Isabella Obaze, and Kaitlyn Torpey as the four-back for the debut against the Current. We have to remember that Obaze didn’t have the best of seasons last year, and Reyes wasn’t that impressive either. Nonetheless, Portland plans to rely heavily on them this season.
It was great to see Reyes stepping up big for the Thorns on Saturday. She recovered many balls, and since the team was playing mostly on the left side, the Mexican had to stay sharp. She did.
If we talk about the the less experienced defender on the field, it was a difficult game for Perry. It was expected, though. Imagine you’re a rookie and your first match as a professional soccer player is against one of the top teams in the league, and you’re tasked with marking 2024 Golden Boot and MVP Temwa Chawinga—a forward that if you blink, you’ll miss. What is more, Perry had to perform in a very new backline that is just getting acquainted with one another.
Nonetheless, and despite that, Perry did well in some departments as you can in the table below.
The Thorns got the short end of the stick in their opener. And that’s the thing: Facing KC in your first game of the season without the firepower Portland had last year, with a very new backline, and on the road was a recipe for disaster.
When it comes to defending against tricky players such as Chawinga or Debinha, you have to be tricky as well. On the first goal the home team scores, maybe it would’ve been good to make Chawinga fall into an offside trap, but to do that Portland’s entire backline needed to be on the same page. That wasn’t the case in Saturday’s match and maybe won’t be for some time.
It would’ve been great to have Sam Hiatt available, since she has been around in the league for some time now. and she knows the drill. “Sam had a knee injury at the end of last year and a long RTP [return to play],” Gale said after the match. “We haven’t got her up to 90 minutes yet, as we just had to build that back. The medical and performance department has done a really good job in getting her close to being able to go 60 minutes.”
With Hiatt not ready to play, we can expect the coach to keep using the four defenders he used against Kansas City for the next few games. Hopefully, they will get more acquainted with one another and improve little by little.
We have the ball… Now what?
Portland tried to, in true Portland fashion, build from the back. The problem is that the team doesn’t currently have the personnel to do so.
Below we can see an image that was repeated over and over again on Saturday. Mackenzie Arnold passed the ball to the center-backs, and they moved it between them while Sam Coffey approached to help. Kansas City put a line of players high enough to prevent them from passing the ball to the middle.
The Current’s plan worked, and as a result, the Thorns’ backline was disconnected from the middle, which resulted in the center-backs sending long, aerial balls to the midfielders. After losing those aerial duels, Portland lost possession.
Credit: NWSL
The Current had many tools to make Portland pay for losing the ball so easily. Speed, individual brilliance, and scoring prowess are just some of them, and all of them were on display during the three goals the home team scored on the Thorns. Of course, the visitors didn’t make the task that hard.
Kansas City’s first goal was the result of a bad defensive effort. Their second was the result of individual brilliance, and the third a combination of both factors. Debinha’s class shined through in that third goal, but Portland’s entire defense was also hypnotized by the ball and didn’t mark her. As a result, she pushed the ball—which Obaze then couldn’t clear on time—against the back of the net.
Olivia Moultrie
In brightest day, in blackest night, Olivia Moultrie will always show up. The youngest player on the roster is playing her fifth season with Portland, and she’s not even 20-years-old. How cool is that?
It’s really amazing to see her as one of the “veterans” and and as someone who has so many responsibilities in the team. Of course, it’s not ideal, but seeing Moultrie take on those responsibilities with no hesitation shows her maturity as a player. The first game of the season showed her strong mentality on the field; even though she contributed with a goal for Portland—the Thorns’ only one—she also missed another.
However, Moultrie had enough guts to step up on the penalty spot against a mighty opponent at a pivotal point of the match. If she had scored, the Thorns would have been back in the game. Yes, she missed. Some surely asked why Coffey didn’t take it. But Moultrie was also qualified to do so. Moreover, the penalty was also a learning opportunity and part of her journey as a player.
“I’ve grown as a player,” she said after the match. “I’ve grown as a person as I’ve been on this team. These things are a natural evolution for me. And it’s just like, how can I help my team? How can I do whatever I need to do for us to win games?
On Saturday, one of the few positive things we witnessed was that growth Moultrie referred to. She will keep showing up for Portland because that’s the kind of player she is. Age has never been a problem for her. Since day one, she was ready to take on the mantle of being the youngest player in the league, and she has always been up to the challenge.
That attitude and leadership will be key for the Thorns this season. Hopefully, her teammates will observe that and follow her example.
It feels as though the universe is playing a cruel joke on the Portland Thorns. With the large number of offseason departures, even the most sadistic person would not have expected—or even imagined—four of the Thorns’ starting XI missing the entire season before it even had a chance to begin. With Marie Müller and Nicole Payne’s ACL injuries, the Thorns are down to one outside back (Reyna Reyes) and out a massive defensive force and outside playmaker in Müller. With Morgan Weaver getting reinjured, presumably right after returning from her USWNT call up in January (we have no specific data or timeline released from the club) and Sophia Wilson announcing her pregnancy, the offensive structure that the Thorns have been built around since they went one-two overall in the 2020 NWSL College Draft is gone.
In isolation, these injuries and absences are devastating, but combined with the general ineptitude that has plagued the front office since 2021, the Thorns seem to be on a downward spiral with no signs of slowing. On Friday night, the gates of Providence Park opened for fans for the first chance to see what this new Thorns team was going to look like during a preseason game against the Utah Royals. It left everyone with more questions than answers.
The Thorns lined up in a 4-3-3, the same formation they used for the majority of the last season. Let’s look at how each line played and worked together.
In defense, new signing, Australian (not Austrailian, as the Thorns spelled in their press release) Kaitlyn Torpey slid right into the starting XI. Sam Hiatt started alongside Isa Obaze at center back, with Daiane not dressing for the game. Reyes got the start as well, to no one’s surprise. While individually all four defenders are solid players, what they lacked as a unit was a leader. With both Becky Sauerbruun and Kelli Hubly departing, the Thorns need a player who is willing and able to dictate play and organize the backline, and this became abundantly clear whenever Utah was on the attack. On the Royals’ lone goal, Mackenzie Arnold came up big one-on-one from a close range shot, but no one was tracking the runners on the far side. Torpey lost sight of Ally Sentnor completely, and Sentnor was able to score a fairly simple goal in the bottom corner. Set pieces in particular were a struggle for Portland, with players losing their marks on corner kicks and not tracking Utah’s runs. It was these lapses in defending fundamentals that caused the defensive line to collapse. Luckily, both Arnold (and Bella Bixby, when she came in at the 60th minute) were able to make the necessary saves.
Hiatt was the eldest starting defender at 27. As she has the most NWSL experience over her career with the Seattle Reign and NJ/NY Gotham FC, and as a center-back, I have the expectation and hope that she will step up into that leadership position. However, I am also trying to keep my expectations reasonable and acknowledge that the Thorns are running on a skeleton crew of players and do not have the necessary coaches to help guide them. The Thorns are still without a goalkeeping coach and have only had two assistants since head coach Rob Gale was promoted last summer. By leaving these positions open, the Thorns are shooting themselves in the foot, with no time for a new hire to acclimate and disseminate their knowledge during preseason—when there are no consequences to trying new formations or tactics.
The midfield trio of Jessie Fleming, Hina Sugita, and Sam Coffey was the best line on the field, and it was a shame that they were unable to dictate more play. Hina and Coffey both sat deeper, playing box-to-box, and read each other’s game very well; both were far-and-away the best players on the pitch. On both sides of the ball they retained possession, won tackles, and made clean passes to break through the lines, and Thorns fans should be manifesting that they maintain their health over the course of the season. Fleming, an utterly frustrating player last season, seemed to have more direction and intentionality in her play. Instead of merely running around the pitch, she helped start a high press, and was able to put lots of pressure on the Royals’ backline. While it became clear over the course of the match that Gale wanted to build the play out from Arnold through the wide channels, Coffey—as captain—should advocate for herself and her skills to switch up play centrally, particularly now that Weaver and Müller—the strongest wide playmakers—are out for the season.
As everyone could have guessed once they heard the news that Wilson was going to be out this season, the Thorns’ biggest struggle for this year will be to score goals. Deyna Castellanos, the Venezuelan marquee signing of the offseason, offers some qualities similar to Wilson in the way she drifts on the backline and looks to poach space over the top, but she does not have the speed that Wilson does, nor does she have the defensive abilities or willingness to cover and run deeper. The way the Thorns set up in a 4-3-3 did not serve to highlight Deyna’s skillset, which we were able to see in flashes in her playmaking, dummines, and through-balls. There were several times over the course of the game where she put the ball on a platter for a tap-in, and a teammate fumbled or missed the target entirely.
In particular, Payton Linnehan was incredibly frustrating to watch on the wing, with probably the most chances on the night. Unironically, I think that the now-retired Christine Sinclair would have been a good partner for Deyna, where her ball-knowledge and control would allow Sinclair to dink the ball in the perfect corner of the goal off of Deyna’s set-up. Currently, neither Olivia Moultrie or Linnehan have that control, nor did they show any flashes of it.
If I were Gale and were looking at my teamsheet, I would opt to play a two-front of Deyna with either Reilyn Turner or Pietra Tordin, and push Moultrie more centrally. This would allow Deyna to work off of a pure striker in Turner or Tordin (both of whom seem to be on minutes restrictions due to lack of playing time across all three broadcast preseason matches) and allow Moultrie to play the way she likes, with the ball at her feet centrally, thus maximizing the skillset and potential of each player.
Off the bench, both Turner and Tordin looked promising, but we are at risk of another Izzy D’Aquilla situation, where Portland’s head coach forces a natural striker to play out wide and eventually causes them to lose their spot on the team entirely. Jayden Perry looked relatively strong at center back and had the confidence to move the ball up through the middle more than Hiatt (who she replaced) did. After those three names, the Thorns’ bench was incredibly thin and offered no real league-ready depth, something that they will need with a season that stretches through November.
Ultimately, I think that the Thorns are one serious goal-scorer away from being a mid-table team that sneaks into the playoffs. The squad looked shaky, but I feel inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt that they are still getting used to one another. They are doing the best with what they have—barely meeting the roster minimum, not having enough coaches, losing four starting players in the last two weeks—but time is running out to right the ship before the season gets underway, and the hole is dug too deep.
If Gale is out there reading this, I urge him to build your tactics around the team in front of him, not the one that he had a few weeks ago.