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ICC Soccer Thorns

My Favorite Things

These are a few of my favorite things (from the International Champions Cup).

Photo by Matthew Wolfe

A lot of good things that I liked happened last night. Here is a list of the best things that happened, in my opinion:

1. Seven total hype reels throughout the evening

2. Barcelona playing in a super-organized possession-based style, which I would bet not a huge amount of money, but some money, that no team has ever done in Providence Park before

3. Wendie Renard (tall)

4. Mariona goals (two)

5. When Amandine Henry scored in the North End

Photo by Matthew Wolfe

6. Melvine Malard goal

7. The ideal combo of sophistication and technical prowess, on the one hand, and yakety sax defensive errors on the other; maybe the best soccer game I’ve ever seen in person

8. Captain Hubly

9. When the Thorns rotated as much of the team as possible because the same 15ish players have been doing everything for like a month and a half, they’ve been on the road two weeks in a row, and the team has four games in the space of 12 days, so a bunch of players got their first starts and minutes

10. When Natalia Kuikka scored with her head after telling her roommate Angela Salem she was going to score with her head

11. When Olivia Moultrie did a direct free kick and it went in the goal, it was still cool even though the Houston keeper should have been able to save it

12. When Rachel Daly got mad

13. When it went to penalties

14. The sky

15. Shelby Hogan’s first penalty save

16. Shelby Hogan’s second penalty save

17. You can guess what this one is

18. When Simone Charley scored the winning penalty

19. That lineup, doing That

By Katelyn Best

Katelyn Best writes about the Thorns and the NWSL, among other things. She is the reigning taco champion of the North American women’s soccer circuit.