The Portland Thorns got a point on the road thanks to a late PK that centerback Jayden Perry buried in the back of the net.
Early goals
What is it with Portland and conceding first-half goals this year? The San Diego Wave scored in the 6th minute, but the trend holds true with all the other teams that have scored on Portland since the beginning of the season. Racing Louisville scored in the 9th minute, Gotham in the 8th, Seattle in the 4th, Angel City in the 9th, and Kansas City in the 4th.
So, are the Thorns focused enough since kick-off? Is it a mentality problem? Because it sounds like at least some of those goals would have been avoidable if Portland were been focused since minute one.
The club has a lot to thank Jayden Perry for with her PK goals, but at the same time, Kimmi Ascanio’s 6th minute goal wasn’t the first time Perry lost a forward in a play that ends up in a goal against.
It was frustrating to see Ascanio with a lot of space—nobody, and especially Perry, applied a tight mark on her at all—which resulted in her heading that ball comfortably and beating Bella Bixby at short range.
Fast buildups, slow buildups
It looked like on Friday, San Diego had it easier than the Thorns finding pockets of space and creating chances.
One of the reasons is that San Diego was good at pushing Portland to the wings. They let the Thorns move the ball there, and they made it hard for Portland to find space in the middle of the park, as you can see in the video below.
Added to the above, the Thorns weren’t close enough to make fast passes and triangles, which gave the Wave the chance to cut passes easily.
San Diego looked like they were more practical and were better at finding spaces to exploit. However, that wasn’t 100% to the Wave’s credit; it also says something about how Portland played.
In the video above, you can see how the backline completely forgot about Ascanio and that also there are acres of space between Reyna Reyes and Perry, giving another Wave player a chance to receive the ball. In the end, the play stops due to offside, but it still can give us a better understanding of how the team’s defensive shape was.
11 vs 10
In minute 41′, Kennedy Wesley got sent off due to a foul on Olivia Moultrie when she was the last woman standing. That resulted not only in Portland having a numerical advantage on the field but also in San Diego having to make an early substitution, an attacker for a defender.
So, Kristen McNabb came in for María Sánchez, which resulted in San Diego playing a 5-back formation. Understandably, Portland created better chances in the second half, although not many more shots (nine in the first half and 11 in the second). Portland’s expected goals went up from 0.87 in the first half to 1.82 in the second.
Nonetheless, numbers didn’t translate into goals until late in the match, when Sam Coffey got fouled inside the box. The play resulted in a PK that was scored by none other than Perry in stoppage time.
The rookie centerback has been ice-cold from the penalty spot. Portland has found in her someone the club can rely on in difficult moments.
Credit: Opta/ X
Last but not least, Bixby got the start for the third time this season, and she had another convincing performance. Portland’s goal is in good gloves.
It’s hard to write about a soccer game when there wasn’t much soccer being played.
When the Portland Thorns faced off against Racing Louisville on Sunday afternoon, nobody expected that the referee would make himself the main character and the game would set an NWSL record for the most number of fouls in a game (41, compared to the 25 the previous Thorns matches averaged). Thanks to two penalties and a brilliant headed goal by Reilyn Turner, the Thorns managed to eke out a win. Jessie Fleming said it best postgame when she said it was “embarrassing for Louisville, and embarrassing for the league,” to allow such blatant fouling and disjointedness.
Coming to the end of a three-game-week, head Rob Gale rotated his starting lineup, resting the Thorns’ only true outside back Reyna Reyes, and starting Hina Sugita in the No. 6 defensive midfield position while Sam Coffey was in Spain at a family wedding. Coffey had previously been the only Thorns player to see every minute. Gale described her as a metronome who “sets the tempo.”
As part of his squad management on the back of a congested three-game-week, Gale said, “It’s foolish at this stage of the season to be huge with minutes. We have a lot of young players, players who were squad players, who aren’t used to playing this many minutes. It would be irresponsible of me to push them too hard now, and it would cost us down the line. Squad rotation is very important, and I want to keep the players pushing each other, so that when they step up, they are able to perform.”
Hina’s heat map versus Racing
Hina, who does best as a free-roaming midfield player that can operate in both boxes, was asked to sit deeper. This rotation fundamentally affects the ways in which the Thorns’ attacking buildup is created, as they lose Hina’s creative ability going forward. Not including the penalty kicks, the Thorns created 0.54 expected goals—an abysmal outing. Hina’s heatmap shows that she very rarely got forward centrally, forcing the Thorns to try and build through their wide players. The only problem: the Thorns’ wide players are not actually wide players.
Photo by Kris Lattimore
The Thorns’ unbalanced roster construction has been a problem for the past several seasons, but is really coming to a head due to the current number of long-term injuries on the squad. With only two true wingers (Payton Linnehan and Alexa Spaanstra), Gale has resorted to playing central forwards Caiya Hanks and Turner out wide instead. By asking these players to be out of position, he is mitigating their strengths. We saw what could happen when Turner is able to find herself centrally: she scores a headed goal between the backs of two defenders. Unfortunately, Gale seems to be stuck in the mindset that Deyna Castellanos is the Thorns’ best option centrally, which time and time again has proven to be unsuccessful.
The game quickly spun out of control as Louisville scored their second and third goal in quick succession, both of which were egregious errors by the Thorns. Off a goal kick when trying to play out of the back, Mackenzie Arnold and Jayden Perry had a lapse in concentration and made a bad pass that was easily picked off by Racing and placed in the back of the net. Louisville is a high-pressing team, relying on the speed and stamina of forwards like Emma Sears to maintain the press. When up against such one-note opposition, sometimes it’s necessary to change up your style of play. If you know that you’re going to be under intense pressure on your backline, it’s up to the coach to recognize that and change up the style of play, using Macca’s long-ball distribution to switch the way the Thorns’ progressed the ball—especially without Hina operating in the midfield the way she usually does.
The third goal allowed by the Thorns started with a foul in the build up on Isa Obaze that left her on the ground and Racing outnumbering Portland in the box. Had the ref been competent, he would have called the ball back, but he didn’t. Ball don’t lie, however, and the Thorns were handed a lifeline when they earned a penalty in the fifth minute of first half stoppage time, with Jessie Fleming calmly slotting it home for her first ever (!!!!) goal in a Thorns jersey.
With twenty fouls recorded in the first half, the Thorns went into the locker room down 2-3. Gale said that during his halftime speech, there “wasn’t much tactically to change at half time due to the physicality of the other team and the nature of the game. We needed to stretch them better in a low triangle and deal with service in the wide area and stop giving away set pieces, because that is what they play for. Louisville goes long, dives, gambles on pressure and tries to slow down the game and they are effective at it. We rotated [Olivia Moultrie] into Jessie’s position, and at the end we just went for it with five at top and pushed for it.”
Momentum tracker via SofaScore
In a statistic that seems unbelievable, the Thorns are the only NWSL team that have not conceded in the second half, so clearly something that Gale is doing at halftime is working. With the frequent starting and stopping of play, it was hard for either team to create much rhythm. The inexperience of the Thorns’ roster showed through, with no Coffey on the field to step up and reset the tempo and place the Thorns back in control. This is one of the downsides of having your captain be a keeper, as it’s hard for them to reset the tone of the game from the penalty box. And unfortunately, no one in the outfield stepped up.
Jayden Perry celebrates scoring the game-tying PK. Photo by Kris Lattimore.
The biggest takeaway from the match, since there was hardly any quality soccer played by either side, is that Perry needs to be signed to a longer contract immediately. Her cool, calm, collected presence in the 100th minute to earn the team a point should be worth at least five years in a Thorns kit, in my opinion. If the front office wanted to signal that they were serious about a long term rebuild, this should be one of their first moves.
The air in Providence Park on a Tuesday night is different. After a frustrating one-nil loss to the Seattle Reign on Friday, and with the possibility of losing five games in a row to NJ/NY Gotham, the Portland Thorns took the field with something to prove to both themselves and the fans.
The Thorns’ first multi-goal game of 2025 arrived in spectacular fashion: a 4-1 thrashing of the juggernaut Gotham. It’s not that the Thorns have been unable to get near the goal—which is what their three goals across their first five games may have suggested. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The Thorns lead the NWSL in shots (60) and are second in expected goals (10.2), only behind Kansas City. With a front line whose most experienced players are sophomores Reilyn Turner and Payton Linnehan, it has taken a few matches for the young team to find their footing. The Thorns seem to be heating up at just the right time, before a congested slate of games before the league breaks for the Euros in June.
With such a quick turnaround between games—only two training sessions—the Thorns had very little time to focus in after Seattle. Speaking postgame, both Caiya Hanks and Jayden Perry credited the Thorns leadership team, in particular Sam Coffey and Jessie Fleming, for helping create the right mentality headed into Tuesday night.
“Sam gave us a great speech at the beginning: to play with intensity, and smile, and have fun, and that showed today,” Hanks said.
Perry focused on the Thorns’ change in approach to their training sessions as modeled by Fleming and Coffey, saying, “The intensity and response in the quality and the energy, we knew we could have given more in that game and gotten a different result. We had to switch our mindset, and that showed in this game.”
Head coach Rob Gale said postgame that “19 players featured between the two games,” and spoke of his pregame speech, which referenced the late Pope. “We have to do it together,” Gale said. “We are not a team of superstars. We are servants to the team, and are humble, serving something bigger than ourselves.”
Right from the whistle, these slight shifts were evident. The Thorns were on the front foot, and playing with intentionality as they moved the ball across the lines and into the penalty box.
Mimi Alidou’s goal by Kris Lattimore
Mimi Alidou, the 29-year-old Canadian, started her first game for Portland nearly two weeks after she arrived in the city and quickly showed why the Thorns brought her over from Portugal midseason . In just the seventh minute, Alidou redirected a ball from Hanks into the back of the net with ease, a lá Christine Sinclair.
When speaking about Alidou, Hanks said that, even though the two don’t follow each other on Instagram yet, they “have this weird connection. I just knew that she was going to be there in the box,” she said. “It’s really cool when you meet someone and just know that you are going to have a really good connection on and off the field.”
Unfortunately, the celebrations did not last long. Thorns let Gotham respond immediately, and the game went into halftime tied at one. Credit to Gale, quite literally coaching for his job, for making tactical changes at half time. The first half had the Thorns playing on the back foot, defending Gotham (and allowing them just three shots). But after conceding, the Thorns never regained solid spells of possession and thus weren’t able to play the style of soccer that they needed to.
But Portland came out of the tunnel at half time flying. Finally, importantly, things were starting to click. The Thorns’ second half was one of their best in ages on both sides of the ball.
“We all knew we were due for a win,” Hanks said. “We had an issue with coming out slow in our last games, and we had to come out with the intensity and the fire. The games we come out fast are the games we win; we saw that in Utah. Once one or two go in, they just start flowing, and we were due for that.”
Photo by Kris Lattimore
Hanks was the star of the show against Gotham. She had three shots on target and completely dominated Gotham’s right back on every dribble and pass. After recording her first career assist in the first half, she added her first professional goal in the second. When asked about what it felt like, she said, “I released all my thoughts, all my hesitations, and just hit it.”
With that, the flood gates were open. It seemed as though every touch was turning to gold, and the Thorns were running circles around Gotham, dictating the tempo and exhausting the traveling team.
The best sequence of the night was absolutely in the 70th minute when the Thorns won a penalty kick (without even needing a VAR review—how I love quick footballing decisions). Coffey stood over the ball, then, from the back line, came rookie Jayden Perry. She stepped up in front of a rowdy North End, and calmly sent Ann Katrin Berger, 2024 NWSL keeper of the year, the wrong way, becoming the first rookie to score a penalty this year.
Perry gets her rose by Kris Lattimore
Perry said postgame that she advocated for herself early into the preseason. As the designated penalty kick taker during her time at UCLA, she had never missed. “I told Rob that I am confident in PKs, and that if he let me take them, I would do that job,” she said. “My teammates and my coaches put their trust in me, and I knew that they had my back.”
In addition to slotting home her first professional goal, Perry had a solid performance at center back, winning all but one of her ground duels and all of her aerial ones and making four clearances. She is only signed through this season, and with the Bhathal family in attendance on Tuesday, they should swiftly lock Perry down to a longer contract.
Perry added: “Little Jayden would be crying right now. It’s such a dream to play at this level, and scoring my first goal brings so much joy to me and my mom and my sister, who were here today. Today, we were playing with that passion that we had as little kids.”
The fourth and final goal of the night came from Deyna Castellanos, who broke a 23-game scoring drought by capitalizing off a rebounded shot. Soccer is a funny sport, because despite having a 50% passing completion rate, losing the ball 20 times (per SofaScore), and having zero clearances, blocks, interceptions, accurate crosses, or duels won, Castellanos still plays ninety minutes and scores a goal. My only hope is that the goal unlocks something within her, and she is able to be much more productive going forward.
Air Turner by Kris Lattimore
There is still so much season ahead of the Thorns, but the win against Gotham was a statement to the rest of the league: Don’t underestimate the Thorns. We might be without Sophia Wilson and Morgan Weaver, but we have the best young talent in the league.
Maybe we should play more games on balmy Tuesday evenings in Portland.
The first Cascadia rivalry of the year was played in Lumen Field, and the hosts got the win.
Coming off their first victory of the year, spirits were high as the Portland Thorns hit the road to play Laura Harvey’s team. Even though the Seattle Reign had a rough start to the year with an aged roster, the seasoned coach has found a way to give to reinvent the Reign.
Seattle’s goal
Not even five minutes into the game, Lynn Biyendolo found an opening between Portland’s lines. The forward sent a horizontal pass to Maddie Dahlien on the left, where she faced Thorns defender Kaitlyn Torpey. The rookie beat the Matilda, but the tally wouldn’t have been possible if not for the complicity of Nérilia Mondésir.
Credit: NWSL
As you can see in the image below, Mondésir occupies the space between Torpey and Sam Hiatt at centerback. She then steps back to leave the space open for her teammate.
It was an excellent off-the-ball job by the Haitian, but Portland’s backline was also to blame. Look at the acres of space between the center-backs and the Reign players available to make a run if Dahlien had chosen to pass instead of shooting.
Credit: NWSL
Seattle’s plan in the first half: Long balls
It was clear that one of coach Harvey’s plans had to do with long balls to either Dahlien or Biyendolo. The rookie was Torpey’s nightmare, and she and Hiatt had to double-mark to stop the winger.
It was key, then, not only for the back four to be very attentive to any long balls and runs, but also for Bella Bixby to do the same and to intervene when necessary. And that’s exactly what she did several times during the match.
No doubt, Bixby’s interventions were pivotal and stopped Seattle from extending the lead. We can see that clearly in Biyendolo’s shot, where Bixby comes out of her line to shrink the striker’s angle.
Portland’s plan
Reilyn Turner had found the back of the net for Portland in two consecutive games, but she couldn’t do so for a third time. But she was still the player who stepped the most on Seattle’s box (five touches) and hit the crossbar in the second half.
As you could see in the video above, Hina Sugita was once again the most unpredictable player. She was successful the times she went through the wings and tried to make a pass or send a pass into the box.
If we talk about things the Thorns need to improve on, one of them is the players’ positioning inside the box. As you can see in the video above, the ball played by Sugita was good enough but Turner’s body angle wasn’t the best, knowing that she wasn’t going to have enough time to receive, accommodate her body, and shoot.
But there were still other areas of success, like Payton Linnehan with crosses. Even though she didn’t have much weight on the field, she was the player with the most crosses completed.
Payton Linnehan’s distribution. Credit: NWSL
On the other hand, Portland also need to improve on their passing. Let’s take this play, where Olivia Moultrie carries the ball, as an example:
Turner does an excellent job at receiving the ball with her chest and passing it with that sole movement, wasting no time making the pass in that way to Moultrie. Caiya Hanks sees the space in front of her and signals where she wants the ball, but instead of a vertical pass, Moultrie decides to continue with the carry. That gives Seattle time to close the space, and Moultrie can’t find an open teammate to pass to after that. As a result, she goes for a horizontal pass, and the opportunity gets lost.
So, we can see the Thorns didn’t play badly against the Reign, but there are important details they need to improve to maximize their chances and be able to take them.
Also, it would be good not to have to depend on only one player to score. Before Sophia Wilson, one of the Thorns’ main characteristics was the fact that pretty much anyone could score. And since they don’t have a clear striker nowadays, it’d be great if they could go back to being that kind of team.
Three games into the 2025 NWSL season, the Portland Thorns are still searching for their first win. The club has managed to net only two goals across one away loss and two home draws. Last season, former head coach Mike Norris was given four games (3L, 1D) before being promoted to Technical Director, so head coach Rob Gale is on a very short leash before a potential reassignment. A failure to win all three points at home against a North Carolina team who are perennially terrible on the road should have been the final straw, but alas, it was not. Instead fans are left dissatisfied headed into the international break.
Game over game, there has been tremendous growth in the Thorns team—and that trend continued against the Courage. Gale fielded a starting XI with an average age of 24, the second-youngest in Thorns history, and Mackenzie Arnold had far and away her best game in Portland colors. The centerback pairing of Isa Obaze and Sam Hiatt is already strengthening, and the duo of Reilyn Turner and Caiya Hanks up front is one of the most exciting forward lines in the league in terms of raw potential.
It’s hard to look at a 0-0 draw and say that it was a good game or deserved, but for the defensive unit in particular, it was. Arnold played out of her mind, making five saves (including a penalty). She was commanding of her box, putting her body on the line several times. Her effort seemed to set the tempo for the rest of the team. Reyna Reyes won the most duels in the match (10) and Kaitlyn Torpey was the most accurate passer (94%), as both were tasked with starting the attack from the wide channels as well as defending. To complete the line, both Obaze and Hiatt had nine defensive actions apiece—and stifled the Courage’s forwards.
Leo wrote a very good article about the pressure that a new general manager is under to build a roster for a perennial powerhouse in under two months, and the roadblocks he has faced. I would like to expand on one signing in particular, Deyna Castellanos. By the time Jeff Agoos was named GM, there were very few free agent signings available, and most Big Name Players had already resigned with their clubs or chosen a new one by January. Castellanos was not a free agent, and had to be bought out of her million-dollar contract after a lackluster season in the Bay Area in order to be picked up by the Thorns. Castellanos has a lot of starpower in the NWSL, is the face of a new Nike campaign alongside Sophia Wilson, and was absolutely the Thorns’ biggest signing in their short offseason.
So, why would the coach bench her? Against the Courage, Gale tried a new formation, a 4-4-2, with a diamond midfield that relied heavily on progressing the ball through the center of the field. Castellanos played the point of that diamond, and in theory, this should have been a very successful lineup given the available players on the Thorns, with a lack of traditional wide forwards and outside backs healthy. Without Wilson to tailor the formation to, Gale seems to be setting up the team around Castellanos.
Unfortunately, during the 60 minutes she was on the field, it felt as though the Thorns were playing down a person. Her zero chances created, zero touches in the Courage’s box, zero accurate long balls or crosses, zero tackles, and one defensive action all point to a player that might as well have not been on the field—not someone who is supposed to be a creative centerpoint of a team’s attack. By not putting in much effort, Castellanos effectively stranded the two target forwards, Turner and Hanks, who then had to drop back further to receive the ball and had more work to do and players to beat once getting it.
One possible formation change could be sliding Olivia Moultire into the point of the diamond, allowing her more freedom centrally. I am also eagerly awaiting Pietra Tordin’s first start, as she has looked particularly bright in her fifteen minute cameos so far. The flare and vision that she has shown in limited minutes could also be positive for the No. 10 position, despite her playing more as a No. 9 in college.
Post game, Gale mentioned that there was “no way to keep the upward momentum going when you have 11 players gone for international break,” but perhaps that is not necessarily a bad thing. The Thorns have played better each game, but are still experiencing the same poor results. The break in play will allow for a reset before these next stretch of games against the Utah Royals (one point), Seattle Reign (four points) and NJ/NY Gotham (two points), all of which are winnable games.
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.
Defensive stats by the back four. Source: Opta
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.
Credit: NWSL
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.
The Portland Thorns have been resting on their laurels since their 2022 NWSL championship season and have not worked to cultivate a new identity in the two seasons since. After an uninspiring 0-0 draw to the worst team in the league, the Utah Royals, on Saturday night at altitude, it’s clear that the eight-week Olympic break cannot come soon enough.
There are a multitude of valid reasons why the club has been in purgatory for several years, most notably being the sale of the club from Merritt Paulson’s cold hands. The ownership tumult has further complicated the club’s ability to find a permanent, competent head coach to step in after Rhian Wilkinson’s resignation. The club has been slowly leaking world class players from that 2022 squad, and they have not brought in many replacements. Coupled with the lack of tactics and willingness to change and adapt from former head coach Mike Norris and current interim Rob Gale, it seems almost like a miracle that Thorns have managed to dig out a niche in fifth place in the NWSL standings. (Even that placement feels less impressive when we’re reminded that over half—the top eight of 12—teams qualify for the postseason.)
It almost feels futile to try and break down the team’s tactics when it’s the same each week (get the ball to Portland’s wingers, who then are tasked with taking on the defense one-vs-one to get to goal), and the rest of the league has figured the Thorns out. But alas, I will try to.
Against Utah, Gale chose to start Nicole Payne at right back and Reyna Reyes at left back, relegating the Thorns’ best defender, Marie Müller, to the bench. Müller has been consistently leading the Thorns on several stats, including tackles, recoveries, and crosses, and post game Gale clarified that her absence was to allow her to rest after the many minutes put on her legs in recent games. Against a dismal attacking side that has only scored seven games thus far, it seemed like a reasonable action. However, Müller’s absence required Reyes to play on her much weaker left side to accommodate Payne at right back. Payne is a good pure defender, but is weak in possession. She made one progressive pass and only had two touches in the Thorns’ attacking third. For a team that likes their outside backs to push high and join the attack, these numbers are dreadfully low. Reyes, in her sophomore season with the team, is seeing the field markedly less, mostly due to the competition at her best position, right back. Her strengths are opposite those of Payne; Reyes is better on the ball due to her time in midfield at the University of Alabama, but she lost all of her duels on the night against the Royals. Her attacking play was much better, with 13 touches in the final third and two in the Royals’ penalty box, but on her weaker foot, her passing and distribution suffered.
Like Gale said post game, “sometimes you have to give credit to the opposition,” and the Royals were able to successfully mark the Thorns’ midfield out of the game. Hina Sugita and Sam Coffey have been the fulcrum of the Thorns’ build this season, and other teams have begun to realize that if they press them high, then the Thorns are forced to play through their wingers, who are much more easily dispossessed. The Royals’ press led to many misplaced and overhit passes, particularly from Coffey, which resulted in easy turnovers and put the Thorns right back on the defensive foot. Gale has been asking Hina to play deeper to allow for Coffey to push forward, and the two of them work very well together. Still, Hina and Coffey ended up accounting for one through ball between the both of them, which meant Sophia Smith severely lacked opportunities to show off her skills in behind the defense, and Portland’s attack suffered greatly.
The other most puzzling part of the Thorns’ lineup on Saturday was the inclusion of Ana Dias as the starting No. 9, which pushed Smith out wide. Dias put on a show in the charity match midweek, scoring a hat trick, and I had hoped that her confidence would translate to the league game. Which unfortunately was not the case. In her 75 minutes , Dias had one accurate pass and three shots, none of which were on target. She had three touches in the Royals’ box, and only 0.1 expected goals. To put it bluntly, she had a very poor showing. While Dias’ signing was relatively low stakes for a player with only seven appearances for her country and who had been playing in the Russian league (i.e, not a very competitive one), the gamble has not paid off, and the Thorns’ offense is lacking as a result. That she plays in the No. 9 position exclusively forces the Thorns’ best player to play in a position that she is not as successful in, and means that the crosses and plays into the box that Smith does get off are oftentimes wasted by Dias. Against a team like Utah that has allowed 27 goals thus far, it was a reasonable gamble for Gale to take, but unfortunately, the team is paying for it.
The Thorns have one more game before they take an eight week break, and it’s against the incredibly lost San Diego Wave, who just fired their head coach. On paper, it’s a home game that the Thorns should win handily, but, if the Wave press high and are disciplined at the back, it could easily turn into another 90 minute slog. The Olympic break cannot come soon enough, and hopefully the pause will give the Bhathals a chance to finally make an announcement about which world-class coach will come in and take over, hopefully lifting the Thorns out of their holding pattern and back to the top of the table where they belong.
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