Category: Thorns
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It is December of 2002. The University of Portland women’s soccer team is in Austin, Texas, about to play Santa Clara for the NCAA championship. The Oregonian calls the team “more blue collar than showtime”; they’re known for their gritty defense, which has shut out every opponent so far, and their star striker, a sophomore out of Burnaby, British Columbia named Christine Sinclair, who has notched seven goals so far in the playoffs. They are a tight-knit group, punching well above their weight for a school of just over 3,000 students.
They have a rallying cry: win it for Clive. Their beloved coach, the 50-year-old Clive Charles, told the team he had cancer last spring. He’s getting treatment, but it’s a losing battle. In his thirteen seasons coaching the women, he’s come close to a championship several times, but never won, and his team knows this might be his last shot.
Here in Portland, a thousand or so students pile into the Chiles Center to watch the game on the big screen. UP students mingle with alumni and families; in one section, a pack of rowdy kids wearing only face paint and “kilts” (really a few yards of tartan fabric wrapped haphazardly around the waist) who call themselves the Villa Drum Squad pound drums and chant.
This is where women’s soccer as it exists in Portland today started to take shape. The scale is small, but you can catch a glimpse here of what Providence Park will look like 15 years in the future, just before a Thorns game kicks off—the drums, the tifos, the buzz in the air. At a school with no football team, in a city deeply unaccustomed to winning championships, Christine Sinclair is the biggest show in town.
This is the house that Clive built—without it, the Thorns wouldn’t be what they are—and in building it, he touched countless lives. Here’s how he did it, from the perspectives of three of those people.
1. Ganty
It is 1978, the Timbers’ fourth year in existence. Clive has just arrived in Portland. Soccer is still a novelty in the states, but the NASL is growing, with aging stars like Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer, and George Best drawing attention. Attendance for the Timbers has been respectable, with averages between 13,000 and 20,000 in their first three seasons.
The club bought Clive from Cardiff City, where he had captained the team to promotion to the second tier. Brian Gant, a midfielder for the Timbers from 1977–1982—who is also, not coincidentally, Christine Sinclair’s uncle—describes Clive as “ahead of his time” as a player, an attacking outside back before attacking outside backs were really a thing.
“The back four back in those days, it was all about take no prisoners,” Gant says. “You had these all these big, strong physical guys, but he was a flair player who had a great left foot, incredible. He used to always tell guys, ‘hey, guys, I could play a tune on the piano with this left foot.’”
But it’s Clive the teammate, not Clive the player, who would really make an impression. That spring, when he walked into the Timbers’ dressing room at Catlin Gabel for the first time, the gravity shifted in his direction. “I thought, wow, he’s a friendly sort of guy, he is,” remembers Gant. “He was just the most easygoing, funny, just charismatic guy you’d ever meet.”
By that time, a substantial contingent of Timbers players were calling Portland home year-round. The club had already brought on Gant, Clyde Best, Willie Anderson, and John Bain. “The league itself was starting to become a lot more professional. And, you know, players were starting to come here, and Portland had a great reputation of being a good soccer city. The fans took care of us… the Timbers Army was started back then. And it was well looked at throughout the league, as well, as a great little soccer town.”
The team started to cohere, with Clive at its center. “Clive was the type of guy that was always talking and wanting to do things,” says Gant, who paints a picture of that time as a kind of summer camp. Much of the team lived in the same area in Beaverton, and they started going to lunch together every day. At lunch, they’d make plans for the rest of the day—golf if it was nice or pool if it wasn’t, always competitive. “Pretty soon, you had this whole group of guys that were all of a sudden not just connected on the soccer field, but connected off the soccer field.”
Clive called everyone by a nickname. Gant, who is tall and lanky, was Spider Man or Spidey, and eventually just Ganty; Clive himself was Charlo or Chazzy or the Dean of Divot, on the golf course. “We all knew it wasn’t to make fun of the person. It was to make that person feel special. Like, ‘oh, I got I got this title!’” He had that effect on people, of making them feel special.
There was no spotlight for an NASL player. The crowds weren’t huge, and many fans didn’t really understand the game. But they were enthusiastic, in part because Clive and his teammates spent time selling the game of soccer to the community. Clive could make friends with anybody, and the team as a whole was accessible on a level that’s unthinkable today. There were signings at Fred Meyer; after games, the team would go to the bar at the Hilton or the Benson and someone would invite them to their kid’s birthday, and they would actually go. “We’d show up at a party and say hi to the kids, play soccer with the kids in the backyard,” says Gant. “And you know, get a free meal.”
A few years later, like so many American leagues, the NASL went under. Clive spent the last few years of his career playing indoor soccer, which he reportedly hated, bouncing from Pittsburgh to LA. Eventually he and his wife Clarena came back to Portland, drawn by the growing soccer community the Timbers had sown. Back home, players of Clive’s caliber were a dime a dozen—and for a Black man, the outlook was especially poor. “He said, ‘Ganty, if I go back to England, all retired soccer players, all they want to do is open up a pub.’” He didn’t want that. He wanted to build something.
2. Tiffeny
It is the early 1980s. Clive is putting flyers under windshield wipers at a strip mall in Gresham.
Clive was a product of the West Ham academy, and he had a vision for Portland: a development pipeline from the youth level up through college, a place for local kids to get real training and grow into world-class talents.
But first he had to find the kids. So he and his fellow coaches, including Gant, would xerox a stack of pamphlets advertising a weekend- or week-long camp and pass them out all over town. Before long, they were booked for a whole summer, and Clive had secured a sponsorship from Fred Meyer.
It was at one of those camps that a particular kid, seven or eight years old, caught Clive’s attention. Tiffeny Milbrett was the only girl on the field, and Clive was transfixed. “He said, ‘oh my god, this kid is something else,’” remembers Gant. Their meeting was to set into motion a chain of events that ends with the Thorns becoming the best-supported women’s club in the world.
At that time, high-level women’s soccer basically didn’t exist. It wasn’t an NCAA sport until 1982; the first World Cup wouldn’t happen until 1991. Clive had grown up in a country whose governing body refused to sanction women’s competitions. But he didn’t bat an eye to see a girl dominating her age level.
“[That’s the] biggest thing with him, because even in this day and age,” says Milbrett, “there’s still plenty of men who don’t want to respect women in general, let alone respect women playing sports… I mean, we didn’t even have names for it back then, and he truly was a human being that, literally across the board, he was going to give the same respect and attention.”
He quickly became not just Milbrett’s coach, but a mentor and a role model. “He adored that kid,” says Gant, “ not only as a soccer player but as a person.”
Milbrett calls Clive “the most important male influence in my life. Most people probably just thought he was my coach, but he really influenced me in a very strong way through the game.”
From a young age, she was independent and confident, both on and off the field. Growing up with a single mom who had to leave for work early every day, she was often responsible for herself. “I think I’m very independent because of how I grew up,” Milbrett says. “And Clive really was one of the first top-level coaches that, it was ok to be a very, very strong, independent, confident woman. He was never, ever afraid of strong women. Ever. And you have far too many men, even the ones that say that their coach is 100% to the women’s side—I’m sorry, I experienced too many men that even in the women’s game, they can’t handle strong women.”
Where many coaches use their authority like a cudgel and feel threatened by questions or dissent, Clive saw Milbrett’s independence as an asset and nurtured it, helping her grow into the fearless goalscorer she became. “Tiffeny was the vision,” says Gant. “Clive said, I want a team full of those… that’s why he said, ‘we’ve got to have FC Portland, we’ve got to have that. We’ve got to develop these kids.’”
By 1987, he’d scrapped the clinics and started FC Portland, where Milbrett trained through the end of high school. By that point, Clive had been coaching the University of Portland men for a few years, and it was largely because of a desire to keep coaching Milbrett that he agreed to take over the women’s program, too.
UP was a small school, and Clive relied on his personality and his reputation as a coach, rather than the reputation of his program, to draw players. Anson Dorrance, who had helped push the NCAA to recognize women’s soccer as a collegiate sport, was drawing the vast majority of the top talent to North Carolina. “When Clive was picking players,” Gant says, “The first thing he did, he says, ‘I got to have quality character.’… so many of the girls that played for Clive that made the program so special were hard-working players. They’re good, honest citizens, good, honest students. They weren’t necessarily the best players throughout the country.”
Of course, there were exceptions, genuine world-class talents who came through UP. Milbrett was one; Shannon MacMillan, who Milbrett overlapped with, was another. Then there’s the GOAT herself.
3: Sinc
It is 2001. Christine Sinclair has just started at UP.
It wasn’t a coincidence that Sinc ended up in Portland. Clive had been a presence in her life before she was born. “My parents used to actually rent a house from him and Clarena up in Canada,” she told me a few years ago (Clarena is Canadian, and the couple had considered moving to Vancouver after Clive’s playing career). Clive didn’t just build women’s soccer in Portland, he built its most important player, kind of literally.
Sinc choosing UP was the natural outcome, but not just because her family knew Clive. As a shy 18-year-old, she needed a nurturing environment like his program. “I think I would have gotten lost in some of those bigger schools,” she said when she signed with the Thorns.
“She came here for the way [he mentored] people,” says Gant, “and because Sinc’s a pretty quiet kid, for the most part. She’s pretty quiet. And she was like that growing up.”
Sinc would probably have become a legend wherever she’d gone to college, but it’s less clear she would have become the kind of legend she is—the respected leader, the consummate teammate—without Clive’s influence. Clive was gregarious and charming where Sinc is quiet and thoughtful, but if you’ve heard Sinc’s teammates talk about her, listening to people who were close to Clive talk about him sounds familiar.
“It’s full and complete and total trust,” Milbrett says of him as a coach, “because first and foremost, he was just an outstanding human being to you. And that’s how you build up a player, that’s how you build up a person—building that kind of relationship through trust.”
Sinc could have gone to any school in the country. By her 18th birthday, she had already scored 21 goals for Canada, and she’d gotten a stack of scholarship offers. But she didn’t want to go to the most successful program; she wanted the coach who cared about her. “He was the only coach I talked to who was actually interested in me as a person,” she wrote in 2012. “For people who have ever been recruited, this is very unique.”
Clive would rib Sinc about her shyness, and soon she’d start teasing him back. As they got to know each other, she started to come out of her shell and speak up, where she’d usually stayed on the fringe when she was younger. “She toughened up a lot, coming to college,” Gant remembers. “You know, she learned to respect her voice. And she learned to communicate with teammates and coaches, and it really changed who she was as a person, I think.”
The Pilots went 16–3 Sinc’s freshman season and were eliminated in the College Cup semifinal by North Carolina. Sinc notched 23 goals, eight of them game winners. That spring, Clive called together “the Pilot soccer family, current and past players,” as Sinc wrote, and gave them the news: he’d been battling a rare form of prostate cancer for two years, after being diagnosed while coaching the US men at the 2000 Olympics. He intended to keep coaching, but nobody knew how much time he had left.
2002
The Pilots faithful, a few hundred strong in purple and white, greeted the team at the airport. They’d brought their drums along and chanted so loud the TSA agents couldn’t hear the metal detectors.
The team had been victorious in Austin; after they’d gone down 0–1 early in the second half, Sinc had leveled the score in the 61st minute, then scored the sudden-death game winner in overtime. Several players described a feeling that divine intervention was at work during the tournament. Clive said the win was “like a ten-ton weight has been lifted off me” and vowed not to let the trophy out of his sight. Supposedly he slept with it next to him that night.
Clive passed away in August of 2003. That championship win was the last game he ever coached. His players kept his memory alive, and the Pilots won another in 2005.
The kids and families and queer women who cheered the team on from the Chiles Center, many of them, would go on to form the Rose City Riveters. They’d learned how to love soccer at UP, and they helped show the world what support for a women’s club could look like.
Clive left an impression on everyone he ever met, and changed the lives of countless people he never did meet. His legacy goes way beyond this story. But it’s hard to overstate what he did for women’s soccer. The Riveters wouldn’t be what they are without UP, the Thorns wouldn’t be what they are without the Riveters, and the NWSL wouldn’t be what it is without the Thorns. None of it would have happened without Clive.
Sinc, of course, went on to become a giant in the game, planted firmly in Portland since her college days. Her dog is named Charlie in Clive’s honor.
After retiring in 2011, Milbrett started coaching, a career that took her to Colorado and Florida. Now she’s back on the Bluff, coaching on a part-time basis.
Gant stayed on at FC Portland, where he still works today. When he ponders where Clive might have been now, he suspects he would have moved on from coaching and taken an administrative job in the game. It’s easy to imagine him as the Thorns GM, or a league commissioner.
“He loved coaching,” says Gant. “But it was about the game, too. It was about, how far can we take this game? And I remember when he was coaching the [2000] Olympic team, he felt bad because it was time away from his UP kids and time away from Portland and Clarena and all that. But he says ‘Ganty, the game—it’s a global game now. It’s everywhere. It’s unbelievable.’ And you know, he’d just been diagnosed with cancer and everything. And it got emotional at times, because when he started talking about it, he sort of said, ‘and I might miss it.’”
The NWSL held its first-ever virtual college draft last Wednesday evening. Like so much of modern life, it was confusing and tiring. For one thing, constant time-outs made it an excruciatingly slow-moving event, with the first round taking almost a full two hours to wrap up. More importantly, the whole thing was shrouded in uncertainty after the pandemic forced the league and the NCAA to hammer out some new rules.
First, seniors taken in the draft are allowed to choose whether to play in the NCAA’s upcoming spring season and report to their NWSL teams afterward, or forgo their final year of eligibility and go straight to the pros. Second, all NCAA seniors were eligible for selection in the draft, whether they declared for it or not.
While that uncertainty loomed large, and in some cases may have forced teams to rethink their plans, Mark Parsons said during the draft that it didn’t significantly impact the Thorns’ preparations. “We’d done more homework than we ever have” leading into the draft, he said. “We had done that homework because we felt we could improve on last year—there was one or two players we missed [in last year’s draft class].” The coaching staff put together profiles of 100 players and spoke to 67 ahead of the draft, assisted by college coaches who helped the club gauge whether players would be a good fit for Portland, on and off the field. After all that legwork, the rule change was almost incidental.
Unlike last year’s draft where the Thorns nabbed Sophia Smith, the team didn’t make any splashy big-name signings who will significantly change the team. Still, they did take the rights to four high-quality players who will provide depth in areas the Thorns need it, especially with the Olympics looming this summer.
There was, however, some behind-the-scenes drama when it came to Portland’s first pick, Yazmeen Ryan, who they took sixth in the first round. The Thorns went into the draft with the seventh overall pick, but after Racing Louisville selected Emma Ekic with the fifth pick, there was a long time-out, which ended with the announcement that the Chicago Red Stars had traded their number six pick to Portland in exchange for Portland’s seventh and 32nd picks and a 2021 international slot.
Parsons later explained that Portland had tried to trade up for the fourth overall pick in order to take Ryan, the Thorns’ top target, early on. However, it didn’t pan out because Kansas City offered Sky Blue $175,000 in allocation money for the same spot. “And then it was panic time,” Parsons said.
Although they knew Chicago wasn’t planning to take Ryan, the Thorns were concerned Rory Dames might trade that pick to a team who was interested in her. “We assured [Dames] the player he wants would be available, we just can’t have you trading to anywhere else and lose the opportunity to bring Yazmeen to Portland,” explained Parsons.
They were intent on Ryan for good reason, as she’s a player Parsons believes could contribute to the Thorns right now. She’s an attacking midfielder who looks both to score with late runs into the box and to feed her teammates with well-timed through balls. She could be a real asset in that role during the summer Olympics, when Portland will lose Christine Sinclair, Crystal Dunn, Lindsey Horan, and likely Sophia Smith. Ryan has also taken penalties and set pieces for TCU.
Portland’s next selection, Sam Coffey, is a midfielder out of Penn State who’s comfortable in a box-to-box role. She’s good both on and off the ball, has excellent vision, and can dictate the course of a game. “I think Sam Coffey could play for us right now,” said Parsons, “but she could also keep growing, keep improving.”
Amirah Ali, who Portland took 22nd overall, looks like a somewhat longer-term prospect. She’s a forward who, in Parsons’s words, “receives the ball under pressure back to goal, can twist and turn, can run at people, can finish. She can impact now,” he continues, “but I do think there’s going to be a journey for her […] her character is key. I feel she can come in and learn from some of the best players in the world around her, and I think she can learn from this coaching staff.”
Finally, Hannah Betfort is a converted forward from Wake Forest who’s played at both outside back and center back. She’s a leader on her college squad, serving as captain since 2019. She has strong passing and tackling numbers and also contributes offensively—notably tallying seven assists since moving to defense. Betfort, too, looks like a longer-term prospect, as Portland’s defense is already piled high.
With this year’s eligibility extension, how many of these players will report straight to preseason, and how many will want to play their senior college season in the spring? Players don’t have to announce their decision until the 22nd, so at this point, we don’t know. However, Parsons did tell the media that not all the draftees will be in Portland for the start of preseason. In particular, he hinted that Coffey wants to play her last college season, saying she’d been “terrorizing everyone” this fall and “she’ll want to do that in the NCAA tournament as well, fingers crossed.”
The bottom line, though, is this: “We know what their current plans are before we pick them, and we’ll respect that and wait for that phone call.”
So where does this leave the Thorns’ roster, and how will they line up? Trying to guess is a fool’s errand (read: I’m bad at it), but here are two possibilities we think are plausible. The first option is to keep the diamond and use Dunn and Smith up top. If Sinc isn’t available, either Dunn or Ryan could slot in at the No. 10.
Another possibility, given Portland’s stack of defenders, is something like the 5-3-2 the Thorns used for most of 2017.
Ever since Natalia Kuikka, the 24-year-old Finnish defender who signed with the Thorns this offseason, graduated from Florida State at the end of 2018, she’s had a return to the US on her mind. After wrapping up a two-year contract with Göteborg—and winning the league in the 2020 season—the timing was right, both for her and the Thorns. She was ready for a new challenge, while Portland needs to bolster an aging back line after losing two starters in the last year.
Kuikka’s career has taken an unusual trajectory in several senses. First, rather than go pro—something many Americans think of as the obvious choice for talented young Europeans—she opted to go to Tallahassee to play for Mark Krikorian’s Seminoles and earn a degree. Once that chapter closed (ending with an NCAA championship), she made another surprising choice and opted out of the 2019 NWSL College Draft, despite being a top prospect.
Both choices have worked out. Contrary to the belief, now orthodoxy in some American soccer circles, that professional clubs are always a better development pipeline than college, Kuikka’s experience at FSU shaped her in important ways, both as a player and as a person.
When asked about what she learned in the States, it’s the latter that comes to mind first. “I grew a lot when I was there,” she said via Zoom. “I learned things about myself…I always knew that football and soccer is what I want to do, but then being in college, I figured out that there’s another part of me that’s not an athlete, and there’s other things I like to do.”
Being in the US and balancing soccer with school gave her opportunities players don’t get on a grueling European club schedule. “I started exploring and had a little bit more time to do traveling and seeing the world,” she says. “I think that it gave me more motivation to learn and experience, and see things in not just my perspective, but learning from others, and putting myself in others’ shoes…There’s so many different cultures and things to experience in the USA.”
Meanwhile, Krikorian’s impact on her development as a player was enormous. After recruiting her as a winger and playing her there during her freshman season, he decided to see how she’d do in central defense. “I don’t even know how it came to be,” she says. “I remember being called to Mark’s office, and he said something like, ‘We’re going to try to do some new things, and you might not play in your normal position, but don’t worry.’ I’m like, okay, whatever. It’s spring. And then we had a practice game against Boston Breakers at the time, and he [played me] as a center back, and after that, he just kept putting me there.”
As far as what qualities of Kuikka’s gave Krikorian this idea, she laughs and says “I don’t know!” She wasn’t totally new to defending—she was already playing left back for Finland—but she was very much an attacker, notching six goals and five assists in her freshman season.
If converting forwards into defenders is another American cliché, it’s also a move we typically associate with outside back, a position that requires speed, offensive aptitude, and a willingness to make lung-busting runs up and down the wing, on top of defensive chops. There’s quite a bit of overlap, in other words, with the role of a winger—something that’s much less true of central defense. But Kuikka stepped up to the challenge. “[Mark Krikorian] started talking about leadership and stepping up for the teammates and all this, and I couldn’t really say no,” she says.
As counterintuitive as the switch sounds, Kuikka’s experience playing higher up the field is evident watching her on the back line. She’s a gritty defender in one-on-one situations, but she’s also supremely calm and confident on the ball. She isn’t fazed by onrushing forwards and is rarely pressured into clearances. On top of that, she has excellent passing range, and it’s clear that even at center back, she still thinks of the game in offensive terms. Although she enjoys defending, she says, “I do like being involved in the game—opening the game and kind of being in control—I like that. So I think [Krikorian] kind of saw that as well.”
“I think playing as a winger and in a more attacking role, and now playing in defense,” she adds, “I know what kind of movements the wingers and attackers would do, and what I would do in that position, so it’s maybe giving me a little bit—I’ll be [more] prepared with those things as well.”
As to where she slots in in Portland, Kuikka says she’s had conversations with Mark Parsons, but there won’t be any final decisions until she joins the team. Portland doesn’t want for quality center backs in Sauerbrunn and Emily Menges, but in the short term, Kuikka adds crucial depth there, and would be a great option if the Thorns ever trot out the back three again. She’s also not likely to start over Kling at left back, but given that she’s naturally right-footed, it’s easy to imagine her becoming the first choice at right back. It’s also not impossible to see her at the No. 6, though that’s a position the Thorns are quite deep at.
Talking to Kuikka, another reason she caught Parsons’s interest quickly becomes obvious: She has the team-first attitude he praises in the team’s leaders and talks about working year after year to cultivate. She’s also a proven quantity as a leader, having captained the Seminoles during her junior and senior seasons. She comes across as thoughtful and understated, always bringing the focus back to contributing to the team.
“I’ll do whatever for the team, and what’s best for the team,” she says, referring to her positional switch. “If [what’s] best for the team is me playing as a center back, I took that challenge, and focused on the next summer, playing as a center back in the summer leagues and making sure I can be the best center back for my team that I can be.”
As far as opting out of the draft, in addition to giving Kuikka a chance to be closer to family and to the Finnish national team, which had just hired a new coach at the time, it also gave her a control over her fate most draftees don’t get. She was able to choose to sign with Göteborg, and then, a few years later, to choose Portland. “I just kind of wanted to have something familiar and safe,” she says—she spent a summer in the Pacific Northwest in college, playing for Seattle Sounders Women, and still has ties in the area—”yet something new.”
The philosophy of the Thorns coaching staff appealed to her, too. “The player approach was what I was looking for,” she says. “The way Mark wants to develop the players and wants the best for the players.” Unsurprisingly, the fans were also a factor: “I’ve always wanted to play in a big crowd, so that was a big thing for me.”
“I think at the end for me, it was a pretty easy choice to go for Portland.”
I think deep down I knew as soon as Tobin Heath announced she wouldn’t be playing in the Challenge Cup that she was never coming back. It just felt that way.
Like the rest of you, I spent a few weeks preparing for the expansion draft. I had mapped out what was likely, what I would have done if I was in charge, what I thought was unlikely but possible. I steeled myself hardest against the likeliest outcome, thinking, we’ll miss those players, we’ll empathize with the disruption this causes in their lives, but at least they’ll get a well-deserved chance to start for a team that they will make better.
Then the unlikely thing happened instead. I was surprised by how much it stung.
Five years ago, I started writing about the Thorns because I really, really liked them. I still do. But as you get pulled slowly but surely out of the “fan” column and into the “media” column, things change. You gain some detachment. Everything feels less life-or-death. You start thinking of things in terms of individual actors making the best decisions they can, rather than your team versus other teams and good versus bad.
So the media part of me wants to start by saying that it’s probably wrong to think of this as something the Thorns did to Tobin Heath. Under the rules of the draft, their protected list made sense. They protected the two most important allocated players who aren’t currently on loan abroad, and Louisville took a really big gamble that no one expected them to take. I also don’t know, but I hope, that this isn’t the end of the world for Tobin, and that whatever happens next is a net positive in her life.
I’m not sure I would have had those thoughts five years ago. The thought I would have had, and still do have, is that I am sad anyway, and all the context in the world doesn’t change that. Tobin Heath occupies a unique slot in my brain: she was my first favorite Thorn.
I have read that music you first hear when you’re young sticks with you more strongly than music you encounter later, because your brain is still forming. Your neural circuitry somehow physically molds itself around those sounds and the experiences that go along with them. You lose that ability once you hit age 25 or so. To this day, I find Tobin uniquely thrilling to watch, the same way hearing “Once in a Lifetime” makes me feel like a teenager again.
When I first started watching the Thorns, I didn’t know very much about soccer. Tobin stood out because she’s so clearly different from anyone else. She’s built different and she moves different, all jagged angles and splayed limbs, awkward and graceful at once. She catches your eye just by how she moves on the ball, and then she does something like rainbow a defender, and that pretty much seals it. You have to be awfully humorless not to find a little bit of joy in that.
The first Thorns game I watched from the press box was their 2016 home opener, which was the Orlando Pride’s debut as a club, and it felt very big and laden with symbolism in a way I’m not sure I could register anymore. It was a break in the life of both the club and the league: Mark Parsons’s first game as head coach, the first-ever fourth season of women’s professional soccer in America. Alex Morgan’s departure that offseason had felt like the club growing up. Hard as it is to fathom now, there were people who questioned whether the Thorns would maintain their popularity without Morgan’s talismanic star power. Morgan and Heath clasped hands before the game, each now the face of a different club, and you could feel that Heath had always belonged here in a way Morgan never did.
And she owned that game. Before that season, she’d played relatively few minutes for Portland, thanks to injury and international duty. That first game of 2016 was like an announcement that she was really here for the club, and she was going to do things nobody else could do. I remember few details from the game, but one improbable trick of physics sticks in my head, where she flicked the ball into the air and somehow guided it right, then left, in a midair elastico, and the wildest part was that this worked and she beat her defender.
After the game, she walked into the presser with the captain’s armband hanging off her sleeve by one strip of velcro and talked about wanting to give everything to this club. She grinned that big Tobin Heath grin, giddy with excitement like an overgrown kid. Parsons said, “we’ve got fucking Tobin Heath.” I felt giddy too.
What Parsons said quickly became a meme, but it did mean something real: he saw that this wasn’t just another good player, but one who deserved to have an offense built around her. With her on the team, the only logical thing to do was get the ball to her as much as possible.
And yet, that never quite happened. It’s a little ironic that Tobin’s best season in Portland, in 2018, was one that also saw Lindsey Horan ascend to godhood, and ended with Jessica McDonald tearing off her jersey in Providence Park to reveal an undershirt reading “JESUS PAID THE PRICE”. Her second best season, in 2016, had ended similarly, against the Flash. The year they beat the Courage, the offensive scheme Parsons had built around her had to be scrapped midseason due to a nagging injury, and she played just four games before the playoffs.
There was often this almost-ness around her presence on the team: she’s almost healthy enough to play, the Thorns have almost hit their stride, but just wait until Tobin gets back from the Olympics. She never quite became the face of the team; there were just too many other faces in town.
Still, it feels wrong to imagine her not being here. There aren’t too many other stars in this league who’ve been with the same club for so long, who seem to really like their clubs as much as she did. It’s a cruel twist that her time in Portland ends without her in Portland at all, in a year where no fans even set foot in Providence Park.
It’s also a bookend for me. I’m turning 30 in a few days, so the timing here is a little on the nose. Heath was the first soccer player I ever interviewed, a few weeks after that 2016 opener, for a short sidebar in Portland Monthly. I had no idea what I was doing, but she was gracious and thoughtful and it made me feel capable. I’ve long wanted to do a big, in-depth feature on her, but time marched on and I never quite got around to it.
The Thorns have announced the signing of Finnish international Natalia Kuikka. Kuikka is a defender out of Florida State who captained the Seminoles when they won the 2018 NCAA championship. She was projected as a potential top-five pick in the 2019 college draft, but opted out to sign with Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC in the Swedish Damallsvenskan, where she’s currently in her second season.
This signing likely means the Thorns are expecting to lose defenders in the offseason, whether to the expansion draft or elsewhere. Before the Fall Series, Mark Parsons hinted at doubts around Katherine Reynolds’s future, saying she planned to reevaluate her options going forward after suffering a concussion in the quarterfinal of the Challenge Cup. At age 33 and having dealt with a string of injuries in recent years, it doesn’t seem unlikely that retirement is among those options.
Kuikka has played as a center back both in Sweden and for FSU, but she started her college career as a winger. Thus, it’s plausible that Portland may be bringing her in as an option at outside back as well, a position they’re currently thinner at than they are in central defense.
Regardless of who ends up staying or leaving during this offseason, this also looks like a smart longer-term move for the Thorns, who have several defenders in their 30s, including not just Reynolds but Becky Sauerbrunn and Meghan Klingenberg. Kuikka is a smart, physically strong defender who stood out at FSU for her confidence on the ball and ability to play out of the back in coach Mark Krikorian’s possession-oriented system.
Unless you’ve had your head under a rock for the last six hours, you’ve likely heard the news: Crystal Dunn is a Thorn.
It’s not poppycock this time—thanks to OL Reign taking one for the team(s) and “facilitating” the trade. The 2019 World Cup Champion, two-time NWSL Champion, NWSL golden boot winner and MVP of the 2015 season’s move to Portland (finally) extends beyond the offseason.
In exchange, the Thorns sent the Reign $150,000, a 2021 international slot, and Portland’s natural first-round pick in the 2022 college draft. Here are a few of our takeaways about the big news:
[incoherent screaming]
With multiple expansion drafts on the horizon and no clear answer to whether soccer in the traditional sense will even be possible in 2021, the Thorns’ future—like that of many teams in this league—is uncertain (more on that in a minute). What looks pretty watertight at this juncture is that Portland’s midfield is going to involve all of Lindsey Horan, Crystal Dunn, and Christine Sinclair.
Those players aren’t going anywhere, which is, uh, crazy? It feels like cheating. Then again, when Dunn went to North Carolina, that also felt like cheating—so maybe what it boils down to is that having Crystal Dunn is cheating.
Dunn is one of the few players in the world who can genuinely bend a game to her will. She can score practically at will and is equally dangerous at both dribbling and passing. She’s a defensive threat, too. It’s hard to overstate how huge an acquisition she is for the Thorns, especially when you start to think about her connecting with oh, say, Sophia Smith.
What does this mean for the expansion draft?
This looks like a superteam for now, but not so fast. Three expansion drafts are looming in the next two years, with one—for Racing Louisville—happening in less than a month. Don’t expect this to be the last move Portland makes this offseason.
Assuming the rules are the same as they were in 2015, the Thorns will be able to protect nine players, including two USWNT-subsidized players. As things stand, the two protected subsidized players have to be Dunn and Horan. We’d already expected them to lose at least one keeper, likely AD Franch, but now she, Heath, and Sauerbrunn will all be on the chopping block. (Sophia Smith is blissfully saved by the fact that USWNT allocations won’t be announced until after the expansion draft.) Sauerbrunn probably doesn’t get taken—she’s 35 and has made it clear she wants to settle down in Portland. We think she tells any interested team she’ll retire rather than report.
Heath? Harder to say. She also owns a home here and clearly likes playing for the Thorns. She also holds the same leverage as any elite player in this league: she can always decide to extend her time in Manchester rather than move to Louisville or Sacramento. However: it’s not hard to imagine, say, Louisville picking up her rights, her deciding to stay in England for 2021, and then forcing a trade to LA for 2022.
Of course, that’s assuming the Thorns can scam them into taking the rights of someone who probably doesn’t plan on playing for them, but the Thorns have a pretty solid track record when it comes to taking advantage of other teams (see: The Alex Morgan Trade). That’s also assuming Angel City wants Heath on their side, but it’s hard to imagine a team saying no to her if she asks.
The No. 10 problem, solved
We’ve all been dreading/denying the inevitable: that one day, sure as the cruel sea beats cliffs into sand, Christine Sinclair will have to retire. That she’s had an almost unbelievably long and consistent career doesn’t change how problematic this is for the Thorns in the long term.
A situation that we think epitomizes this pretty well was last year, when the Thorns tried three different players at the No. 10 while Sinclair was away for the World Cup. Dagný Brynjarsdóttir, Ana Crnogorčević, and Andressinha—may she be free forevermore—are all good players, but the team’s reliance on an all-time great in that position showed in her absence.
Dunn is the answer to that, positionally at least. As far as Sinclair’s importance to the locker room, there’s of course no real replacement, but Mark Parsons seems to think Dunn has some of the same qualities as a leader, too. “She has such a contagious energy about her that just wants to make you be better when you’re around her,” he said in an interview released by the team today. “But what she doesn’t get praise enough for is her leadership, and the way that she leads. By example, and by being positive, and by being driven. She’s had a lot of success, and it’s not by luck.”
So, there have been four soccer games, and the Thorns won three quarters of them, which puts them ahead of the Houston Dash to win the Verizon Community Shield in the NWSL Fall Series.
That doesn’t mean a third star—it wasn’t a real season, after all—but it sounds like Portland has other ideas. “We were joking maybe we could get a little ghost, or maybe a mask to put on our jerseys,” Christine Sinclair said tonight, “but we’ll figure that out in the offseason.”
The thorns did, however, win a $25,000 grant
Even with the notable lack of a star, the winners of the Shield aren’t leaving Cheney Stadium empty-handed. The 2–1 victory secured them the first place prize for the fall season: a $25,000 grant to a local business. For the Thorns, that’s Mimi’s Fresh Tees, a “woman owned social justice t-shirt company,” according to the company’s Instagram.
The Thorns wore Mimi’s Tees to their home game on September 30—what would turn into a 4–1 win over OL Reign.
http://www.instagram.com/p/CFyBDs-jXrA/
“It’s great to have something to play for,” said Becky Sauerbrunn after tonight’s match. “As a team we’ve really dug deep into, okay, how can we help, especially our community […] To be able to give an independent business in Portland this amount of money, we’re really proud, and we’re really happy that we get to contribute to the community.”
The game itself? Not particularly fun soccer
While that’s wonderful to see, I have to say I’m not sure I took all that much from the game from a soccer perspective. OL Reign came out of the gate strong, with the likes of Bethany Balcer and Jasmyne Spencer putting Portland’s defense under a decent amount of pressure. As Sauerbrunn pointed out, though, the Thorns did a fantastic job of defending as a team and were able to both weather the storm and steal a penalty kick goal to give them the lead before halftime.
Tacoma lost their edge after the first half hour of the match, although they did sneak one past the Thorns’ defense off a 46th-minute free kick. And then there was another buried penalty that allowed Portland to regain their lead.
But besides the goals and the Thorns absorbing that initial run of Reign offense, I can’t say it was a particularly fun match. Tacoma decided to play a tightly-marked game and tackle hard when Portland had the ball, and the Thorns, for their part, weren’t able to play out of that pressure for longer than a few passes.
Yeah, maybe Portland being a little sharper on the attack could’ve earned them a few points—they looked marginally better than they did on three day’s rest at Utah last weekend. And maybe they would have beat Casey Murphy, who was playing incredibly high off her line, if that had been the case. But they didn’t, and the match was a tricky one as a result, with the exception of a few plays.
So… Amber Brooks?
The thing about Amber Brooks is that silly—some might say bad—defending isn’t anything new for her. Nine times out of ten, though, that manifests itself in getting caught too far up the field (something that isn’t super ideal for a center back), or ball-watching as her mark makes a relatively unimpeded run to the goal.
Rarely does it mean that she’s involved in all three of a game’s goals, fouling two different Thorns in the box to create Portland’s penalties and directing a weirdly-deflected ball on frame for OL Reign’s lone goal of the night.
And while we’re here: christine sinclair
Obviously I want to contextualize it with the fact that three of them were penalties, but Christine Sinclair scored six goals in the last three games at the age of 37, and I feel like we should talk about that.
She’s also very clearly living her best life right now, which she deserves:
The visiting locker room in Tacoma seems like the place to be tonight. 🥂 #BAONPDX pic.twitter.com/oQjjNcoKiP
— Portland Thorns FC (@ThornsFC) October 11, 2020
Seattle-based photographer and Rose City Review contributor Nikita Taparia has something in common with Thorns midfielder Gabby Seiler: they’re both huge tennis fans. Taparia sat down (via Zoom) with Seiler for a wide-ranging conversation touching on female athletes, tennis fashion, and the similarities between the two sports. The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity; the full audio is available on our Patreon for $10 subscribers.
Nikita Taparia: What is your tennis origin story? Like, how did you become a fan, and at this point, how hardcore do you think you are?
Gabby Seiler: So, it actually started with my boyfriend. He played tennis at Florida, and I met him at Florida, and I remember going to my first tennis match and being like, what the hell is going on? I knew absolutely nothing, and I never watched tennis growing up. So I went to my boyfriend’s, McClain’s, tennis match at Florida, and I was just like flabbergasted, like I was obsessed. I would go to his tennis tournaments or his matches. I just started to love it, and then I started watching majors.
NT: Do you have a favorite player that you absolutely love watching?
GS: So since I started playing tennis, I think the player that I would like to play like is probably someone who mimics me too, kind of on the soccer field, is [Angie] Kerber.
NT: Ooh, yes!
GS: We have similar body types, and I feel like she’s super powerful, muscular, and she’s super quick, agile, athletic, can kind of cover all the bases on the court. Obviously, I love Serena. I mean, how can you not? She’s an absolute legend and I mean, she’s amazing. Those two are probably my favorite players. Obviously, Osaka is really talented and so fun to watch, and she’s amazing. I feel like there’s just a lot of women that I just love to watch.
NT: I’m right there with you. So of those players and of women’s tennis, if you could take one attribute from them, like strength, or flexibility, or mentality, or endurance, or whatever, and use it towards soccer, what would it be?
GS: Honestly, so I never was the biggest fan of Azarenka—like she’s amazing, but I didn’t really know her that well since I’m new to tennis—so once I knew her background, and hearing her story, I think she has a really cool story. I really like her energy. I think she has this mentality about her, and like, nothing really phases her and she stays really composed. I said that to McClain, and he said, Gabby, you haven’t seen her in previous matches.
NT: Yeah, I feel like there definitely has been an evolution in her game.
GS: And one thing I really like is how calm Osaka is, like even in the final, I was really amazed with her composure, and I think with soccer you need that. And I think, for me, I have a lot of energy, but I think adding that composure and just being able to settle things down, or just like not let things affect you, is really amazing and kind of compartmentalized.
NT: Yeah, we saw that on the women’s side for the US Open, where it was first Vika who was coming back after that first set [against Serena], and then we saw Naomi do literally the same scoreline to Vika, but it was this idea that, I think she literally said, I didn’t want to lose this way. It was like a switch that turned on all of a sudden.
GS: Yeah, and I think that’s so cool, and I really appreciate that. What was cool about Vika is that she went straight to play the next tournament like nothing [happened], and she was absolutely crushing it. I think that’s so cool!
I think I have grown to like her and kind of root for her, just from hearing her story. And I think whenever you hear someone’s background and story, it kind of changes, too. I think that’s the cool thing about tennis in the sense of, it’s not a team sport, so everyone has this really unique story.
NT: You are hitting it right on the nail. I feel like in the beginning, I was pretty equal in my watching of men’s and women’s tennis, but over the years, I have very much gravitated towards women’s tennis because I just love the way all of them play. They all have their different styles, strategies, and whatnot. And I mean, that’s not to say that the men’s side doesn’t have that, but—I don’t know, I just haven’t had as much inspiration.
GS: Yeah, I agree with you, and I think we can kind of relate to them a little bit more. I just have so much respect for them. I have respect, you know, for the fact that they get paid the same and things like that. I just think that’s cool for the women who did that before them, so that they have what they have now. I think for me too, I just relate to their stories, like you said. Not that I don’t really like the men’s—I just feel more connected to it.
And you know, sorry, but females also have babies! So I have a lot of respect for people like Serena, and girls who are moms, and Vika. I think that’s so cool, and I can’t even imagine what’s that like, but even for soccer players who do that, that is actually amazing. And those women are superheroes.
NT: Absolutely. I feel like we’ve been gravitating towards this: on the women’s side of the game, what lessons do you think NWSL can learn from tennis?
GS: Ooh, that’s a good question! I think that something we can learn from tennis is obviously what Billie Jean King did—she took a huge risk, and that’s definitely not easy, and she kept pushing for more and pushing for more. I think like we as women shouldn’t have to do that, but I think we keep having to do the same, whether that’s us supporting the WNBA, or whether that’s the WNBA supporting NWSL.
I just think we have a unique opportunity as females and as athletes to use our platform, and I think even like, what Osaka did in the US Open, I think that’s something we can all continue to learn from. I think that NWSL’s definitely getting there. I know at least on our team, we’re having those conversations and we’re trying to push for more. But I think there’s always room for improvement.
And then secondly, I think we as players, the thing I love about tennis is I feel like all those women are so unique and they use their strengths, and I think sometimes when you’re on a team you can become a little bit monotonous, or kind of be a robot. I think we all have unique abilities, and I think the more that we can bring that to the women’s game and show those unique qualities in games, it’ll make the women’s game more fun.
NT: Yeah, for me that’s a number one thing, and it’s interesting because I think on my side, as a photographer, I start to kind of pick up on habits of players while they’re playing. Like I was having this discussion earlier about how I’ve noticed how players run.
GS: Oh, yeah, I believe it!
NT: Literally how they run. And in terms of, because I photograph it so often, and I edit it so often that I’ve picked up on how they run and when they’ll run where. And I think, again, that uniqueness does come out, but, yeah, I’m all for everybody doing whatever trick shots you want to do, any tricks you want to pull off!
GS: Yes, it’s true! No, I think one thing that I know like, our coaches try to—they want you to do, obviously, what’s best for the team, but we obviously are all here for a unique reason and we all have different strengths, and I think like, you want to try to bring those out too within the team environment. Even today when we were watching the Reign game, when Sofia Huerta let it go through her legs for Bethany [Balcer]. I think the more we can do things like that—because the women’s game is really fun to watch, and I think people don’t realize that, because, one, it’s not on TV, but. I think the more we can do that, the better, and the more people will want to watch.
NT: One aspect that I often think about as a tennis fan, and it’s part of football culture as well, is fashion is a big thing. I’m wondering, are there any particular tennis looks that you’ve started to notice and that you’ve liked?
GS: Yeah! I, one, fell in love with tennis because of my boyfriend, but then, the outfits are really what drew me in. Because I love the cute tennis skirt, the cute tennis dress. You know, there’s been some unique ones. The US Open ones, I didn’t particularly love them this year. I think you have to find a balance, but I’m also not into, I know it’s been a tradition and I think it’s kind of cool, but—
NT: The white?
GS: Yes. The whole white thing. I don’t know, I personally like the uniqueness too. But I’m trying to think—I don’t know how you feel about Sharapova, but I do kind of like her outfits. I actually really liked Serena’s US Open outfit. But I think I definitely like the dresses. I wore one once for tennis and it’s so comfortable and so great. But I think the cool thing about tennis is they’re all unique and all different, and you can kind of show your fashion sense through whatever brand you’re wearing.
I love team sports, but I love the individuality within tennis, you know? Obviously there’s a lot of pros to team sports, too, like I have a million best friends.
NT: I also think individuality, we see this in the WNBA, where they’ll have different shoes on, and a lot of it is because they want to share a message with the world. So I feel like there is room where you can have players bring out whatever it is. I forget who it was, but there was actually a tennis player that, if I remember, was wearing rainbow laces, and I thought that was a pretty cool thing, because when it comes to tennis I don’t normally see a lot of outspokenness.
GS: Activism, yeah. It’s very true.
NT: So even the gesture of wearing rainbow laces, I appreciated.
GS: Yeah, I agree with that, and you don’t see that as much within tennis. I think that’s why it’s cool what Naomi Osaka did. I think she’s kind of been the leader in that and I think that’s been really cool, and it’s been unique to tennis. Some of the announcers during the tennis were kind of killing me, but—you know, she started a conversation and I think that’s the first step sometimes. But I love that the WNBA and NBA—I love the shoes! I think that is so cool, and I know like Adidas did, they had a Black Lives Matter cleat, but it wasn’t so much a unique—like it would be cool having your own message. That would be really neat. I feel like we’ll start to see that more, though.
NT: Yeah, I think it will grow as the women’s game grows, you’ll see more unique kits, you’ll see more individuality.
GS: Yeah, I love our kits.
NT: I can’t wait to photograph it.
GS: They’re really, really amazing. The detailing’s really amazing. I’m like, blown away. I can’t wait for you to photograph them.
NT: From afar, but it’ll happen. So, you mention you’ve played tennis, and I’m wondering, is there anyone else on the Thorns that have played tennis? Have you played tennis with them?
GS: Yes, so we’ve given—a lot of my teammates are very interested. Emily Menges is very interested. She wants to get some lessons. But actually, McClain’s given Britt a few lessons, and she’s actually, like, really good. She’s just super athletic, and she’s amazing, so it’s not shocking. But it was funny because McClain served to her a few times, like actually served to her, and she was like, “oh my GOSH!” She couldn’t believe how fast it was! I think it’s cool when us as soccer athletes can appreciate other sports. I even think after that lesson, she had a new fascination for [tennis].
I played a little tennis when I was coming back from my ACL, and it kind of helped me get my cutting back. I didn’t do anything super reactive, but just kind of getting that cutting and that agility down, I would do some drills with McClain, and it was really nice, because it kind of gave me the confidence to cut again, and it was a good stepping stone into getting into reactive cutting in soccer. My boyfriend says I would have been a really good tennis player because I have really good footwork, and I didn’t realize how important that was in tennis either. He’s like, sometimes amazed at how good I can move with my feet, and I’m like, see, there’s benefits to playing multiple sports! So that was cool, seeing the difference and kind of the crossover.
NT: Yeah, I think footwork is actually one of my favorite things to watch for a tennis player and a soccer player.
GS: Same here.
NT: I never share these a lot, but I’ll often end up photographing [soccer players’] footwork when you’re doing something. Especially in one-v-one situations, because it’s fun to watch you like, problem solve out of it. And I get a front view of it.
GS: Yeah, it’s really cool, and I think like, a lot more goes into footwork than what you would think from the outside. For example, Kling, she has the best feet I’ve ever seen when it comes to her one-v-one defending and just how good she is with her feet, defending. She’s amazing and I have such an appreciation for it.
NT: I feel like I’ve heard that people play ping pong, so I would love—
GS: Oh, yes, Britt is amazing at ping pong! So, her hand-eye coordination obviously is so good. She’s so good at ping pong.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B9AeIVyhGM2/
NT: So I don’t know where I came up with this idea but I’m really excited for it. I’m going to present you with a tennis situation, and I want you to give me the soccer equivalent. I’ll do an easy one: an ace on match point.
GS: Ooh, an ace on match point. What’s the score? Is it like 6–0, 5–0? Like, I need to know the score, because then—
NT: Okay, let’s say it was a long deuce point, at like, 5–4 where the person serving is trying to finish the set, and the receiver is trying to level it, and then suddenly ace, match point, boom, it’s over.
GS: Ooh, that would be a goal in like the 92nd minute. Don’t you think? But like, not just a goal—like I feel like, if it was off a corner kick or something.
NT: Ooh, set piece goal in the 92nd minute, and the score is tied and you finish it.
GS: Yes, and you put it away. It’s a header.
NT: Okay, here’s one. So my friend often calls this, in tennis, a golazo: having a dropshot followed by a lob winner in tennis. And really it could just be the lob winner.
GS: I love this. What would I—hmm, okay. I feel like that would equate to like, a really good possession by [one] team, and they almost score, but then the other team counters and scores.
NT: And I feel like it would have to be a lob goal, like a chip—chip the goalkeeper.
GS: Yeah, like you win it, and chip the keeper or something, right?
NT: Yeah, that feels right. Well, okay, on a similar idea, netcord winner. We saw a bunch of them [at the US Open]. I like to call it the tennis gods at the net.
GS: Ok, ok, I have a good one. I have a good one. I know what you’re going to say. And yes, I agree with that, but I think about when you are up 1–0, and somebody ties the game in the 89th or 90th minute. But you absolutely dominated them, the score could have been [2–0] or 3–0, but then they score to tie it, and then you don’t get three points. I think that’s what I would feel with a netcord.
NT: What! That’s pretty extreme. I mean, usually netcord winners are just random winners….
GS: I know! But that’s how I feel when that happens sometimes, especially if it is against me.
NT: Netcord winner on match point, I guess that would make sense.
GS: I feel some type of way though. I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. Especially when the netcord winner is a very, very huge winner.
NT: Okay, this is the complete opposite thing now: it’s a 40-shot rally, a crazy rally that ends with both players diving to the ground to keep the ball in play, and of course, one fails in the end and one prevails.
GS: Ooh, that’s a little bit harder. That one has me a little stumped. You know what actually, I feel like those kind of remind me of a lot of the games that we have with Reign. In the sense that it’s a battle, and it can be so back and forth, you know, it kind of can be a bloodbath sometimes. Super physical and really exciting, but it’s tough and a grind, but then someone pulls through. That’s kind of what I would compare it to, NWSL speaking. What do you think?
NT: I like that comparison. I was thinking, it’s this battle that is in the midfield that’s constantly in the midfield, and then eventually, someone breaks through.
GS: Yes. I like that. That is good too. I totally see it. I feel like a lot of times that happens in are games with Reign too. It’s like very much a midfield battle. Like, there’s a bunch of headers. The ball’s in the air a lot more than it should be. It’s physical and it is a grind, but someone pulls through in the end. I like that.
NT: Okay, this will be a simple one: a failed smash winner. Like you’re going for the smash winner—
GS: Like you’re pissed?
NT: No, like you are going for the winner and you smash it, and have you ever watched Djokovic play, where he tries to smash it and it actually goes into the net?
GS: Yes! A failed smash winner.
NT: We call it Djokosmash sometimes.
GS: That is actually the worst. Ooh, what would I compare that too? I feel like it could be someone has like, a one-v-one with the goalkeeper, and you did all this hard work, and all you have to do is just place it into the goal, and you miss like crazy over the bar, or wide or something insane.
NT: Another fun question: if you could pick five tennis players for a five-a-side soccer game, who would it be, and what positions would they play?
GS: Ooh. So I would definitely would pick Serena. Position, a striker, because I feel like I would compare someone who could strike the ball well, [with her] amazing serve.
We need some defenders. Ooh, this could get kind of crazy! Obviously I would pick Kerber, because I love her as a player, but I would pick her as a midfielder, because I feel like she would cover a lot of ground. Let’s see, who else? Definitely Osaka, because I just need her calmness and composure, so I would actually pick her as a midfielder too, so that’s three. And then I would pick myself—no I’m just kidding.
NT: No, you could put yourself in this!
GS: No, no. Okay, and then, I would need a goalie. Who would you pick as a goalie? That’s kind of hard. I feel like they would all have good strengths, because they can see the ball well.
NT: Who has the quickest reflexes maybe?
GS: Yeah, what are we thinking here?
NT: Or who strikes the ball early, I guess.
GS: True. That one’s up for debate. I’m not sure who I would choose, actually. I feel like you need a good goalie for your five-a-side team. Let me tell you, it’s a game changer. I’m trying to think! You know what, I don’t know. I need to think about that one.
NT: Okay, who would you have as a defender then, because you have a striker, two midfielders—would you have a defender?
GS: I don’t know. You know what, I would maybe pick Wozniacki. Only because I feel like she is a fighter to the end of time. And she will, no matter how tired she is, she will literally go to the end and like you need that person on your five-v-five team.
NT: I like that! I see it.
GS: That’s a ballin’ five-v-five team if you ask me.
NT: Well you picked four! You need one more!
GS: Yeah, but then myself.
NT: Oh okay, you’re in this. How about you play goalkeeper?
GS: Yeah, that would be the best actually. Actually five-v-five is my favorite thing ever, so I’m really glad you asked that. We’re going to win the tennis NWSL cup!
