Category: Thorns

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Not Soccer Soccer Thorns

The Three Marks of Existence

Photo by Nikita Taparia

I tried to write about Mark Parsons, who recently completed his sixth and final season as the coach of the Portland Thorns. It didn’t work. Instead I just thought about the passage of time and my experience of it. That’s what this is:

Aniccā (Impermanence)

I was 16 the first time I felt old. I was in the hall at South Eugene High School and something involving a slightly younger person happened—I have completely forgotten what—but I remember with crystalline clarity that suddenly I felt like this:

The "Simpsons" characters Patty and Selma smoking cigarettes with bored looks on their faces

It’s absurd to feel old at 16, or perhaps any of the ages that I have been thus far. But the essence of feeling old has nothing to do with objective age. It’s about being old-er. Thus, it is possible to feel old at almost any age. One of the main ways to feel old is what I felt in the hallway that day: realizing that you know things that younger people do not.

Sometimes you look at a younger person and think, “How could you care so much about [thing]?” Sometimes you look at them and think, “Good lord, don’t do that.” Sometimes, a little cruelly, it’s “Just wait until [bad thing happens].”

The other face of feeling old (aside from mysterious bodily pain, which I would not experience until some years after the hallway incident) is the sense that the world and the people in it have shifted under your feet. You drive by a house you used to live in and it’s been painted and had all the leaky windows replaced, or it’s not a house at all anymore, it’s a condo. You go to a Thorns game and it hits you—feeling old always hits you all at once, never incrementally—that there are only two players on the roster who were there when you started your foolish little hobby of writing about them whether anybody wanted you to or not.

This is all a roundabout way of saying: things change. The “they knocked my old house down” feeling and the “what do you kids know” feeling are two sides of the same coin. Something goes away, something else gets renewed. Everything dies, and the wellspring of youth is infinite. That’s all you can count on.

Photo by Kris Lattimore
Anattā (Not-self)

Where is the essence of a soccer team to be found? Is it in the players? The stadium? The manager? The ownership? The fans? Clearly not: almost all of those things have changed for the Thorns over the last six years. If they are all changeable, how can we say that a club that exists today also existed nine years ago? 20? 100?

During the pandemic, I aged a good 10 years. That was the effect of more or less sitting in my house doing absolutely fuck all for something like 15 months. What I mean is that the experience was ultimately good for me.

For instance, one night last spring I realized that I’d been waking up with a vague fear tickling at the corners of my mind every day for months. Upon reflection, I realized that the fear was the fear of death, that it was probably time to deal with that fear head on, and further, that nothing in my life had given me the tools to do so. I decided to look for God.

In that hallway at South Eugene High School, 15 years ago (15 normal Earth years, not 15 pandemic years), I’d never have believed I would one day write that sentence. But I’m not that old-feeling 16-year-old anymore. You sit around long enough, becoming incrementally more Patty-and-Selma-like all the time, and eventually you might realize that the question—the question, the only question, the burning, impossible question—isn’t “does God exist,” or “what am I supposed to do while I’m here,” but “why is there something instead of nothing?” The answer to the question, which is unanswerable, is the thing we call “God.” That is what I have come to think, anyway.

I bring this up because 1) becoming curious about the nature of the universe was what led me, in a roundabout way, to the title and structure of this article, and 2) to illustrate that things will happen to you that you don’t expect. You will change in ways that might not make sense. This is both wonderful and terrifying: wonderful because it means that you are never stuck one way; terrifying because it also means that there’s no “you” to speak of, really. Not one that persists, or is under your control.

The me I was in 2007 is no more or less me than the one I was when I started to think about death last spring. The only one that exists at all is the one typing these words right now.

The Portland Thorns, too, are only ever exactly as they are in a given moment. There’s no higher level of abstraction. At one moment in 2016, they were this:

The 2016 Thorns after their semifinal loss to the Western New York Flash

Once earlier this year, they were this:

A screenshot showing Washington in their defensive shape, with Kelli Hubly, who is carrying the ball, being left open.

Another time, they were this:

Marissa Everett, Kelli Hubly, Meghan Klingenberg, Angela Salem, and Rocky Rodríguez celebrating
Photo by Matthew Wolfe

So right at this moment, what are the Portland Thorns? Where can I go to see them?

Inevitably, we have to conclude that they do not exist. We use their name as a semantic convenience, but it does not point to any continuous thing. The Thorns are not Mark Parsons, AD Franch, Midge Purce, or “Iko Iko”. Nor are they Sophia Smith, a big red drum, Gavin Wilkinson, Rhian Wilkinson, or even Christine Sinclair. They are not a pressing team or a counterattacking team. They are not defensively sound, nor do they have trouble finishing. They are simply there, or not.

Photo by Matthew Wolfe
Duḥkha (Suffering)

The supply of suffering is infinite. It is the sting of a playoff loss, the sunburn one gets at an afternoon game in August. It is when Tobin Heath’s rights get snapped up in an expansion draft for no good reason.

We cannot stop these things from happening (please do wear sunscreen). Pain will happen. Loss will happen. Suffering is adjacent, but different: its root is in clinging. We cling to players and coaches, clearly. We cling to the idea of winning everything, to the high of a championship, to the moment when a player is one on one with the keeper and is surely, surely going to score. There is nothing here (see above). It’s like trying to scoop up sand with a sieve. Once we understand this, we can begin to get free.

It is only in letting go that we can fully experience anything. If we relinquish expectation, we start to feel that the very fact of the game is a miracle. The weight and texture of the ball, the sun and the rain, the existence of feet. We see that the moment a player is one on one with the keeper is a spark of magic, regardless of what happens next (what happens next doesn’t exist, until it does). The goal itself is an unalloyed joy, if we let it stand by itself.

Even the pain of loss, if we look at it right, is a thing to experience, to open ourselves up to. It doesn’t last. Or you might feel it today, but not tomorrow, and then again the next day. It is not us.

In this way, nothing is ever old. Everything is as new as the moment when we take it in. The world is remade in each moment, and so are we. May we always remember this. May we never feel old.

Photo by Nikita Taparia
Categories
Soccer Thorns

Some Thoughts on Endings

Credit: Matthew Wolfe

TW mention of suicide

Watching the Portland Thorns and Chicago Red Stars semi-final alone in my dorm room in Los Angeles, I felt numb. From the kickoff, something was off in the final third. The Thorns weren’t themselves. They seemed to be getting inside their own heads and psyching themselves out. While the stats showed the Thorns absolutely raining shots down on Chicago’s goal—21 to Chicago’s five—none of them were particularly threatening. It didn’t feel like the Thorns deserved to score. 

I wasn’t “having an okay time” seeing the team struggle on the field. They weren’t fighting for the ball as if their season depended on it, which it did. Maybe it was Lindsey Horan’s sudden freak injury or Crystal Dunn’s pregnancy announcement, but the personnel on the pitch seemed as though they had hardly played together. 

The Thorns haven’t had the best run of play leading into the playoffs; despite winning the shield, they won only three of their last 11 games. Ever since Paul Riley’s predatory behavior was made public, there has been a weight on the league that won’t lift. In the postgame, Emily Menges said that the team has done a great job of leaving these traumas off the pitch and focusing on soccer when they’re playing. I have to take her word for it, since I’m not in the locker room. However, I can’t help but think of the extreme mental toll that’s been taken on the players. 

Trauma and abuse as severe as what the players in the league have been through forges intense bonds between people. The foundation for that bonding was already in place. The Thorns have praised their team chemistry and culture throughout the season, saying that they are a team unlike they have been in the past and that they truly believe in one another.

But Menges and Christine Sinclair were on the team back in 2015, too. Having to relive terrible experiences while simultaneously working your job at a place that is entwined with toxicity is impossible for me to imagine, yet these players have done it.

They end the 2021 NWSL season with three of four trophies, which is an incredible feat they should be proud of. 

And yet, I think all these players need a long break. I’m not saying that it’s great that their season was cut short and that they are off now, but from the outside, it’s a bit of a relief. 

I’ve been through my own mental health struggles, which I wrote about for my school newspaper. I played soccer for 12 years at the club and high school levels, but had to quit due to the incredible pressure placed on me by my coaches and the toxic atmosphere my teammates created. Watching the game on Sunday, I couldn’t help but worry that this heavy NWSL season would turn players away from the league—or even from the sport they love altogether. I don’t want to make assumptions about what the players are going through, but I can’t help thinking about it in the context of my own experiences. 

After Chicago scored their second goal and the ref made several bad non-calls, the numbness overtook me. One aspect of the broadcast that particularly got to me was the repeated replays of the goals scored against Bella Bixby. Having only jumped up to first keeper midway through the season, the semifinal was her NWSL playoff debut. The Thorns’ playoff hopes rested on her shoulders. She was visibly frustrated after both goals, and the commentators talked about her reaction as the film looped. The broadcast even lingered on her after goal kicks, as if to implicitly blame her for the scoreline. As soon as the final whistle blew, the camera panned to Bixby, who was overcome with emotion. The camera stayed on her face far too long, and I, too, started to cry. 

Midway through Mark Parsons’s final media call as head coach of the Thorns, Bixby announced on Twitter that her father had died by suicide earlier that week. The rest of the world fell away as I read that. I barely registered another word that Parsons said. I knew exactly what Bixby was going through, and I couldn’t believe that she had just managed to play the most important game of her career. 

When I was 16, one of my close friends died by suicide, and I couldn’t do anything for weeks. Still, five years later, it’s hard for me to do things we used to do together. I can’t listen to Taylor Swift or have a picnic where we only eat veggie straws or see our horse, Willow, without crying. The mental strength it took for Bixby to go to work, to compete at the highest level, is something I cannot imagine, and I am so unbelievably impressed. It also made me more angry at the ways the broadcast fixated on her emotions. No matter the reason behind the sadness or emotions, they’re not for broadcasts or journalists to turn into content. 

When I lost my friend, I hated how people asked my mom, “oh, how is Jaiden doing?” for weeks. It never felt like genuine concern, just morbid curiosity. Like I was a museum piece.

I’m sad for the team, and how their season ended. There will not be a Thorns team like them again, with Parsons leaving and a roster shakeup inevitable with a double expansion draft next month. I’ll be sad to see people go, but I also know that the culture and community that the team has worked hard to create will inevitably be broken up. Losing that sense of safety and community so suddenly is hard to deal with.

Even with the team splintering off in the off-season, I hope they are still able to lean on one another as results of investigations are revealed. I particularly hope that Bella Bixby has people to support her. Having a group of people you can lean on no questions asked is one of the best tools for grieving. 

I don’t have much to say about the soccer played in that semifinal. But I do know that when you lose someone to suicide, it feels like the earth has stopped spinning.

If you suspect someone is suffering from suicidal thoughts or ideations, ask them about it point-blank. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s so much worse to regret that you didn’t ask. People who are suicidal feel as though they have no one to talk to. Showing them you’re the person they can talk to might save their life.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

That’s How it Goes in Soccer, Sometimes

Photo by Matt Wolfe

The Thorns fell to the Chicago Red Stars 2–0 in their semifinal match at Providence Park on Sunday. Despite both teams taking a major last-minute scratch—Lindsey Horan sat out the match after suffering an injury the day before, and Chicago was without Mallory Pugh due to COVID-19 protocol—the Red Stars were able to execute their game plan, and the Thorns saw yet another match where they struggled to put the ball in the back of the net.

It was a rough game in that the Thorns kind of knew what Chicago was going to do in advance—if not the exact game plan, at least some of what they’d be coming up against—but they weren’t able to do enough to actually counteract that strategy.

“Our last match against Chicago, I thought they did a really good job of keeping us to one side,” Becky Sauerbrunn said in a press conference ahead of the semifinal game. “They kind of invited us to play to one side of the field and then really committed numbers and kept us over there, and it was difficult to switch the play. So for us, it’s identifying open players, it’s identifying the space that we can capitalize on and how we can get the ball there. I think if we can do that we can do that successfully and relatively risk-free, that will really help us in our build up.”

And Chicago did the same thing this time around.

“They’ve turned up into probably the hardest place to play against probably the hardest team to play,” Mark Parsons said of Chicago’s semifinal performance. “Very stingy, very disciplined, very organized performance, and they’ve got a great result.”

The Red Stars applied pressure early, cutting off spaces and staying touch-tight on Sophia Smith. For their part, the Thorns saw some success when they were able to break up a Chicago attack, switch the ball, and counter up the other side of the field, but the Red Stars were able to limit the moments where that happened from early on.

“Chicago did a really good job of keeping a lot of people in their box,” Emily Menges said after the game, “and it was really hard to get anything clean off.”

It’s not that the Thorns were bad—they generated a fair number of chances and managed to play out of Chicago’s press enough to get a couple really solid looks on goal—but, even as they found more chances, they did do the thing they’ve been doing all year where they shoot a lot and don’t have all that much to show for it. Despite a 21–5 shot line and an xG total that played heavily in their favor, the Thorns just weren’t able to find the back of the net.

But beyond the stat lines, it wasn’t a game that felt good. Kealia Watt was subbed off for Chicago after she went down a little before the 30-minute mark, and goalkeeper Cassie Miller went down a couple minutes after that.

And then there was the Red Stars’ first goal: an (admittedly very good) shot from Katie Johnson that deflected weirdly off Bella Bixby’s hand and inside the near post in the 37th minute. And then Chicago struck again when Morgan Gautrat found an open Sarah Woldmoe outside of Portland’s box, and Woldmoe snuck her shot from distance past the Thorns’ defense and inside the near post.

Again, it wasn’t that Portland were bad in the closing 30 minutes of the game, but they weren’t able to do enough to win back either of the goals or to prevent the game from ending in a 2–0 loss and Chicago moving onto the final.

“The ball didn’t bounce for us in the 18 tonight,” Christine Sinclair said after the match. “We created a lot of half chances, a lot of crosses, but we just weren’t on the end of them.”

That’s how it goes in soccer, sometimes.

It’s a tough note to go out on, especially with Parsons set to leave for the Netherlands and the inevitable roster shakeup that comes with two expansion drafts and a new head coach, especially after the fallout of the front office covering up Paul Riley’s abuse, especially with Bixby playing through her dad’s passing just days before—and especially when the Thorns had set out to win everything this season and ended up falling just short.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

A Little Worse for Wear, the Thorns Are Finally over the Finish Line

Photo by Matt Wolfe.

What strange times we’ve all lived through.

The end of this Thorns season—only the second-weirdest NWSL season because 2020 happened—came with a shrug last night, somehow sudden despite being the latest-ever closing weekend in the league’s nine-year history. If we had visions of the Thorns thundering down the stretch in Mark Parsons’s last year in Portland, growing in power until they peaked in the playoffs and won the last and biggest trophy left to win, well. They could still peak in the playoffs. They could certainly still win the big trophy. But things haven’t gone quite like that.

The season ender was, above all, weird. I’d been expecting a win; North Carolina have not been good (and weren’t good last night), and the possibility of the first decent home crowd in more than two months seemed to bode well, motivation-wise. Instead, the Thorns did more of their weird thing that they do, their frustrating thing where they look like the dominant side for most of the game, string together some beautiful attacking sequences, look like they generally have the right idea, and never manage to put the ball in the back of the net.

With that said, let’s look at how the Thorns approached NC. This team talks a lot about how they deploy the same formation against every opponent, but they do make smaller-scale tweaks against specific teams. Against the Courage last night, rather than pressing one forward and having the other available to combine or receive a through pass if the first forward won the ball, they used the non-pressing forward to mark NC’s strong-side outside back.

They also pressed the back line less than they generally do, period. Here’s a shot of the Courage defense getting lots of time on the ball, with the Thorns’ attackers gently encouraging them to keep to one side of the field but otherwise not interfering. Sophia Smith is loosely marking NC left back Carson Pickett in the bottom left of the image.

A screenshot showing North Carolina's half of the field as the Thorns defend. Carolina CB Abby Erceg has the ball and is being given lots of space, with the Thorns not pressing the back line at all. Both Carolina full backs are pushed well forward. Sophia Smith is hovering by left back Carson Pickett near the halfway line.

At first, this seems almost backwards. Generally speaking, offenses try to make their shape as big as possible, while a team in its defensive phase tries to shrink the available space. But here, as Mark Parsons explained after the game, the Thorns wanted to let the Courage spread out like this. “When their backline has time on the ball,” he said, “they get bigger, and when you win it, you have a lot of space to exploit, which you saw, I think, multiple times through the first half.”

As you can see in the screenshot above, both Pickett and Merritt Mathias, the NC right back, are pushed well up the field. Abby Erceg is taking her time on the ball, scanning the field for a pass. Eventually, she passed to Denise O’Sullivan in the center of the field, who was immediately forced to go back to Erceg under aggressive pressure from Angela Salem, bringing us to the moment below:

Here the Thorns have succeeded in confining Erceg to a little pocket on the left flank. She can’t pass to Pickett, who Smith is still covering. She could go back to O’Sullivan, but Salem is ready to pounce if she does so. She can either hit one over the top toward Jessica McDonald and Lynn Williams, or she can try to find a pass through the Thorns’ midfield line to Debinha, who’s hovering behind Yazmeen Ryan in this shot.

Ultimately, she chooses the second option, which brings us to the defensive advantage of Portland dropping one forward at a time back to mark an attacking fullback. “You look at McDonald and Williams, their biggest threat is in behind,” Parsons said. Marking one outside back with a forward lets all four defenders stay home, narrowing the channels Williams and McDonald have to get in behind.

There’s a second piece, too: “We wanted to make sure that that space wasn’t there, but they get there through their 10s.” Keeping four defenders home frees up one of them to step to the Courage No. 10s, Debinha and Amy Rodriguez, which is exactly what happened here. As soon as Erceg passed to Debinha, Kelli Hubly was in motion, springing forward to whack the ball into outer space.

Ideally, instead of a whack, they’d make a long pass into all that space created by the Thorns’ permissive pressing strategy, and Morgan Weaver or Christine Sinclair would burst through and have an easy chance on goal. That almost happened a few times, but, as Parsons said, the team ultimately “didn’t quite take advantage of those counter attacks.”

But: having already clinched the Supporters Shield, the Thorns didn’t need to win this game, which was perhaps what dictated the vibe as the game went on. After a handful of good chances in the first half, including some beautiful combinations between Portland’s attacking corps, the second half was a bit of a slog. The Thorns only posted five shots (compared to 14 in the first half), with just one on goal.

The Courage, meanwhile, were fighting to avoid elimination from the playoffs and played increasingly desperate as time marched on. It was a strange sight. Much of the individual brilliance the Courage have always had was still there, with Debinha and A-Rod both making some eye-popping, if useless, solo plays, but the machine broke down a long time ago. These days, we’re all just trying to get by.

As for the Thorns’ fate in the weeks to come: they get a bye in the first round of the playoffs, courtesy of the Shield. In the semifinal, they’ll play the winner of next weekend’s Chicago-Gotham matchup. I think it’s likely they beat either of those teams and make it to the final, but after that, it’s anyone’s game.

I genuinely don’t know what to make of Portland’s form right now. Last night after the whistle, the defense gathered for a group hug, celebrating their 13th regular-season shutout, which is a new league record. The team  was all smiles as they climbed the stairs to greet the fans and learn the winner of the Riveters Player of the Year, who—very deservedly—was Angela Salem.

They’re a good soccer team, broadly speaking. The best in the league, you might argue! It seems cruel at this point, after everything they’ve been through, to pick nits about the defense getting a little lucky a few times last night, or to ask whether the team is having a scoring issue. Parsons spoke about the need to keep improving heading into the semifinal, and he’s right. Hopefully Lindsey Horan, Crystal Dunn, and Rocky Rodríguez are all fully healthy by then, too, which will help.

As ever, the emphasis postgame was on togetherness. The last two years have been brutal for everyone in this league, and it’s hard not to assume that the last month in particular derailed the Thorns’ hoped-for late-season progression curve. But pain can lead to growth, too, and if the team is as happy to have made it this far as they seem to be, maybe that’s enough.

“This is a special group,” Kling said postgame. “It’s a real family. We’ve been through a lot this year—hard times—whether it’s health, COVID, the abuse scandals that have happened, and I think we’ve used all of these things to come together and to talk about it and to get stronger.”

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Soccer Thorns

Still a Top Pro, Angela Salem Works Toward a Coaching License

Photo by Nikita Taparia
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Soccer Thorns

Takeaways: Thorns 1, Dash 0

Credit: Matthew Wolfe

For the Thorns, the 2021 season has been all about building a strong mentality and culture. Through interviews and post-game pressers, Thorns players and coaches have spoken about the importance of their culture shift to their success this season. Back in August, Christine Sinclair said that “[the Thorns] want to put [themselves] in the best position to win, and not by chance,” which has been the byproduct of a team that has fun together—and fights and gives everything for each other. 

Since Sinc spoke in August, a reckoning has occurred in the league, with its shockwaves landing firmly in the Thorns’ locker room. In a turnaround from the recent four-game winless streak that’s had people doubting the team’s chances of winning the Shield—something they were favored to do for the majority of the season—the team managed to pull out a win against Houston, looking the best they had against the Dash all year.

The season isn’t over yet, with one last home game against the Courage to go, but I think last night’s win against Houston to claim the shield was a culmination of an entire season’s worth of work both on and off the field. So, in honor of that, here are some things that went really well for the Thorns. 

High Press

Historically, the Thorns have struggled to break down the Dash’s back line. In the Thorns’ 1–0 win in July, they recorded 14 shots, dramatically lower than usual. Just a few weeks ago in October, the Thorns lost 2–3, putting only nine of 26 shots on target. Forwards Sophia Smith and Morgan Weaver (among others) like to sit high, ready to either get the ball at their feet or receive a long ball over the top, and over the course of the season, the Thorns have struggled to score when they weren’t able to press high and sit along the back line. But last night, Smith and Weaver were able to find all sorts of space between the Dash’s defense, and exploited it well, combining for six shots.

One moment that exemplified the ever-strengthening Thorns mentality was a shot by Sophia Smith in the first half. She was played a ball in from Meghan Klingenberg and after taking one touch to settle it, sent it rocketing towards the goal. She missed, but the important element of the shot was Smith having the confidence to take it early. So many times over the course of the season we have watched Smith dribble towards the goal, only to end up passing it straight to the keeper, and it’s much better for her to test the keeper with a harder, earlier shot than not. 

Strong midfield diamond

The Thorns have clearly found their ideal starting midfield with Sinclair, Rocky Rodríguez, Angela Salem, and Lindsey Horan (it’s wild that they still have Dunn on the bench to bring on). The passing chart below shows how important it is that the midfield keep their shape in order to dictate play throughout the center of the field. The heavier lines extending from Rocky and Horan’s bubbles indicate the volume of passes that each player gave and received, showing how they maintained possession, continuously feeding balls forward toward the pressing forwards.

Mark Parsons said post-game, “we knew we needed to control everything we can to put it in our favor,” which manifested in the form of the midfield being first to what felt like every ball. They dominated the center of the pitch, intercepting Houston passes and serving as the catalyst for counterattacks, many of which nearly paid off. 

Credit: Arielle Dror

When looking back at the season holistically, the Thorns struggled to reintegrate their international players after the Olympic break, largely due to the bulk of them being in the midfield. Finally having a consistent lineup over the past few months has let the Thorns implement the tactics they have been working on, allowing them to improve each game.

Brick-wall Bixby

Bella Bixby and the Thorns defense earned their 12th clean sheet of the season, and Bixby’s eighth. While a lot of the glory goes to the forwards and midfield for scoring, the defense has been quietly and consistently dictating games all season. Outside backs Kling and Natalia Kuikka had the most touches out of both teams on Sunday, and center backs Becky Sauerbrunn and Emily Menges contributed to the 48 duels won.

A quote from Bixby sums up the defense’s mentality quite nicely: “despite having big outcome-based goals, we have been extremely process-based, and [are] really just taking it one game at a time.” Bixby, who became the Thorns’ starting keeper after AD Franch went to Kansas City, has excelled at the position. She exudes confidence when directing her back line and stays focused until the final minutes, which yesterday was when the majority of the Dash’s crosses and shots came in. Plus, watching her palm the ball on saves is just epic. 

With one more regular-season game to go before postseason, the Thorns are in a good place to continue growing and proving that their elite mentality is what sets them apart.

As Horan said after the game, the Thorns set out to win everything this season—and now the elusive quadruple is within reach.

Categories
Not Soccer Soccer Thorns

Takeaways: Thorns 0, Kansas City 0

Photo by Matthew Wolfe

The Thorns suffered an utterly disappointing scoreless tie against bottom-of-the-table Kansas City on Sunday afternoon. While the game could have been momentous for several reasons, including Meghan Klingenberg reaching 10,000 career NWSL minutes, and marking the first time that the Thorns played against AD Franch (who made several great saves), this game is one that is going to be quickly forgotten. 

In the 85th minute, it looked like the Thorns would eke out a win when Morgan Weaver was awarded a penalty and Christine Sinclair stepped up to the spot to take it. It unceremoniously went off the lower left post, even after AD dived to the left, keeping the score at 0–0. 

In the early second half, Kristen Hamilton scored a goal that was called back due to a foul on Becky Sauerbrunn, and it seemed that maybe this would be the spark of intensity that the Thorns so desperately needed. But again, nothing came of it. The Thorns remained flat and lifeless, looking as though they had little desire to play this game.

Despite being close to soccer-specific Children’s Mercy Park, Kansas City’s home games take place on a baseball field with an extremely narrow and poorly sod soccer field crammed into it (the team has announced it will move to Children’s Mercy Park next year, but the fact they ever played on this field sends a message). The Thorns, who normally thrive off a high press and the ability to get wide, were unable to create space between themselves, causing passes and crosses and shots to all go out of bounds to no one. Mark Parsons noted after the game that “the team wasn’t able to play the type of soccer that they wanted to play.”

That field—and a litany of other factors—made the game hard to watch. It wasn’t just that the team wasn’t playing as well or as organically as they normally do, but that everything going on in the background made it impossible to focus.

In the four days since the Thorns’ last game and the partial dismissal of Gavin Wilkinson (from only the Thorns side of his job), there has been no time to process the sheer amount of trauma that has occurred. Just the day before, broadcasters at the Pride-Gotham game zoomed in on Orlando backup keeper Brittany Wilson and repeatedly misidentified her as Mana Shim. With the endless onslaught of harmful mistakes and disinterest from the league, it’s hard to compartmentalize what is going on. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the players, for whom soccer isn’t a fun distraction, but a job.

Watching the game on Paramount Plus on my laptop felt like a fever dream. I couldn’t conceptualize how 1,600 miles away these people were being asked to play soccer as if there wasn’t a reckoning happening within the league. The quality of the broadcast, which sounded ripped from FIFA 2010, complete with LMFAO playing at each corner kick, felt like a slap in the face. Not only can the league not listen to players, but they seem completely unwilling to invest in them, either. 

The camera’s low vantage point and tight angle made it so that no more than half the players could be seen at any given moment. Players moved in and out of frame in dreamlike apparitions. The Thorns’ white jerseys looked as though they were outlined in black crayon, making them look cartoonish and animated. At one point, Larroquette did a bicycle kick at midfield just to advance the ball seven yards. I instantly did a double take to check that I wasn’t mashing buttons on a Playstation controller.  

All in all, it felt like a rerun of a game from the inaugural 2013 season, one whose final score I already knew. It was hard to get invested and feel as though anything was at stake, when in reality, there’s a lot on the line. The Thorns only have four more games this season, and have choked on their lead, leaving only one point between them and Reign in the race for the shield. 

But that brings me back to my original point. It was impossible to focus on the game because there is so much more at stake than a soccer game or title right now. Everyone on that pitch carried an incredible weight on their shoulders for 90 minutes. Once they step off the field, the weight remains squarely on them, getting straight onto phone calls and trying to fight for the league. There really is no escape for these players as they are constantly told they aren’t worthy, whether they’re being made to play on a horrible pitch or being asked in a postgame presser to recount their involvement in the initial 2015 investigations within the club. 

As the season winds to a close and the games pick up in intensity and importance for the postseason bracket, I find myself disconnecting with the game more and more. The Thorns could lose every game from here on out, but I would still support them just as much as if they won all of those games 5–0. The players’ mental and physical health is the most important, and if they choose to protest at Wednesday’s game, I will fully support and understand. If I as a fan can’t focus on the game, how can the players?

Categories
Not Soccer Soccer Thorns

Notes on a Loss

Photo by Matthew Wolfe.

Last night the Thorns played soccer against the Houston Dash in the heaviest, most surreal context I’ve ever experienced while reporting on the sport.

As for the game: Portland lost 2–3, thanks in part to a Dash penalty scored off a harsh handball call against Becky Sauerbrunn. After Kristie Mewis notched Houston’s second goal in the 23rd minute, the Thorns seemed to wake up and kick their attack into gear. With Houston’s press collapsing two and three players toward the ball, Portland had ample space to work with and had success both from wide areas and stretching the Dash back line enough to find through passes. Christine Sinclair had a cracking finish, Sophia Smith nutmegged Jane Campbell for her goal, and for a while, things hummed along almost shockingly well. Portland dominated statistically, beating Houston in shots by more than double and shots on goal by nearly double.

But as one of my group chats pointed out last night, there’s perhaps no better sign that a team is struggling to focus than when they keep conceding. Refereeing complaints aside, communication got jumbled, marks were lost, and the Thorns let in goals they normally wouldn’t.

I can’t express how strange it felt to be sitting in the press box as the stadium emptied out, players hugging and commiserating on the field below, this thick heaviness in the air, as Stevie Wonder and Lizzo blared on the PA.

The players and the fans had each staged their own protests during the game; players from both teams, like the teams in the night’s previous two games had done, gathered in the center circle in the sixth minute, commemorating the six years that Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly had to carry on in silence. For their part, the Riveters set off red and black smoke in the 24th minute, representing Farrelly and Shim’s numbers when they played for the Thorns—Farrelly wore #24, and Shim wore #6 (2 + 4).

Now here we were, processing, the players doing so under the harsh glare of the stadium lights, as the usual rhythm of a game day wound to a close.

Mark Parsons and Meghan Klingenberg spoke to the media after the game. I briefly tried to be reflective about last night and failed, so I’m going to offer some of their reflections instead.

Parsons on the responsibilities coaches have toward their players:

“You sign up to be a coach, and the first thing on the list is to be able to protect people, the health and safety and well being of people, players, but also as a head coach, you’re responsible for staff. It’s the first commitment you make, and it’s the simplest one to keep, and I’m so yeah, I’m so sorry, and sad that, that hasn’t been met, and players have suffered. How we got here, it’s really, really, really tough to think about how we got here. And we have to be honest in reflection and learning, but we have to make sure—and I think everyone keeps saying we—everyone in any position of leadership has to work to make sure that players are safe. That we have relentless policies and protocols in place to make sure that [we, who are] given this honor and and special privilege being around some of the best professionals, the best leaders, the best women are the right people. We absolutely have failed there… This is this is just embarrassingly heartbreaking.”

Klingenberg on the need to shift power into the players’ hands:

“This has been a really dark and heavy week, for everyone in the league, fans, players, coaching staff. It’s just been a lot. I think with that type of heaviness comes the realization that things need to change. And we’ve been doing a lot of grieving for our fellow players. We’ve been doing a lot of pathfinding, we’ve been doing a lot of, having big discussions about where this league should go, and how it should look. The one thing that keeps coming back to me and to us over and over and over again, is that without any say in the league, without any power, and without the financial resources to protect ourselves, and this will continue happening. So to me, there needs to be big structural changes within the league to protect these players. Because we’re vulnerable without a voice, we’re vulnerable without the financial means to protect ourselves, and that is something that cannot continue.”

Klingenberg on the emotions of the last week:

“I feel sad. I feel angry. I think what I feel depends on what time of the day it is. I feel a little bit of guilt.

Because, you know, I never want there to be any silent bystander in this league. And not because I think that people are bad or want bad things to happen to other players. I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s just that the players felt scared, and there’s no way to get out of a bad situation. These coaches get passed around, and so even if you speak up, it doesn’t feel like you’ll be protected. I think a lot of that goes back to the WPS and magicJack [where Klingenberg played as a WPS rookie]. It’s been really hard, because I know, I was on a team where things weren’t right, on a lot of levels, but there was only one person that ever spoke out about it, and that’s Ella Masar. And I think that we need to have a type of reckoning there too, because we need to protect each other, and we need to stand up for each other.

 

But it’s scary. It’s scary when you think that your career’s on the line and your dreams could be dashed. So I never want to put this on players, ever. I don’t think it’s on them. So yeah, I’m feeling a wide range of emotions. I also feel a bit of joy, that things are starting to change, and there’s discussion. And maybe we can see a light at the end of the tunnel. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of competing feelings.”

Klingenberg on finding joy amid the darkness:

“For us, as players, a lot of times when things are hard outside of the game, we use the game as his place where we can immerse ourselves. And we can just be Megan on a pitch. But that’s been really hard to do this week. Because, as you know, what’s been happening is in our faces all the time, outside of the game, inside the game, so tonight, when I was hyping the team up, I told them that I wanted them to play— My greatest hope for them today was that they played like they were kids again, and to remember what it felt like when you were on the schoolyard or in the streets or in your backyard, and play with that type of passion and joy. I think that, you know, even if the result didn’t come out the way that we want it, I could still feel that joy from a lot of players, and I think we did a lot of really good stuff. So I just want to keep that going for the team because you know, they deserve it.”

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Statement from the Rose City Review on Paul Riley

Credit: Matthew Wolfe

On Thursday, The Athletic reported that former Thorns head coach Paul Riley sexually abused and coerced multiple players during his tenures with multiple professional women’s soccer teams—including his time in Portland. Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim brought these reports to the attention of front offices, commissioners, and other league officials, but by no means are they the only survivors of Riley’s abuse.

Although Riley has been fired, NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird and general counsel Lisa Levine have resigned, and SafeSport—a questionable place to turn—is now investigating the allegations against Riley, we, at the Rose City Review, find lack of transparency and action until this point to be unacceptable.

It’s not enough for coaches and managers to apologize for hiring known abusers, as OL Reign owner Bill Predmore apologized for hiring former head coach Farid Benstiti in a press conference on Friday. “Getting it wrong” is not an excuse when there are known, credible accusations against a man. The systems of complacency within the NWSL run deep. We’ve seen them play out time and time again this year, with the terminations of Riley, Benstiti, and Richie Burke. And we’ve seen that same lack of transparency around the firing of Christy Holly, Alyse LaHue, and Tom Torres.

And it’s not enough for Riley to resign when the people who covered up his abuse remain in power. According to The Athletic’s report, Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and general manager Gavin Wilkinson released Riley from the club after investigating Shim’s allegations against him, but neither the club nor the league publicly acknowledged those accusations or that there had been an investigation. Despite knowing that Riley was a sexual abuser, Paulson, Wilkinson, and the NWSL let the league hire Riley for another job, placing him in yet another position of power.

We believe the Thorns’s statement on the report does not adequately address the harm the club has caused—nor does it outline a plan to keep players safe in the future. Merritt Paulson’s open letter, while outlining positive steps forward for the club, does little to acknowledge the complicit behavior of the Thorns’ front office. The “North Star” that he references as what is best for the players and techinical will need to involve the removal of Gavin Wilkinson to create a more safe and open environment. 

We support Mana Shim, Sinead Farelly, Kaiya McCollough, and everyone else who has come forward about abuse—publicly or privately.

We stand with the NWSL Players Association and their three demands. We commend the NWSLPA for the work they’re doing to push better league conditions and create avenues through which players can report abuse, but that work should have never fallen on them. 

The steps outlined in Paulson’s letter are positive, and we will be following up to ensure that he follows through on them. But we believe that the club’s current plan is not enough. We feel it is unacceptable that Gavin Wilkinson remains the club GM, given his role in covering up Riley’s abuse. We are calling for his removal from the Thorns and Timbers organization.

You can donate to the NWSLPA via PayPal.

Categories
Not Soccer Soccer Thorns Timbers

Club’s Handling of Riley Predominates as Timbers Win

Photo by Matthew Wolfe.

It was, by many of the usual metrics, a lovely Sunday afternoon at Providence Park. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and the Portland Timbers won their seventh game in eight attempts, continuing an improbable run up the Western Conference table that has them positioned to contend as the weather finally begins to turn and the MLS season enters its final stage.

But the result, a 1–0 Timbers victory on the strength of a late headed goal from the Polish marksman Jarosław Niezgoda, felt like little more than a sideshow.

This Timbers victory should have been the second game of the weekend played at Providence Park. The Portland Thorns were supposed to take the field first, on Saturday, for a derby match against their northern rival, OL Reign.

That match did not happen. In its place, after all games across the NWSL were suspended following the horrifying revelations reported by The Athletic last week regarding the conduct of former Thorns manager Paul Riley, Thorns supporters rallied outside the stadium in support of the players Riley abused and those who remain within an American soccer league that has at every turn disregarded their safety.

They also called for the firing of Timbers and Thorns general manager Gavin Wilkinson, who has emerged again as a lightning rod for anger.

Timbers fans last called en masse for Wilkinson’s firing in the autumn of 2012, when the club was suffering through a miserable season on the field. They were wrong then. The Timbers won the Western Conference the next season and an MLS Cup two years later, and Wilkinson’s prowess as a soccer executive has proven beyond any significant doubt many times since.

They’re not wrong now. This time, the frustration is not that Wilkinson can’t pick soccer players. It is that he, along with Timbers and Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and the club’s president of business Mike Golub, failed to ensure that Riley’s career ended after they were made aware of the allegations of his predatory, coercive, absolutely despicable behavior towards their players.

The club investigated Riley following the 2015 season and, with his contract expiring, let him walk. We don’t know exactly what that investigation turned up, and we don’t know exactly how seriously the club endeavored to communicate to the NWSL and Riley’s future employers that he was an active danger to their players too.

What it looks like, lacking that information, and knowing the connections between the Wilkinson and one of the men responsible for hiring Riley to his next job, is that the Thorns, like the Catholic Church, simply moved an ill-behaved coach on to his next parish, consequences be damned.

Sinead Farrelly. Mana Shim. How many others there are—both among those who spoke anonymously to The Athletic and those who weren’t reached or chose not to be interviewed—we don’t yet and will probably never know.

Timbers players Saturday released a statement expressing their support for NWSL players, while Giovani Savarese and other members of the Timbers coaching staff wore teal ribbons in a show of solidarity.

Savarese and his team entered Sunday in a difficult position. Around them in the stadium, and particularly in a vociferous North End, the supporters called—colorfully, loudly, and repeatedly—for their boss to be fired.

The Timbers Army, singing and chanting to the beat of a drum branded with the logo of the Rose City Riveters, made their position known from pregame to the final whistle. Banners hung or hoisted in the North End included “Believe, Support, and Protect NWSL Players,” “Protect the Players, Cut the Rot Out,” and, most memorably, a simple, “You Knew,” along with plenty of two-sticks aimed specifically at Wilkinson.

All the team on the field could do was focus on the task at hand, no matter how trivial it felt taking place in the middle of one of the biggest storms in franchise history.

Knowing a win would cement their status as in the West’s top four with Real Salt Lake’s loss on Saturday, the Timbers faced a Miami side in desperate need of points to keep their distant playoff hopes alive.

Starting without Sebastian Blanco, whose return to fitness was so critical in their revival this fall, and with Diego Valeri suspended for yellow card accumulation, the Timbers lacked a measure of attacking inventiveness in the first half. But Miami was rarely more than ponderous going forward themselves, with the Timbers comfortably defending deep and looking to break with pace.

When Blanco was introduced with a quarter of an hour to go in the second half and no score, the Timbers quickly began to rack up chances. It was thanks only to some excellent emergency defending from Miami’s three center backs, led by Leandro Gonzalez Pirez that the game remained level for as long as it did, and thanks to some very soft defending in the middle of that box that Niezgoda was allowed to freely position himself in the path of a Blanco corner seven minutes from time and nod in the opener.

Miami thought they had equalized just moments later when substitute Julian Carranza headed a cross past Clark, but the goal was ruled out for a push on Dario Zuparic. Miami manager Phil Neville said after the game that his team was “robbed,” and perhaps in a narrow sense, he was right. The whistle on Carranza was soft, one of a number of marginal calls that so often decide close, pedestrian late-season games.

But in a broader sense, his team did not take advantage of the opportunity presented to them in Blanco’s reduced fitness and Valeri’s suspension. They lost the expected goals battle by nearly two and only forced Steve Clark into a pair of notable saves, one on an uninspired Gonzalo Higuain, the other on Brek Shea.

Miami had one more great chance after Carranza’s equalizer was ruled out, deep into stoppage time, but Gonzalez Pirez, outstanding on the other end of the field, sent his open look well wide. That was it. The Timbers are now seven points clear of fifth, on a glide path to hosting a playoff game.

Afterwards, Savarese and Clark were asked about the NWSL. For many of the supporters, the afternoon ended with that subject—and the club’s response to it—foremost in mind. The Timbers Army and the Rose City Riveters are extraordinary in the American sporting landscape for the outspokenness and seriousness with which they take their sociopolitical commitments.

They also, in recent history, have been extraordinary for their effectiveness. The supporters, with the help of others across the MLS, namely in Seattle, stared down the league and won its fight to fly the Iron Front in 2019. The coming fight to hold the organization accountable for its role in perpetuating Riley’s career will, in many ways, be a much bigger challenge.

Paulson’s most enduring trait in a decade-plus as a major league owner, right alongside his passion and inability to stay off Twitter, has been his loyalty to and faith in Wilkinson—a loyalty that has been richly rewarded in on-the-field success.

This scandal is not not going away any time soon. U.S. Soccer and FIFA have opened investigations. The NWSL remains in turmoil, with the Thorns scheduled to play the Houston Dash at home on Wednesday night. Their current manager, Mark Parsons, who is vacating the role in a matter of weeks, has not faced the media since the story broke.

The level of protest at this, a Timbers game, not a Thorns game, made that plain It is as yet unclear what is coming next for Riley and everyone who passed the buck and did the bare minimum instead of stopping him cold. But it is obvious, if there was ever a doubt, that Portland fans are going to keep close score.