The Thorns held on for the three points on Sunday in a match featuring Simone Charley’s second regular season goal (!!), 80% fan capacity at Providence Park (!!), and some very warm weather for a late June Portland afternoon.
Here are a couple of my takeaways from the game:
1. A turning point, of sorts
I’ve talked a lot about the Thorns and missed chances this year, and I think this game was (hopefully) a turning point in that regard. It’s not that Portland did an especially good job on capitalizing on their chances—they recorded 20 shots on the afternoon, with only one goal to show for it—and it’s weird to say this match marked a shift right before fiveplayers step away from the team for the Olympics.
Still, I think Mark Parsons said it best when asked about Christine Sinclair’s missed penalty after the match:
“I think the team were excellent because we missed chances. I think we missed three or four chances that we should score. And I thought, in other games that could affect our decisions. OL Reign or Orlando, when we went through that period, a decision starts to get a bit more desperate, and we were starting to force things or take things on early or not play as fluid, as free in our decision making. I thought it was the opposite today.”
It doesn’t hurt that Simone Charley was the one who scored, either—both because she had the most good looks on goal of any player in the first half and because she’ll still be around through Olympic absences.
“For me personally, it was great to be able to get a goal and use that as momentum going into the Olympic break,” Charley said. “I think you got a taste of seeing how deep our team is, so I’m pretty excited for these upcoming weeks.”
2. 2019 flashbacks, anyone?
I hope I’m not the only one who saw Sunday’s lineup and immediately thought of the last time Sinc played as a dual No. 9 for the Thorns—specifically alongside Tobin Heath in Portland’s Very Weird last two games of 2019.
Fortunately, things were different this time around. Parsons said Tyler Lussi, Sophia Smith, and Morgan Weaver were all dealing with small injuries going into the match, and Charley had taken some time off during the international break for personal reasons.
(It was probably less fortunate for Elizabeth Ball—both in terms of her team losing the match and in terms of being on the receiving end of an interesting yellow card for “the offense of handling the ball to stop a promising attack,” according to match officials.)
The Thorns coasted to a confident 3–0 win against Racing Louisville last night on the strength of goals by Angela Salem (!!!), Rocky Rodríguez, and Lindsey Horan. Although Louisville struggled to put together much of an attack, it was one of Portland’s most complete performances all year. Even with Christine Sinclair unavailable, their usual game plan worked exactly the way it was supposed to, and just as important, the gals showed progress against their perennial bugbear of ludicrously unlucky finishing.
1. The press, perfected
On the defensive side of the ball, Portland’s press clicked last night better than it has all season, barring maybe the 5–0 Red Stars blowout. They didn’t do anything new, they just looked extremely well-organized at the same scheme they’ve been implementing all season.
In broad strokes, the Thorns’ pressing strategy in the defensive phase consists of encouraging their opponent to move wide, cutting off options into the center of the field, and trapping them on the wings. Here’s an example of how that worked last night:
Clip cortito y editado con energía de domingo, pero cada vez es más y más importante no solo presionar a la pelota, sino presionar espacios y presionar receptoras. Thorns hace esto de manera impecable. pic.twitter.com/OxL9zEM7eq
As Tony points out, most players aren’t pressing the ball here, but constricting the space and limiting Louisville’s options when it comes to passing centrally. After chasing the ball to outside back Emily Fox on the left wing, Fox only has one option, which is to pass backwards to center back Kaleigh Riehl. Riehl, in turn, has no options going forward and has to throw the ball away.
The Thorns also deployed a suffocating counter-press that bore fruit several times—including a moment that led indirectly to Salem’s opening goal in the eighth minute.
The Thorns have just lost possession here, but—because of Rodríguez, Weaver, and Horan cutting off passing lanes, and Simone Charley hovering near Fox—Louisville midfielder Freja Olofsson has nowhere to pass but straight back:
Riehl receives the pass, but quickly gets hemmed in herself, as Weaver and Charley both charge toward her, and Rodríguez and Dunn mark Olofsson and Fox, respectively, eliminating them both as options:
Dunn and Rodríguez close in and, with no remaining choice besides booting the ball to the moon, Riehl dribbles straight into the trap the four Thorns players have created:
From here, Weaver strips the ball off Riehl, dribbles a few yards to the left, and takes a powerful shot that bounces off a Louisville defender for a Thorns corner. Racing is sloppy clearing the ball on Kling’s initial service, and it eventually falls to Salem, who scores.
2. The midfield balanced structure and fluidity
The midfield last night consisted of Salem, Rodríguez, Horan, and Dunn, who slotted in for Christine Sinclair as the captain had already departed for the international break. The beautiful thing about this group is that Dunn, Rodríguez, and Horan can all play any central midfield role, so what we saw was quite a bit of fluidity among the group. Dunn, nominally the No. 10, would drop deep fairly often, with Horan and Rodríguez often making runs into the box ahead of her. Salem, the No. 6, had the most restricted role, but still roamed quite a bit.
Heat maps for Dunn (left) and Salem (right) are below:
Data from Wyscout, courtesy of NWSL Analitica
It’s clear which player is which. Salem, the No. 6, has more actions in Portland’s defensive half (of course, Portland spent most of their time attacking, so no one did a ton back there), while Dunn hung out a lot in the space between Louisville’s midfield and defense, as well as getting into the box. But there’s also non-negligible overlap between the two players; Dunn dropped deeper at times, and Salem also got forward into that same pocket outside the 18.
After the game, Salem noted that the midfield “felt really fluid” and explained the group has been working on their organization, saying, “Sometimes with [our] midfield, we’re not always balanced, because we have such an attacking mindset in there. The focus has really been on just creating balance and holding space and staying disciplined. I think the midfielders all did that tonight.”
Here are the two No. 8s, Horan (left) and Rodríguez (right):
Data from Wyscout, courtesy of NWSL Analitica
These two have a little less freedom than Dunn, but only horizontally, as each of them mostly sticks to one side of the field. Vertically, they both spend significant time in both halves of the field.
Like the team’s press, none of this is new—what I wrote above is the definition of a box-to-box midfielder—but last night, it all snapped into place in a new way, with everyone choosing their moments to get forward while staying attuned to the movements of the other three and ensuring they weren’t leaving areas of empty space. Salem is the holding mid, but all three of the others could be seen playing deeper than her at times. This is what you get when you put together three players who are all among the best in the world at their preferred position, and almost as good at a handful of others, and give them a few months to train together.
One other thing I want to point out from those heat maps: Horan? She does a lot! We all know this, but even if you know it, she does more than you probably realize.
3. Some numbers
This was another very lopsided match: The Thorns registered 28 shots to Louisville’s 4, putting 12 on frame. Louisville had zero shots on target.
As dire as Racing’s offense was, however, it’s also worth noting that defensively, they put up more of a fight than Chicago in their big loss, or the Reign in their Challenge Cup match. Obviously, they didn’t succeed in stopping Portland’s attack, but there was visible organization in their press, so it’s not like they rolled out the welcome mat for the Thorns. In the first half, they won 25 duels to the Thorns’ 17. That dropped to 23 and 26, respectively, in the second half, likely as Louisville’s arduous journey to Portland caught up with them.
Finally, Portland significantly out-possessed and out-passed their opponents: 59.6% to 41.4%, and 517 to 375 total passes, respectively. As with the duel numbers, the second half was substantially more lopsided in both respects.
The Thorns finally put it all together yesterday. In a 5–0 dismantling of the Red Stars, the moments of disconnect and bad luck that had kept Portland from dominating throughout the Challenge Cup fell away, and the girls in (black and) red looked like the fully armed and operational battle station we’ve been waiting for.
Sophia Smith scored a brace, though I’d argue she scored two and a half, as it was her powerful shot that deflected into the net off Tierna Davidson. A Christine Sinclair penalty and a right-place, right-time finish by Tyler Lussi—who pounced when Alyssa Naeher fumbled a save—closed out the scoring.
Read on for some of my takeaways from the weekend:
1. Reversion (progression?) to the mean
This was clearly Portland’s best performance to date, but it didn’t represent a huge leap in quality as much as it did all the pieces finally falling into place. We all knew the Thorns were good; that they hadn’t been this good before Sunday really does look like a combination of bad luck and insufficient time training as a full squad. These goals were always coming. It was only a question of which unlucky opponent they’d get unloaded on.
To review some numbers: the Thorns posted more than 20 shots in two of their five Challenge Cup games, including 26 in the final and 29, a club record, against the Reign. They ended Sunday’s game with 22, including 10 on target and 18 from inside the box.
Look at the xG for the 1–1 Challenge Cup final and the 5–0 regular season opener, and you may notice some similarities:
A lot of the chances that went wasted against Tacoma and Gotham came down to bad luck—Sophia Smith, in particular, looked totally snakebit last weekend—but yesterday, the team also solved a lot of the little miscommunications and disconnects that have shown up in previous games.
“We got everyone up to speed,” said Mark Parsons after the game. “What we saw today happened just before the FIFA [international] players broke off. We were playing like this for a couple weeks. Everyone returned, and what are we on now? Week three, week four? Around the same time the understanding became, rather than people thinking about what we need to do, it’s more subconscious and they’re just doing and having fun.”
2. The midfield had plenty of time and space
The Red Stars changed things up for Sunday and lined up in a 4-3-3, I assume because they were short a midfielder with Morgan Gautrat unavailable. This proved to be a mistake.
To start with, there’s an obvious numerical imbalance in the midfield, with Portland lining up in their usual diamond shape: Chicago’s No. 10, Vanessa DiBernardo, was largely tasked with marking Rocky Rodríguez, while Danielle Colaprico and Julie Ertz rotated between Christine Sinclair, Lindsey Horan, and Crystal Dunn. (When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound good for the Red Stars, does it?) Chicago’s wingers would sometimes help with Portland’s No. 8s, but since they were also responsible for Christen Westphal and Meghan Klingenberg, that always left either Dunn or Horan unmarked.
Still, with a sufficiently organized press, all that can be okay. Except the Red Stars’ press was not organized. This is just before Kling drew the penalty that led to Portland’s second goal:
The defensive disorganization is obvious: Dunn looks to have at least four passes available at this moment. Just before this, Ertz did succeed in forcing Rocky to pass backwards. On the other hand, DiBernardo has gotten lost, caught in the open because she wasn’t sure whether to press the back line or cut off a passing lane, and Colaprico has been caught ball-chasing and left Sinc open. In other words, not only are the Red Stars outnumbered in the center of the field, they aren’t effective in using the numbers they do have.
Making matters even worse, the mismatch wasn’t just numerical, but personnel-related, at many positions. Rocky turned DiBernardo a number of times, Christen Westphal handled Kealia Watt with ease, and Smith and Morgan Weaver stretched Chicago’s back line like taffy.
3. Portland shredded the Red Stars in transition
Speaking of which, two goals yesterday—and a handful of good chances—came from quick attacks in transition, either off counterattacks originating in the Thorns’ defensive third or from fast restarts by AD Franch. Smith and Weaver looked unstoppable, with Weaver sprinting at the back line to receive a long pass and Smith making the second run behind her. Franch’s distribution, not just fast but pinpoint accurate, is also to be lauded here.
This was another area where Chicago’s disorganization, and eventually (understandably!), a palpable sense of defeat, undid them. In the sequence leading to Smith’s second goal, three of the Red Stars’ defenders are sprinting shoulder-to-shoulder toward their goal after her. Then Arin Wright tries to hold Smith offside in what looks like a spur-of-the-moment decision—and ironically, Wright is herself the one keeping Smith onside, albeit just barely:
It’s a small moment, but it feels emblematic of how far out of step Chicago was throughout the game.
In short, we shouldn’t expect Portland to be this dominant in every game—but we did get a good look at the tools that are available when the squad is at full strength.
It has been a while since we’ve heard the words “10 a.m. means nothing anymore” on a Thorns broadcast. And while I—and many others—miss listening to Ann Schatz when I stream Portland home games, it’s probably good to not tell your fans that 10 a.m. means nothing ahead of a 10 a.m. tournament final.
So, I may not have gotten anything from the McDonald’s breakfast menu on Saturday morning, but I did watch the Thorns lift the 2021 Challenge Cup trophy at Providence Park after beating NJ/NY Gotham FC on penalties.
Here’s what I took away from the match.
1. A couple goals were scored
For two teams who have conceded a total of five goals across a collective eight matches during the Challenge Cup’s group stage, both of the game’s goals felt incredibly silly.
Christine Sinclair did a pretty fun thing early on, in which she took the ball off Carli Lloyd (who then ran into Sinclair rather than trying to take the ball back), turned, took a couple touches before goal, and got the shot off as Gina Lewandowski made a half-attempt to step to her. It was a good chance on Sinclair’s part, even as it was a pretty foolish lack of defensive pressure on Gotham’s.
Still, the NJ/NY side got their payback when Lloyd headed Imani Dorsey’s cross into the back of the net in the 61st minute. Like Sinclair’s goal, it’s not particularly good defense; Becky Sauerbrunn either misread the ball or wasn’t aware that Lloyd was standing right there and didn’t jump high enough, and AD Franch was caught watching as the ball spun into the back of the net. (Admittedly, it’s close enough range that it would’ve been impressive if Franch had gotten there, but it’s got to sting when you’re not fully set for that shot.)
2. Minus the aforementioned goal, Portland’s defense is scary good
When Mark Parsons talked to media ahead of the Houston game, he said Natalia Kuikka was playing at a three or four out of 10 compared to her potential. I’m still trying to fully process that comment; to me, she’s been easily among Portland’s best players this year, and the thought that we’ve seen less than 50% of what she’s capable of is absolutely wild.
All this is to say Kuikka had yet another stellar game for the Thorns, especially in the first half. At some point during the first 45 minutes, I wrote “Kuikka vs Monaghan is a silly matchup” in my notes, and I think that sums up the defensive end of things pretty well. On the offensive side:
And she wasn’t alone. Kelli Hubly deserves a shoutout for her work throughout the morning, and so does Meghan Klingenberg, who did a fantastic job of containing Gotham’s attack.
Parsons gave Kling just that, in response to a postgame question about her attacking presence:
“I love her attacking play. I think in decision making, build up, some of the passes that she’s playing in behind the back line, the distribution, the crossing, the crossing quality, how many goals, she could she could have shot. Let’s talk about how to defending because Gotham went after her a little bit today. Purce moves over to the other wing after 30 minutes in the first half, because she couldn’t get a look on Kling. And Monahan struggled against her. We saw against Houston with Prince, Kling has come up absolutely big. And you know, in training, we’ve had some one-v-one all out wars with, with Kling being someone that people just can’t beat. Her technical one-v-one defending ability is some of the very, very, very best.”
Photo by Matthew Wolfe
3. PKs!
Portland may have won the Challenge Cup at home, but they also did so in their first ever penalty shootout. I don’t really want to run through the whole thing—it was very stressful live, and we don’t need to bring it up again—but I am still very much in awe of Franch’s save to win the Thorns the trophy. She deserves both the roses between her teeth.
A snippet from yesterday’s presser with Franch and Kling:
Katelyn Best: You guys have won two trophies for the Thorns now. I’m just wondering how you would rate the actual Challenge Cup in terms of its aesthetic and utilitarian qualities.
Kling: We’re rating the trophies now? That’s hilarious.
I just like that it’s a cup. You know, we call it a cup. They gave us a cup.
Franch: We drank from the cup.
Kling: We drank from the cup.
[…]
Kling: Honestly, if you’re rating the cup, I would say I really like the big handles. I feel like the big handles are big here.
Franch: Yeah, you can hold it.
Kling: Yeah.
Franch: Two people can hold it.
Kling: I mean, you’ve got to give it a rating out of 10.
Franch: Maybe you could have a couple more handles, and it would be a 10.
Kling: More handles? How many more handles do you need?
Franch: For everybody.
Kling: I just want it to be a bigger cup.
Franch: So you can fit in it and bathe in it?
Kling: Yeah.
6. I still don’t know what Simone Charley’s yellow card was for, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask
The Thorns earned their third victory of the Challenge Cup last night, a 2–0 win over OL Reign, which clinched their spot in the championship on May 8. A beautiful free kick by Lindsey Horan in the 17th minute and a weird chaos goal by Simone Charley early in the second half were the difference between the two teams. Here are a few of my takeaways from the match:
1. “I hope [my rose] never dies” -Crystal Alyssia Dunn Soubrier
Crystal Dunn made her long-awaited Thorns debut last night, and as promised, she’s getting a lot of freedom to roam and create. On paper, she slotted in at the No. 8 in the midfield diamond, but she played that role a little differently from how Rocky Rodríguez has been handling it. She was very much still in a box-to-box role, but tended to sit higher up the field in the attack, often swapping places with Christine Sinclair as she found space between the Reign’s lines.
We’ve been misled a little—Merritt Paulson said at least once Dunn would be playing at forward—but I love her in this position, especially since it lets both Sophia Smith and Simone Charley fit in the lineup. Mark Parsons’s attitude toward this role seems not unlike how he outlined Tobin Heath’s job; in short, get her the ball in possession and let her figure it out.
At times, Dunn, Smith, and Horan looked to not quite be on the same page as each other and the rest of the team, but that’s understandable given how little training time they’ve gotten since the international window ended.
2. The Reign didn’t really show up
The team formerly known as the Seattle Reign put up a pretty lackluster opposition last night. For a lot of the first half, they struggled to defend in an organized way, often giving the Thorns too much time and space, not choosing the right moments to press, and leaving players unmarked and passing lanes open. I am struck by this image of all of Becky Sauerbrunn’s passes, which shows how content the Reign were to let her make one particular entry pass into the final third over and over:
When the Reign did apply pressure, they often focused on Lindsey Horan, and they did succeed in turning her back towards her defense a number of times. At other moments, though, she either broke through the pressure or combined with Sinclair or Dunn to keep moving the ball forward. On top of those players’ individual skill, Portland often had an overload in the midfield, with Natalia Kuikka and Meghan Klingenberg pushing forward and Smith dropping back.
The Thorns also found a number of chances on good old-fashioned balls over the top, as Sauerbrunn and Kelli Hubly were both given as much time as they wanted throughout the first half. Again, sometimes that didn’t matter—Hubly hit a few that were pretty aimless—but with Charley’s speed and dribbling ability up top, that route is a real threat for the Thorns.
The Reign switched on more in the second half, especially once Jess Fishlock and Megan Rapinoe came on. Those two players both looked to have some ideas going forward, and Fishlock in particular (no surprises here) provided defensive grit the midfield had mostly lacked. Nevertheless, Tacoma’s back line kept making weird errors, and their offense was unlucky on the handful of chances they put together.
3. Um?
Sort of a subsection to the last one: I don’t want to take anything away from Lindsey Horan’s free kick, which was gorgeous, but it’s not hard to see what’s about to happen here. I’m not sure why the Reign were set up like this:
4. Some highlights from the stats
Like they did against Kansas City, Portland significantly out-passed the Reign, with 79.5% accuracy at full time against their opponents’ 71.3%. Six Thorns starters completed at least 80% of their passes, led by Kuikka at 86.2%.
Charley had a record-breaking night:
Simone Charley subbed out after 68 minutes. Finishes the match with 1 goal 6 shots on target (most by any NWSL player since 2019, most by Thorns player in Opta era 2017-) 9 shots (most by a Thorn since 2019)#BAONPDX
The Thorns played the Chicago Red Stars to a 1–0 win in Bridgeview, Illinois last night; Morgan Weaver, fresh off a cleared red card that probably should’ve only been downgraded to a yellow, scored the lone goal of the match off Portland’s only shot on target.
About 30 minutes into the game, my roommate came into my room and asked who I thought would win. I said Portland, 1–0, and that it was going to be an otherwise unexciting game. For the most part, I was right.
1. We did watch a first half of soccer
I was pleasantly surprised by how the Thorns played for most of last Friday’s match. They looked sharp and energized and direct and not like a team playing their first game since October; having Riveters in the stands for the first time in over a year probably helped. Which made last night’s performance—full of sloppy passes and a lack of offensive… anything in the first half—stand out a little more than it would have as the second game in any other season.
After the match, Kelli Hubly said the field was bumpy and made the Thorns “a little bit weary of [our] passes and our touches.”
Portland ended the first half with a 64.2% passing accuracy, which, in my mind, sums up the overarching feeling of those 45 minutes pretty well.
2. Marissa Everett-Tyler Lussi
“Second half, we really went out there and proved to everyone that we had the energy and we were going to win this game,” Weaver said, and Tyler Lussi’s 52nd minute shot was the first hint of just that.
On its own, it was a great run from Lussi. She did well to make the most of her opportunity and hit a left-footed shot. Red Stars goalkeeper Cassie Miller was caught watching as the chance—unfortunately for Lussi and fortunately for Miller—deflected off the crossbar.
But I also want us to take a second to sit back, relax, and (re)watch this absolutely wild curled ball in from Marissa Everett to set up Lussi’s strike:
I’m not sure that I took all that much away from watching this game live, aside from the aforementioned points. Not that the rest of the match was uninteresting: the Meghan Klingenberg as a No. 8 experiment continued, we got to see Emily Menges take the field for the first time this year, and Meaghan Nally made her Thorns debut (at forward!).
But—while I don’t know that I have anything to say beyond what Katelyn’s already written on her—the 20 minutes we saw of Natalia Kuikka at right back were incredibly fun, and I’m excited to watch her play out wide as Portland’s defense returns to full strength.
On Friday night, the Portland Thorns posted a video of the incident between Morgan Weaver and Kristen Edmonds with the words “Morgan Weaver is innocent.” Both fans and media called them out, pointing to the fact that framing a white woman as “innocent” in an on-field altercation with a Black woman perpetuates racist stereotypes that frame Black women as aggressors and white women pure and incapable of harm.
The Thorns organization also responded to a tweet from Sarah Gorden, who criticized the initial tweet, saying “the intent of [their] post had an unintended impact.” That’s an acknowledgement that the post caused harm—to whom or how isn’t made clear—but nothing more.
The club deleted the initial post this morning, but has yet to apologize for the language it used.
The intent of the tweet may have been simply to support Weaver as a Thorns player and to dispute the official’s decision, but it became clear shortly after it was posted that the choice of words had an unintended but very real impact on Black players and fans. Language matters, and good intentions don’t absolve us of responsibility.
The Rose City Review is calling on the Thorns organization to issue an apology for the language they used in Friday night’s tweet. Deleting a post after five days of fan pushback—and dismissing those who called it racist during that time—is not good enough. Last summer, when conversations about race in America were in full force, the club repeatedly expressed its commitment to racial justice. The first part of such a commitment always has to be listening to and believing those harmed by racism.
We stand with the Black players, fans, and media of the NWSL and will always strive to hold ourselves accountable to this same standard.
The Thorns kicked off their 2021 Challenge Cup last night with a 2–1 win against the nameless team from Kansas City, thanks to goals by Rocky Rodríguez and Tyler Lussi. What was mostly a routine and successful first game by a Portland team missing a number of players to international duty and injury turned sour toward the end. Danielle Chesky issued a record-setting four red cards, one to Mark Parsons, and a mass scuffle broke out between the two teams. Here are a few of my thoughts:
1. Things started well and were mostly normal
Up until the last three minutes of this game (more on that later), it really felt like the story was going to be that this was a solid first outing for a short-staffed Thorns side against a brand-new Kansas City team that looked to still be finding their feet and struggled to dictate the game.
The Thorns started a few players in new positions—Rodríguez at the No. 6, Marissa Everett at the No. 10, and most delightfully, Kling at the No. 8 (again, more on that later)—but stuck with the 4-4-2 diamond from last season and deployed a game plan we’re used to seeing. They mostly defended well, working to keep KC out of the center of the field and looking to trap them on the wings. Offensively, they found success on set pieces and through direct attacks in transition, as well as using combinations between Kling, Rodríguez, and the overlapping runs of Madison Pogarch and Christen Westphal to break lines of pressure and get into dangerous areas.
Kansas City, meanwhile, often looked to trap Portland centrally. It sometimes worked, but more often ended either in a foul or with Kling or Rodríguez breaking the pressure and sending the ball into empty space between KC’s midfield and back line. In the second half, the visitors started to find more success defensively—while Portland’s defensive structure sometimes broke down—but the Thorns held on for the win despite a second-half goal by Amy Rodriguez shortly after Portland’s second. At the end of the game, one stat painted a clear picture of the gap between the two teams: Kansas City had just one player with a passing accuracy of 80% or higher, center back Rachel Corsie, while Portland had five, including Rodríguez.
All in all, it was a strong debut for Portland—not without some miscommunications and errors, but fewer than we might expect in a more normal year.
2. Meghan Klingenberg had a big day
Much of the Thorns’ offense last night went through Kling, who translated her status as a leader in the locker room into a shift as team captain—playing in central midfield!
I never would have anticipated this move from Mark Parsons, but as the game played out, it made sense. For one thing, Kling has always been an attacking-minded player, both as an outside back and at UNC, where she did shifts on all three lines. In addition, this Thorns formation involves the two No. 8s spending a lot of time out wide, something that added a new wrinkle to Lindsey Horan’s play last year. In that sense, her role last night shared similarities with her usual spot at left back: she linked up with Po to create wide overloads, sent in crosses, and defended the wing.
But she also did some things I’ve never seen her do with my own eyes. She dribbled and passed through the center of the field, broke through pressure from Kansas City, and worked to set up chances centrally. She looked confident under pressure and set a lot of Portland’s attacks in motion. It was strange to watch, like seeing your school librarian at the grocery store, but also very fun and on the whole pretty successful. When I asked her about it after the game, she had this to say:
“Well,KatelynBest,Ithinkthat,youknow,thathappenstomeallthetimeinpractice,andnoweverybodyjustgetstoseeitinthegame [laughs] Youknow, in rondosandallthesedifferentthings,I’maskedtohandlepressurefromallsides… I’vebeenaskingforyearstoplayin the [No.] 10—givemeashot,givemeachance,Mark,givemeatryout!And I finallygotone,sohopefullyIliveduptothetryout…Ithinklasttime,ItalkedtoAnson [Dorrance]thismorningbecauseit’shisbirthday.AndItoldhimthatIwasgoingtobeplayinginthe[No.] 8andhe’slike, ‘oh,you’llbefine.Youplayedthereforforusincollege.’Soitmademefeelbetteraboutit.”
3. Uhhhhhh
After a mostly straightforward 89 minutes, things got weird. There’s no need for me to rehash what we all saw, but I do want to say that multiple things can be true, and these are some things I believe to be true:
Danielle Chesky has a bad reputation for a reason; she’s already officiated games that turned ugly, she missed a number of clear calls in this one, and she probably should not be working at this level anymore. The quality of refereeing in the women’s game is a real issue and reflects a disparity with men’s soccer.
Morgan Weaver deserved a yellow. She clearly wrapped her arm around Kristen Edmonds’s waist, which seemed to be what caused them to both fall down. She then very clearly shoved Edmonds. That’s not nothing! Obviously Edmonds escalated and deserved to see red for that, but it defies reason to say Weaver did nothing wrong.
We’ve all been guilty of using language that seems innocuous to us, but might be loaded for other groups for reasons we don’t see in the moment. It’s a crucial skill for those of us with privilege—whether that’s based on race, gender, orientation, whatever—to be able to listen to marginalized people and admit when we made a mistake.
Simone Charley. Unrelated to the photos from Thorns media day. Photo by Kris Lattimore.
Well, you saw the title of this post. Let’s not waste any time gabbing away, hm?
11.
This one is good because Meaghan Nally’s friends and family get to enjoy her radiant smile, and also her enemies can see how strong and healthy her teeth are to know she will not be easily defeated.
Four women who went to Harvard Law are starting a boutique firm together. The office is a casual environment—one of them even brings her dog to work—and they do lots of pro-bono work for low-SES and undocumented clients. “We’re sort of like a family,” they say.
A true story about me is that one time Nadine Angerer called me a “soft egg,” which I guess means I’m squishy and delicate? It wasn’t an insult, but it also wasn’t a compliment. It was just an observation, like everything Germans say. Then she laughed good naturedly like this:
The most popular girl in school asks you to prom. She could have gone with anyone, but she chose you, the eccentric loner who eats lunch in the library and listens to bands no one else has heard of. You’re so different from everyone else, and she just wants to get to know you.
The girl who sits next to you in pre-calc asks you to prom. Your only real interactions are checking your homework together and passing notes about substitute teachers. She knows you don’t know each other very well but she thinks you’re really funny and thought it might be fun to hang out for the night? She really hopes this isn’t weird.
You’re sixteen years old and you just read one of your poems at an open mic night for the first time. Your big sister is going to college an hour away, and you invited her, but you weren’t sure if she’d come—but she did, and she’s so proud of you.
Oh, hello. Surprised to see me in your chambers? I’ve been waiting for you. That’s right, I know all about what happened to the queen’s prized jewels. The captain of the guard awaits only my command. You won’t last long in Her Majesty’s dungeon—and just when we were getting to be such good friends! Unless… we can work something out?
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