Tag: 2020

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Soccer Timbers

Late Goals Prove to be Timbers Undoing in Heartbreaking loss to FC Dallas

Photo by Kris Lattimore

Jorge Villafaña turned and put his hands over his face. Diego Valeri started to walk off the field with his head down. Jeremy Ebobisse squatted down and rubbed his forehead.

Seconds after FC Dallas goalkeeper Jimmy Maurer dove to his left and punched the ball away, players in green and gold came to grips with the fact that their season was over.

“In a penalty shootout, anything can happen,” Valeri said, “and it’s just a tiny difference that changed the game. We are very disappointed with the way our season is ending, but our team left everything on the field. That’s why we have to be proud.”

Before Sunday night, the Timbers were a perfect 100% in their three games that came down to spot kicks this season. But penalty kicks are a game of chance, and it was Mauer, not Steve Clark, who guessed a kick correctly to help his team seal a playoff win.

The shootout went eight rounds, making it the third longest in MLS history. As it went on, the pressure to match FC Dallas make-for-make eventually became too much for Portland.

Villafaña, who just thirty minutes prior was the hero after he scored what looked to be the game-winning goal in the 82′, was the player whose missed penalty sealed the game.

“When you leave a game to PKs it can go either way,” Savarese said. “It’s unfortunate because we did everything to be able to win this match until that moment.”

That late moment Saverese referenced came in the 90+3′, just one minute prior to the final whistle.

With the Timbers up a goal and on the verge of advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals, 17-year-old Ricardo Pepi got behind Portland’s back line and slotted a deflected ball past Clark for an equalizing goal at the death.

Up until that point, Portland looked to be in control. But from then on, it was all FC Dallas — right until Maurer came up with the final save on Villafaña.

The late equalizer is the sixth goal the Timbers have conceded in stoppage-time this season. It was also the 15th goal the defense allowed after the 75′, which led the entire league.

Finding different ways to snatch defeat (or a draw) out of the jaws of victory is not exactly a new issue for this Portland team. There have been numerous warning signs throughout the year. Eventually, frustrating results turned into a legitimate trend.

Cracks first started to appear in an Aug. 29 game against Real Salt Lake at Providence Park. With just five minutes and stoppage time remaining, all the Timbers had to do was see out a 4-2 lead. Instead, RSL clawed all the way back and Sam Johnson tied the game at four in the 90+5′.

In late October, the Timbers were on track to beat LAFC until Portland conceded a late goal to 16-year-old Christian Torres in the 90+3′.

Four days later, Portland had a golden opportunity to leap over their bitter rivals, the Seattle Sounders, and into first place in the Western Conference. Instead, Will Bruin found himself wide open at the back post to head in an equalizing goal deep into second-half stoppage time.

And just three minutes into stoppage time against FC Dallas, Pepe’s goal swung all the momentum in the visitor’s favor.

“We, in the last minute, allowed a goal to come in that changed the trajectory of everything that we did well during the match,” Savarese said.

So, what made the Timbers so susceptible to conceding those late goals? It’s a question that could be argued all off-season.

At times, Portland struggled to capitalize on early chances that came back to bite when it entered stoppage time only up a goal. You could argue it is chance, but how much of conceding late is a psychological thing when it happens so frequently?

In the team’s MLS is Back Tournament run, they allowed four goals after the 80′, but Portland found enough goals to win those games. That didn’t happen in the MLS Cup playoffs.

But what was a heartbreaking conclusion shouldn’t overshadow all the Timbers accomplished in a season that spanned from March until November with a four-month break in between.

They won the league’s first––and hopefully only––MLS is Back Tournament trophy over the summer, and played some fun soccer doing it.

After months of uncertainty in 2019, club legend Diego Valeri returned to Portland and picked up where he left off. He ended the season with his 100th MLS assist when he played Villafaña in on goal against FC Dallas.

Gavin Wilkinson and the Timbers front office built up attacking depth over the offseason, and they needed all of it after Sebastián Blanco and Jarosław Niezgoda suffered season-ending injuries toward the end of the year. Jeremy Ebobisse, who broke out in many ways this season, dealt with a concussion over the past few weeks, and didn’t enter the game against FC Dallas until the 88′.

“It’s very frustrating,” Valeri said. “It’s a tough emotion, it’s hard to process now. But we have to rest well and scout the season to see why we had a good season, [find] what the positive things were that we did during the whole season and try to reinforce it.

An argument can be made that Portland was the better side Sunday night. Saverese alluded to that sentiment multiple times in his post game press conference. But MLS isn’t always fair; Portland learned that lesson the hard way against FC Dallas.

“We believed that even though we had adversity and players who were not with us, we still had a group that could go all the way,” Savarese said. “Unfortunately, now we are out and we have to plan for next year.”

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Soccer Thorns

After an Unconventional Path, Natalia Kuikka’s Next Stop is Portland

Photo courtesy of Connect Management Group

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.”

Categories
Soccer Thorns

We Had Fucking Tobin Heath

Photo by Nikita Taparia

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.

Photo by Nikita Taparia

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.

Photo by Nikita Taparia

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.

Photo by Nikita Taparia

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.

Photo by Nikita Taparia

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.

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Soccer Thorns

Please, Come and Gaze into Our Crystal Ball

Photo by Matthew Wolfe
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Categories
Soccer Thorns

Crystal Dunn? Crystal Dunn.

Photo by Matt Wolfe

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.

Photo by Nikita Taparia

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.”

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Thorns Win the “League”: Thoughts and Notes

Photo by Nikita Taparia

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:

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Where in the World is Christine Sinclair?

Photo by Matt Wolfe

After shellacking the Reign 4–1 midweek, the Thorns headed to Utah on three days’ rest and managed to grind out a 1–1 draw against the Royals. It’s been a fun week for the Thorns; some of my takeaways from both matches are below.

1. How does this keep happening?

Below I have made some helpful visuals showing how the Thorns scored their first goal on Wednesday:

Somehow Allie Long—2019 World Cup champion Allie Long—just… didn’t notice Christine Sinclair behind her? And then by the time she did, she just thought, “Ah, well! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

Long isn’t the only one who’s been doing this, though. Here is a similar thing happening in Utah on Saturday. Every single person in this photo except Mallory Weber seems to have their eyes fixed on Lindsey Horan:

Crucial to note here that Sinc did score this, although Abby Smith got a hand on it and the sideline ref didn’t see it go over the line, so it didn’t count. Later on, when it happened again, it did count, to bring the score to 1–1:

So: one way of looking at this is that these teams are defending poorly, and that’s undoubtedly true. If you know the first thing about Christine Sinclair, you have to know not to let her get an open shot on goal like this. You have to know that a loose ball in the box, like that third example, is a huge liability. This is her whole thing! She’s been doing it since she was 16!

On the other hand, I think it’s also fair to look at these as examples of the Thorns offense working the way it’s supposed to. In the Reign example, as hilarious as it is seeing Sinc just tiptoe right behind Long and into that big gaping hole, the hole itself is there because Tyler Lussi’s done an excellent (arguably equally hilarious) job pulling a center back, Amber Brooks, out of position, whereupon Horan easily sprints past her and Taylor Smith to send in a cross.

The second incident seems to be largely Katie Bowen’s fault. She’s marking Sinc on the corner preceding this goal/not-goal, and loses track of her completely as Christen Westphal sends the ball in toward Horan. But! This is also a smart, well-worked play that relies on a great service from Westphal; Horan then bamboozles everybody in using her aerial ability to create a chance rather than go for goal.

The third example, again, is easy to dismiss as sloppy defending from a group of players who should know that this type of situation is Sinclair’s bread and butter (along with some sloppy goalkeeping by Abby Smith), and that’s certainly true—but it’s also true that to create this chance, Horan had to send a cross past Bowen, and Simone Charley had to be in the right place and have the wherewithal to win the 50/50 ball and knock it over to Sinc.

2. But Katelyn what about Lindsey Horan

Stop yelling at me! Obviously, there’s another common denominator here, one that my pandemic-addled brain, increasingly poor at spotting patterns, didn’t process until after I drew all over those screenshots: Lindsey “h*cking” Horan.

We’ve spoken about this before, during and in the wake of the Challenge Cup. Having lost Hayley Raso, Caitlin Foord, and (temporarily) Tobin Heath, the Thorns found themselves thin on natural wide threats. They also needed a midfield scheme that would get all of their best players on the field. The solution was a diamond midfield where Horan and Rocky Rodríguez spend a lot of time out wide, both to help mark opposing outside backs and in the attack.

In different games, Horan has spent varying amounts of time attacking from wide areas, but she’s been surprisingly effective in that kind-of winger role. She attempted four crosses in each of the last two games, just one less than Meghan Klingenberg did against the Reign. (Kling had to sit out over the weekend due to a ludicrous special Fall Series yellow card accumulation rule.) She’s not nearly as accurate a crosser as Kling, but even when those crosses don’t find targets, she’s still creating chances with the help of onrushing forwards ready to scoop up loose balls.

She also, crucially, tends to draw defenders toward her, opening up space for teammates—something that’s been especially effective for Sinc, whose deeper-lying role relies on those spaces when it comes to scoring.

Photo by Matt Wolfe
3. Ok, but

The thing I just said is true, but I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to bask in Sinc’s third goal on Wednesday. Aged 37 and showing no regard for the law, she dribbled effortlessly and cruelly past four (4) Reign defenders. She had just been dunked on by Bethany Balcer and decided to show the damned kids on her lawn who they were messing with. I found the exact spot in the highlights for you :).

4. An ordered list of my favorite things that have happened since last Wednesday
  1. Rocky Rodríguez goal
  2. Christine Sinclair goal (third one)
  3. Christine Sinclair goal (first one)
  4. Rocky Rodríguez yelling “golazo” after scoring
  5. Simone Charley cross to Rocky Rodríguez
  6. Meghan Klingenberg delivering a pregame speech via Bluetooth speaker
  7. Becky Sauerbrunn making a run all the way into the box and almost getting on the end of another Simone Charley cross
  8. Tziarra King (I’m sorry but she’s a star) (I’m not sorry)
Categories
Not Soccer Soccer Thorns

Welcome to the Dark Side

Photo by Matt Wolfe, lightsaber by Katelyn Best

Right off the bat, let’s be clear: the Thorns are not evil. They are a group of human women who play soccer professionally—emphatically not a shadowy warrior cult strong in the dark side of the Force. None of them would ever murder their dark mentor as part of the ancient, never-ending cycle of apprentice betraying master. I doubt any of them even owns a laser sword.

But, I mean…

You know what they say: a rose by any other name would be equally vicious and power-hungry

It’s not like they don’t want us to make that connection, right?

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So, if the Thorns were both fueled and consumed by a supernatural rage, and they did all own laser swords, and if their laser swords were the glowing red of a Dathomirian sunset, what would that look like? In other words, which Sith Lords best exemplify the essences of which Portland Thorns?

Lindsey Horan: Darth Vader

In the 2015/2016 offseason, the Thorns were coming off a dark year. Their season had been thrown into turmoil by the Clone Wars 2015 World Cup, they’d just shaken up their coaching staff, and the roster was undergoing an almost total rebuild. One bright spot on the horizon was Lindsey Horan, the immensely talented young American whose arrival had been foretold generations ago as the one who would bring balance to the Force. Like Vader, Horan does it all, by herself if she needs to: she defends, she sets attacks up, and she scores, sometimes all in a single play.

Christine Sinclair: Darth Sidious

Christine Sinclair may be one of the best goal scorers of all time, but for a player as immensely powerful as she is, her game is surprisingly understated. She’s cool and calculated, always lurking near goal when you least expect her, waiting for the fortuitous moment to strike. She makes an impact even when the other team thinks they’ve got her marked out of the game. And off the field, she’s famously quiet. She’s been in charge for years, and if you didn’t know what to look for, you might not even know it.

Tobin Heath: Darth Maul

A double-bladed lightsaber is the sword version of a cheeky nutmeg: few people can even control it without putting themselves in danger, let alone use it effectively in a duel. Some would call it unnecessarily flashy, but unnecessary flash is exactly what makes millions of people fall in love with the game. In my book, Tobin Heath gets unfairly labeled as all style and no substance too often, but the style? Nobody can deny the style.

Becky Sauerbrunn: Count Dooku

Count Dooku was a Jedi master—trained by none other than Yoda—who turned to the dark side late in his career, setting in motion key events in galactic history. While Becky Sauerbrunn has yet to put on a Thorns jersey, it’s not hard to imagine that one of the most decorated center backs of all time could be a difference maker for a team whose weak point has been defense in recent years. She’s already won two NWSL championships and two World Cups—a third NWSL ring, presumably suffused with dark energy and giving off a faint red glow, would be a great addition to that trophy case.

Mark Parsons: Darth Bane

Mark Parsons isn’t a Thorn, per se, but bear with me: Darth Bane was the ancient Sith lord who restructured an order on the brink of collapse. He introduced the rule of two, which limits the entire Sith order to a single master and their apprentice. When Parsons arrived in 2016, the Thorns were on shaky ground, and he restructured the team in a number of ways, bringing in a largely new roster and building a team-focused culture that prioritizes hard work and effort. The Thorns as we know them today wouldn’t exist without him.