Tag: Amber Brooks

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Soccer Thorns

Four Takeaways: Portland 2, Tacoma 0

Photo by Matthew Wolfe

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:

A map showing Becky Sauerbrunn's passes

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:

A screenshot showing Lindsey Horan lining up a free kick, with an arrow showing the path the ball will take

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:

And most remarkably, the Thorns as a group broke their record for most shots in a competitive match:

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: