Kansas City – Rose City Review

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?

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, Katelyn Best, I think that, you know, that happens to me all the time in practice, and now everybody just gets to see it in the game [laughs] You know, in rondos and all these different things, I’m asked to handle pressure from all sides… I’ve been asking for years to play in the [No.] 10—give me a shot, give me a chance, Mark, give me a tryout! And I finally got one, so hopefully I lived up to the tryout… I think last time, I talked to Anson [Dorrance] this morning because it’s his birthday. And I told him that I was going to be playing in the [No.] 8 and he’s like, ‘oh, you’ll be fine. You played there for for us in college.’ So it made me feel better about it.”

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.