Tag: Reign

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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:

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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:

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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
Soccer Thorns

Three Takeaways from Portland 0, OL Reign 0

Photo by Rob Gray/ISI Photos

The final game of the Thorns Extended NWSL Challenge Cup Preseason ended in a scoreless draw. A late Chicago winner last night means that the Thorns will be squaring directly up with the North Carolina Courage in the quarterfinals.

The Thorns haven’t had the most productive tournament in terms of goals, but if we look at these games as a challenge for a rebuilding squad to test themselves against, they’re getting what they came here for. They’ve faced off against the toughest teams in the tournament and are about to go against the best once again.

New look Reign are not pretty, but they’re effective

OL Reign have been a real mystery so far this tournament. They have a different style of play than anyone in the league has ever had. It hasn’t been great to look at, and the Reign didn’t have a single shot through 30 minutes of this game. But the Reign did not need a win today, and Portland did. New Reign coach Farid Benstiti has made it a point for his team to not lose in this tournament, and his team played a specific game to prevent that above all.

Parsons got his forward rotation wrong

The Thorns started with Simone Charley and Morgan Weaver up top, and with Portland very comfortably parked directly in front of the Reign box in the first half, it seemed like kind of a waste.

You see, Simone Charley Ran Track. She’s fast. She’s also a sprinter who usually does not last 90 minutes because of how much she puts into every forward run. Charley was putting up a real fight pressing the Reign backline in the first half. But with the Reign sitting very deep, it felt like a waste. Charley’s best moments are in the open field where she can put defenders on skates, create separation from her defenders, and create. Up against a set defense, however, she and the rest of the team struggled to do more than cross the ball somewhat aimlessly.

As the game opened up in the second half, Charley came off for Tyler Lussi in what was pretty clearly a planned substitution at the 60 minute mark. Unfortunately, the first few actions of the second half were Charley’s best of the game, with her crossing into the center where no one was waiting, only to put the second service over the bar.

There’s obviously no telling how games will go ahead of time. But most people could probably have told you that the game was going to open up the more that it went on. It was a shame not to have her speed on the break as both teams got more frantic. The rotation in the first game against North Carolina, with Lussi and Marissa Everett eating up minutes and pressing the backline only for Weaver and Charley to come on later, may be one we see against the Courage a second time on Friday.

A makeshift backline once again gets the job done

Emily Menges was not available for selection today after showing up as questionable on the injury report. With Becky Sauerbrunn out for the tournament, Meghan Klingenberg was the only locked-in first choice Thorns player in defense going up against a Reign team that looked, on paper, very strong. Bethany Balcer had to depart early, but Jodie Taylor and Sofia Huerta are both highly experienced NWSL attackers. Yes, the Reign played conservatively, but all three forwards are more than capable of making things happen on their own.

And basically nothing happened. The Reign couldn’t put a single shot in for the first 35 minutes, and when they grew into the game in the second half, a defensive setup that could have been shaky ended up looking solid.

Kelli Hubly has now started three games for the Thorns in central defense. One or two mishaps aside, Hubly looked solid, putting in some strong tackles on Reign forward Yuka Momiki to keep the most dangerous Reign player pretty contained. Christen Westphal looks totally comfortable at right back for this team, providing important offense down the flank.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

This Magic Moment

Photo by Nikita Taparia
“Do you know what? Yeah. It might take us a while to get to where we want to get to, but we’re gonna get there, and you can just remember this fucking goal.”

When the Thorns aired their first-ever home game, against the Reign, last weekend, I recognized almost nothing. Christine Sinclair, of course, was there, looking roughly the same as she had since 2005 and also roughly the same as she looks today. Other than her? Any familiar faces were shuffled out of place. Mana Shim sat on the bench, anonymous. Michelle Betos was in goal for the other team. Alex Morgan, well—that’s an article unto itself, the story of who Alex Morgan was in Portland, who people thought she was, who they wanted her to be, how they remember her today. Allie Long, I guess, was more or less the same player, but she didn’t look the same.

Weirdly, the Seattle Reign, in terms of personnel anyway, felt more familiar. The team underwent massive turnover between 2013 and 2014, but the bones of who they would be over the next few years were already in place. There was Laura Harvey, of course; on the field, there were Lu Barnes, Elli Reed, Keelin Winters, Jess Fishlock.

Ah, Jess Fishlock.

It’s strange to think that we ever didn’t know who Fishlock was, but back then, of course, pretty much nobody in the states did. This was the curse of coming from a country like Wales in 2013—even avid women’s soccer fans simply had no way of watching her. On that day, the commentators (Ann Schatz, may god bless her and keep her, was another familiar feature of that broadcast) explained we should watch the woman who looked kind of, but not really, like Megan Rapinoe.

The crowd didn’t know yet who Fishlock was, how they were supposed to respond to her, but on some instinctive level, she knew exactly who she was to them. “I love a big crowd,” she says of Providence Park. “It’s like a cauldron in there. It’s amazing.”

This is the thing about Fishlock: in her own way, she loves Portland, and Thorns fans, whether they admit it or not, need her. A villain, like a photographic negative, forms and sharpens a club’s vision of itself. Without an antagonist, there’s no reason to watch.

Photo by Nikita Taparia

Fishlock announced herself quickly that day. Despite playing for what would turn out to be an abysmal Reign side—”I already knew by that point it was going to be a slog,” she remembers—she was the best player on the field, for either team.

If you’re reading this, you probably don’t want to hear that. Keep in mind, though, that the actual soccer in the NWSL in 2013 was really rather bad. Few players could quite control the ball; fewer still could reliably pass it along the ground to another player.

Amid the chaos, Fishlock gave us a glimpse into the future. She was physical, of course, but unlike with the thoughtless and often bizarre violence being carried out by those around her (on both sides), there was a purpose to everything she did. As the game went on, she was clearly frustrated, but she was also laser-focused. Her frustration only seemed to sharpen her. This player—physical, athletic, wildly competitive, but incredibly skilled—was the embodiment of what the NWSL would become over the next six years. She was the ideal NWSL player before the NWSL really existed.

As the Thorns went up a goal, then two goals, as 16,000 fans clapped and sang and reveled in seeing their new team for the first time, she knew what had to happen.

“I don’t want us to leave here,” she remembers thinking, “and have them have a clean sheet… We were like, ‘fuck’—excuse my French—we were just like, ‘fuck, if we’re gonna lose, fine, we’re gonna fucking lose, but we’re gonna fucking score. Like, because we’re gonna make sure that these [the fans] are like, dead silent for like, a millisecond.’”

And then, right on cue, she did, cleanly slotting a half-volley just inside the post as Winters knocked Nikki Marshall over. Just as Fishlock had planned, the stadium was silent for a heartbeat. She pounded the crest on her shirt and pumped her fist, and Providence Park erupted.

Photo by Nikita Taparia

Fishlock is the perfect villain not because she’s physical, or even because she dives, but because she is undeniably very, very good. There was no shortage of fouls in that game, but if that was what mattered, Kaylyn Kyle would have been marked down as an enemy, too. What mattered was the goal—the spoiling of the Thorns’ home debut.

That moment, in retrospect, would prove more definitional for the Thorns—not as a team, necessarily, but as a club—than anything else that happened that season, including the championship win. It was as if everyone in the stadium, in unison, suddenly remembered a fundamental fact about the world. Here is our team; here is our enemy. Thus has it always been, and thus shall it ever be.

The end of that season ushered in an era of rapid change in Portland. Cindy Parlow Cone left. Paul Riley arrived in a whirlwind, then blew away in a cloud of dust. Kat Williamson left, then came back, then retired, Vero Boquete and Jessica McDonald both spent short, magnificent stints in Portland, Nadine Angerer became a fixture. Through it all, Thorns fans made regular pilgrimages to a concrete relic in the shadow of the Space Needle, hoping that this time they’d get to drive home victorious, fixing their ire on the diminutive Welshwoman when they didn’t.

A play in three acts:

“I actually miss her,” Nash Drake, the Thorns fan who composed the first tweet above, confessed to me. “The thing about Fishlock is that she understands what rivalry means… It’s kind of like two guys sitting around drinking beer and hitting each other.”

This is rivalry in its highest form: a drama that goes on as long as there’s something for it to go on about, but which both sides, at the end of the day, know they’re choosing to participate in. It’s real, but it’s also not real. We’re doing it because it’s fun.

Wouldn’t it be a shame if it turned out we couldn’t all be friends?