Categories
Soccer Thorns

Thorns Win the “League”: Thoughts and Notes

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?

After shellacking the Reign 41 midweek, the Thorns headed to Utah on three days’ rest and managed to grind out a 11 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 Thorns

“I Have to Turn This Shame into Something Better”

Last weekend, Thorns defender Kelli Hubly took to Twitter to voice her support for Black lives and her opposition to racism.

She’s in the minority—most white NWSL players have not spoken up on their Black teammates’ behalf. I was curious to hear how Hubly got to this place. As much as we should all focus on listening to and elevating Black voices, I also think it’s crucial for white people to talk to each other about race, because at the end of the day, white supremacy is our problem. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity; the full audio version is available on our Patreon for supporters at the $10 level.


Katelyn Best: You said in that first tweet that you had been trying to find the right words to say. What was going through your head, and what was the thing that finally pushed you to say, “I’m going to say something even if it’s not perfect”?

Kelli Hubly: I have a lot of close people to me in my life who are Black, so I’ve had a lot of harder conversations where I’ve felt uncomfortable, they’ve felt uncomfortable, but afterwards it ended up being a great talk that I think has helped me grow, and they grow. Before Utah, I had a couple good talks, and then in Utah, I got that picture [from the tweet] and I was like, “I really want to post this.” And at that point, I know—back and forth people on Twitter, some people say, “I don’t want a white person saying stuff,” and some are like, “I would love white people to be saying stuff.” And my thought process was, I didn’t want to say something that drew too much attention to me versus the real issue, which is Black Lives Matter. So I was in a dilemma of what to say that would make it all about Black Lives Matter and not just like, an Instagram post where I look like a good person.

So I actually have a note in my phone of like, all different thoughts that came into my head, because this was over a month where I would be like, “okay, I want to say something, but it needs to be the right wording.” Finally I condensed it, and it kind of came after—our team does these talks. Like, we do them every week or so, usually on a recovery day, and we either read something, or watch something, and we come back and talk about it as a team, our coaches are there, everybody’s there, and everyone’s engaged. We’ll do a big team talk and then we’ll go into like, smaller groups. So we’ve been bringing more attention to just, everyone educating together and educating each other.

We just had one last Sunday, and it just like, really made me feel like I should post. We haven’t had games, we haven’t had really anything that we could be showing the world, like, this is how we feel. We had Utah and we kneeled, we wore the shirts, we were doing that. But we haven’t really done anything since. So it just felt like the right time for me to post, and I confronted one of my really good friends from home and asked her, “hey, how do you feel about this? Be honest with me. Do you think this is the right message getting across?” And she was like, “Kelli, I love this, this is amazing, I love seeing you use your platform.” So I ended up posting it and I got like, a lot of close friends of mine in the Black community who were like, “thank you so much, you don’t understand how much we love hearing a white person use their platform.” So it was just nice to kind of get my view on things out, because I have a lot bottled up and I haven’t known what to say or when to say it.

Take me back—you said that you guys had a bunch of conversations in Utah, and I know that some of that started even before Utah, but where were you at on these issues going into those conversations, and what did you learn?

So, yeah, we started these conversations before Utah, and I actually started the education process even before those conversations with my team. Like, watching the Meek Mill documentary or 13th before 13th kind of like, really blew up recently.

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, in a white area. So a lot of that was so new to me, and I had no idea. I was kind of just like, shocked that this was actually going on. And I felt a lot of shame for a very long time, because as the white person, I’m like, “how are we doing this to other people?” So yeah, a lot of shame, and I kind of just realized like, I have to turn this shame into something better and like, do better, and have conversations with people. When I went home after Utah, I had amazing conversations with my parents about it, because they also weren’t as educated, either. Like, defunding the police, what that truly means—it doesn’t [mean exactly what it sounds like], there’s deeper meaning to it. And just bringing attention to what actually has been going on, because I’ve been so sheltered.

The conversations have been great, because we’re hearing different stories from different players who have had different experiences, and we’ve been super open with each other, and no one’s really judging, everyone’s taking everybody in, and we’re growing together. I’m learning a lot. I’ve read two books about it, and it’s just very eye-opening, and it’s sad that it took me this long to know what truly has been going on.

If it’s taken me, who, I’m a pretty open person—[I’m] open to learning, I want to do what’s best, I want everything to be right in this world. After hearing and seeing, even in Utah, like, us kneeling,  people writing comments, these comments are unreal to me! My bubble is so like, “Black Lives Matter!” and then I go onto Instagram or Twitter and these comments are like, insane! I’m shocked that people are still thinking this way, and it’s like, what can we do to change these people’s minds, just get them to educate themselves a little bit? It’s just crazy.

Yeah, that’s interesting, and I think that I am kind of in a similar bubble to you in that everybody I know sort of is on the same page: kneeling is good, Black lives matter, we agree something needs to happen about police brutality, and then you see people on Twitter or whatever, disagreeing with that, and it’s hard to wrap your head around.

I get furious. I’m like, I need to say something! But I can’t just be replying to all of these people!

I don’t know how much of this you saw or heard about, but during the Challenge Cup there was a lot of discourse around the kneeling. And it’s striking to me that the Thorns are the only team that every single player and every single staff member kneeled that whole time, and—I don’t want to make it about a soccer team—but to me, that seems to say something about the conversations that you had within the team, that were maybe not happening in the same way on other teams. I’m just wondering if you have any insight as to why things might have gone different for [the Thorns].

Yeah, so we, in Utah, had talked about kneeling, and basically said like, how do we feel? Because we kind of wanted it to be us unified together. And basically, we’re a very close team, like I’m sure you’ve heard through people’s interviews. We’re very close and we all really trust each other, so we can have these hard conversations, and if someone felt uncomfortable, we can have that conversation.

So we kind of all decided together. Our coaching staff has been amazing, because they’re supportive of everything we’re doing, and through this whole process they’re learning so much, because a lot of them are foreign, so this is different because they’re not even from America. They’re learning about all of our history, and they’re trying to figure out, “ok, what are we doing, what do you need us to help with?”

So basically, we made a decision, like, if we’re all going to do this, we’re all going to do it, so we decided that we all were going to kneel, and we also decided after the first game, that we were all going to do it in a line together. I feel like we’ve just been really unified, and we have a really good culture, and it’s nice to see and be a part of.

I don’t want to pry into any conversations, but was there any reluctance, were there folks on the team who were like, “ah, I don’t know, I want to respect the anthem and respect the flag,” or whatever? Was there any of that kind of conversation happening?

Yes and no. Some people, it’s family, or just having people, veterans, in their family, so I think that was the hard part, but then when we talked about it, they knew this was the best thing for us to do and they felt good about it. They were able to, say, if their family member said something to them, they were able to have that conversation and express how they were feeling. It’s just been, like, a crazy time, and people from different parts of the country, it’s interesting to see different parents’ views versus like, my parents’ views. So for the most part, I think we were all pretty much on board and felt comfortable doing that.

I don’t know if you watch the WNBA, but they’ve done a series of pretty impressive, very unified, strong statements on these issues. It’s been striking to me how much more unified and I think, frankly, more effective they’ve been as a league, than the NWSL was during the Challenge Cup. I’d love to get your thoughts on this, but I think about the whiteness of the sport of soccer. Do you think that plays a role in how some of these conversations go down?

Definitely. We’ve actually talked about this in our last talk, last week. Basically, soccer’s a super white, privileged sport. It’s expensive to play growing up. You’re traveling, you need support, you need money, basically, to play soccer at a high level. So that’s why I think you see a lot more white soccer players.

But still, it doesn’t give us an excuse for not doing as much as the WNBA. I think what they’re doing is great, and I think looking at what they’re doing, I think it’s sparked a lot of conversations within our team to see what can we do with these games coming up. We’re on CBS our first game. What can we be doing? Can the announcers be giving out facts during our game? Could we like, think of something to put on pregame instead of when the anthem’s playing, we have something else playing, like players talking about stuff going on in the world? What can we be doing to do our part? Because they’re definitely doing way more than us, and it’s been effective. There’s a picture that I saw of the players in the shirts with the seven bullet holes, and I was like, “wow, that is really powerful.” So it like, makes us want to do more when it’s our turn to be on TV.

When you say that you want to continue to support your Black friends and your Black teammates, what does that mean to you? 

So, just knowing that they can come to me whenever there’s something going on, because I know times are hard and it’s frustrating, and it’s exhausting, and I just want to be able to support. Not pry, but just know that I’m always here. And to just pay attention more. I think everyone needs to pay attention more. And everyone just needs to be more kind! Like, I don’t know, the world is just crazy right now. It really bothers me, because I just see so much hate going on, and I’m just the total opposite. I have so much love to give to people.

So, support, educate, and be able to spread knowledge to people. When I went home, being able to talk to my parents more and give them a deeper meaning to things that I’m going through here. My parents are like, “oh, you’re so liberal! It must be Portland!” I don’t even think that way, I’m like, this is what’s right! This is, you know, human rights here. So just being able to support and be the best person I can be and do what I need to do to help. If it’s posting more, if it’s donating, whatever I need to be doing to make things better.

Do you have any highlights from the stuff that the team has been reading, or the stuff you guys have been listening to that you might recommend to people?

I think a great place to start is [Ijeoma Oluo’s] So You Want to Talk about Race, the book. That was the first book I read. A couple of my other teammates have read it because we were going to do a book club type thing, so a bunch of people got the book. So we’ve talked about it, and that’s a great place, I think, for people to start, because it touches on a lot of different subjects, and then basically if you want to know more about that subject then you know, like, this is what I want to zoom in on next time I read a book or something. And it gives facts, which you can’t, like—facts are facts.

It gives great stories, which are sad at times. Like she talks about being pulled over, and like, last year I got pulled over. And not once did it cross my mind that I would be scared. I’m just like, “oh my god, no, I’m caught!” My biggest thing is like, is my dad going to be mad at me? That’s what’s going through my head, but when I read this, I’m like, oh my god, people are scared for their life, where like, they’re tweeting that they got [pulled over]. Like that is so crazy to me, because that’s never once crossed my head. I’m so privileged. So that’s a great book.

13th is great because it’s just eye-opening. I really recommend the Meek Mill documentary [Free Meek], especially if you follow Meek Mill, he’s a rapper. So his story is unbelievable. I watched that and my jaw was just like, dropped. I think it’s six episodes and I watched them all in a day and I was just like, there’s no way this is real.

Then I read another book, it was a memoir of Mychal Denzel [Smith], The Invisible Man. It was interesting reading a memoir, and with voting all going on right now, it was really interesting, because in the book he talks about how when he was able to vote, him and his dad woke up at like five a.m. so that they could go wait in line for two or three hours, to make sure they could vote. And to go through like, those depths of waking up, waiting in line for two hours, to just be able to vote? I was shocked because I don’t think my parents have ever waited that long, I don’t think I would ever have to wait that long if I was at home voting—because I vote by mail-in ballot—but I was like, that’s crazy! I don’t know. It’s just really eye-opening and the memoir was really cool to read, because it’s in his shoes, and it’s just a totally different perspective, because it’s also a male perspective. It’s just been really interesting to read and just know more about.

I think the last thing I want to ask you is, how do you approach conversations with people who you feel are less aware of what’s going on, or a little bit less open to learning? Do you have a strategy that you’ve used?

Well, I haven’t really come across that many people that have not been open to it. I think, because yeah, even with my parents, if they weren’t sure about stuff, like, my mom didn’t know the term “defund the police.” And so she’s like, “Kelli, but like, we’re still going to need police officers!” And I’m like mom, that’s not the point! So like, bless her heart, she’s so cute, and then once I told her, she’s like, oh, that makes so much sense.

So I think not like, attacking people for not knowing, and not making fun of them or not thinking they’re a bad person because they didn’t know. It’s more if they’re willing to be open and learn, you just have to start wherever they’re at, and then build from there, but you have to do it in a growing way. You can’t be negative, because then they could feel bad about it, or go into a shell. We’ve talked about this on our team. And Gabby actually said, “I would give them the book So You Want to Talk about Race.” And I think that’s a great starting point for people. And she was like, there’s facts. You read those facts, like, you can’t really argue them. So I think that’s a great way to start, and then it kind of sparks the conversation.

It’s definitely hard, and you don’t want to start an argument over it. But you also need to have the conversation. So, yeah. It’s interesting, but I try to, you know, just be nice about it. Start slow and then get into it. Like I had a couple conversations with my parents, and then I told them to watch 13th. They didn’t understand like, the war on drugs and stuff. And I mean, I wouldn’t probably, either, if I didn’t watch this.

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Do the Thorns Have a Scoring Problem?

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Categories
Soccer Thorns

Pack It up and Call It a Season

The soccer has come and gone for the Thorns, and for the rest of us, all that’s left to do is stare into the abyss and hope everything else might get slightly less bad at some point.

But first, let’s reflect on some of the big-picture takeaways from Portland’s Challenge Cup experience.

A War of Attrition

No summary of Portland’s Challenge Cup experience would be complete without noting the single overarching theme of the whole tournament, for all the teams involved, which is that the whole thing was very exhausting. The Thorns started the tournament without AD Franch and Sophia Smith, immediately lost Becky Sauerbrunn, and hung on to Lindsey Horan until she sat down in a defeated-looking heap ten minutes after the half in the quarterfinal. I do not know how Raquel Rodríguez or the 37-year-old Christine Sinclair were still ambulatory by the end of the tournament.

More striking than the impact on any particular player, though, was how fatigue shaped outcomes for Portland twice: first when they took down a North Carolina team that had started basically the same lineup throughout the preliminary round, and again when they limped out of that game and into their semifinal against Houston. Keeping up with even a tired Courage side is an extraordinary athletic feat, and the Thorns paid for it.

Diamonds Are(n’t) Forever

Portland played a new formation in this tournament, a 4-4-2 diamond. This made sense for the players they had available: with Tobin Heath sitting out and Midge Purce and Hayley Raso long gone, the Thorns were left with no real wide attacking threats. They did, however, have an excess of quality central midfielders of various shapes and sizes: Horan and Sinclair, of course, plus Rodríguez, Angela Salem, Celeste Boureille, Gabby Seiler, and Emily Ogle.

What was striking about this particular diamond was where the width came from—namely, in large part, from Rodríguez and Horan. In the team’s first outing against North Carolina, that was largely visible as both of them provided defensive muscle out wide, putting early pressure on runs by Jaelene Daniels or Lynn Williams to ease some of the burden off Portland’s outside backs.

That system is an interesting interpretation of what’s usually thought of as quite a narrow formation, and it went a long way toward containing the Courage; what looked weirder was when Horan and Rodríguez attacked from wide areas. The intent here seems to be to keep Sinclair (mostly) central and have her connect play both into the box and to whoever’s out wide, whether that’s Horan, Rodríguez, or one of the forwards. The problem is that lacking both players like Heath or Raso, who can stretch defenses out of shape and beat wide defenders one on one, and a reliable target striker, teams were able to focus their pressure on Sinclair and force her into sideways passes. What the Thorns were left with was a lot of very hopeful crosses and no one to put on the end of them.

Of course, attacking from out wide paid off one very important time, when Rodríguez sent a pass under Denise O’Sullivan to Morgan Weaver, who bodied past her mark to score the go-ahead goal. This is to say the system kind of worked. You could see how it was supposed to work in that moment. But they just couldn’t generate enough chances this way. Weaver, who looks extremely promising but still raw, can’t reliably beat defenders at this level; more important, it’s not the best use of Horan, Rodríguez, or especially Sinclair, who looked stranded a lot of the time.

In short, this was an interesting experiment while it lasted, and it helped the team find some notable success against North Carolina, but it would be hard to justify for a Thorns roster that included Heath, Sophia Smith, and one or more Rumored International Forwards.

Photo by Lucas Muller
Some Success Stories

The pandemic has meant that the Thorns, like several other NWSL teams, never got the chance to finish building their roster—after having purged half of last year’s starting lineup, no less. Kadidiatou Diani, rumored to be headed to Portland for $445,000 a year, would (assuming she could have adapted to the physicality and competitiveness of the NWSL) have provided exactly the kind of creativity out wide the Thorns are currently lacking. Making matters worse, Ellie Carpenter, another key piece both defensively and going forward—and once thought to be the only Aussie who would survive the exodus—left shortly before the tournament.

On the other hand, the players Portland did acquire are all excellent additions. Rodríguez, arguably the most important piece, is the midfield partner to Horan—a second box-to-box player with the right combination of creativity, work rate, and defensive grit—that Parsons has been looking for since the 2017 season ended. Weaver is physically strong enough to body defenders and gutsy enough to take them on the dribble; with a little more experience under her belt, she looks like she could turn into the mythical goal-scoring forward Portland has lacked for years.

But the team made the most progress on the defensive side. Surprisingly for a team that picked up Becky Sauerbrunn in the offseason, that progress doesn’t just boil down to new signings. Christen Westphal was excellent, but the revelation this tournament was Kelli Hubly, who impressed at right back in the opener, then stepped up to fill the vacancy left by the injured Sauerbrunn centrally. She saved the Thorns more than once, and her willingness to step to opposing forwards made her a great partner for the more conservative Emily Menges. Finally, sitting deep in midfield, the team has an absolute bulldog in Salem, who’s been sidelined by injury for a good chunk of her time with the Thorns. All in all, the roster still looks incomplete, but it’s deeper than it looked heading into the tournament.

“The Culture”

If you ask anyone on the team, they’ll likely say their biggest achievement this month was a return to the Thorns’ vaunted team culture, something both the players and Parsons say had slipped by the end of 2019. For all the talent on any given Thorns roster, this is an attitude-first coaching staff, and whether or not players have a certain personality and work ethic often guides both who gets signed and who gets traded away.

Parsons’ focus on building a team-first, relentlessly hard-working culture, and the unexpected results it sometimes produces, is underappreciated—at least outside Portland. This is a team that often excels when the odds are stacked against them, as they did during the World Cup last year, or during the Olympics in 2016. Even when they won the championship in 2017, they were using a (different) formation they had adopted to make up for Heath’s absence earlier that season, and they gritted and ground and, frankly, punched their way past the top team in the league.

They couldn’t figure out how to win that way this time around; the basic concept was a little too makeshift and the bench a little too shallow as the tournament wore on and injuries took out player after player. But if a strong team culture is the foundational variable Parsons and his players say it is, this is a significant step in the right direction.

The state of the culture is basically something we have to take the team’s word for, especially at a moment when no one is allowed to even speak to them in person. But that, plus an organized defense, have been the foundation for Portland’s success in the past, and if they stay focused on those two things, they’re in good shape looking toward 2021.

Photo by Lucas Muller
And Beyond

That’s the good news. The other news is that a wholesale rebuild is still looming for the Thorns, probably sooner rather than later. They have to expect to take some losses with two expansion teams entering, and then, on some unknown date, comes the real inevitable truth: Christine Sinclair cannot play professional soccer forever. It’s said that mileage matters more than years, so this truncated “season” may wind up extending her career, but she’s nonetheless nearing 40.

At that point, it’s anyone’s guess what direction this team goes in. They’ve built their midfield around Sinclair and Horan for the last five years, and one thing that became clear in Utah is that while Sinclair is still quality, she also needs certain types of players around her to succeed. When she departs, the club changes completely, the way things do when realities so long-lasting they feel like laws of physics change. The only certainty seems to be that the Thorns become, fully, Horan’s club. Beyond that? We’ll have to wait and see.

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Soccer Thorns

Four Takeaways from Portland’s Quarterfinal Victory over North Carolina

After wrapping up the preliminary round of the Challenge Cup winless in last place, the Portland Thorns pulled out a thrilling 1–0 win over the North Carolina Courage with a 68th-minute goal from rookie Morgan Weaver.

The match marks the first playoff game that the Courage have lost since the 2017 NWSL Final, and the first time North Carolina has been shut out since last May.

1. Injuries didn’t bode well for Portland early on

Beyond the tournament-ending injuries for AD Franch, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Sophia Smith, Bella Bixby, Lindsey Horan, and Emily Menges were also listed as questionable ahead of today’s match. While both Horan and Menges started the game, Bixby’s right knee injury paved the way for Britt Eckerstrom’s first start since August of last year.

Unfortunately, the knocks didn’t end there. The first half of the match saw both Horan and Katherine Reynolds go down—for Reynolds, in a head collision with Lynn Williams that saw both of them bleeding and Reynolds subbed off the pitch.

Horan was able to come out in the second half, but fell to the ground again in Portland’s defensive box. She was subbed out for Celeste Boureille in the 51st minute.

Especially given the fact that the Thorns have looked uninspired without Horan in this tournament, these early injuries were worrying.

2. Parsons made some interesting defensive choices, but it worked out alright

Portland started the game with Reynolds on the right, Meghan Klingenberg on the left, and an Emily Menges-Kelli Hubly centerback pairing. In her 40 minutes on the field, Reynolds was often left dealing with Williams up North Carolina’s left flank, and found herself burned by Williams a handful of times—including in the first minute of the match.

While Reynolds is a better defender when isolated one on one, the decision to start her over the faster Christen Westphal was questionable, and the Thorns were lucky that the Courage didn’t take advantage by overloading that side with Williams and Jaelene Daniels.

The other somewhat illogical choice, in the first 20 minutes at least, was the partnership between Menges and Hubly. At the beginning of the match, Menges was consistently the player stepping higher to win the ball while Hubly hung back, something that felt counterproductive given their respective strengths. However, the duo figured things out as the match went on, with Hubly more often pushing up to win the ball and Menges stepping to take on players.

3. Believe it or not, the Thorns scored a goal

After scoring a total of two goals in the preliminary rounds—with one of those goals coming off a Horan set-piece header—things didn’t look particularly promising for Portland’s attack heading into this one. On top of that, they’ve looked significantly worse without Horan.

Regardless, the Thorns broke through when Christen Westphal played a pass up the line Rocky Rodríguez. Rodríguez dribbled to the endline and squared her hips to send a low cross front of goal and beat her defender. Morgan Weaver peeled off Addisyn Merrick at the far post to tap the ball in, and the Thorns were up with their first game-winner of the tournament.

4. Britt Eckerstrom had the game of her life

Slipping down Portland’s goalkeeper depth chart to the third string, it was hard to know what to expect from Eckerstrom going into this game. Fortunately, she did really, really well.

If she had any nerves, Eckerstrom worked through them in the first half; her handling was a bit shaky, and she was lucky to catch her own rebound on two separate occasions. She was also fortunate in the fact that North Carolina struggled to put their shots on target, with a handful of sitters hit wide of goal or missed completely.

However, the Thorns ended the half 0–0, and Eckerstrom showed flashes of the fantastic positioning and ability off her line that she relied on heavily in the second part of the game.

And that second half was something to behold; Eckerstrom was everywhere across the face of goal. She came out several times to smother a through-ball in traffic—including blocking a Courage breakaway and deflecting the rebound wide—and got a strong punch to a brilliant Debinha free kick to preserve the Thorns’ lead.

Bonus: #FreeNadine

Eckerstrom was absolutely fantastic today, but it was kind of cool to see Nadine Angerer listed as a sub for the Thorns—even if it was the result of Portland’s first- and second-string keepers being injured. And, yeah, it was a great game, but can you honestly say it wouldn’t have been better if Angerer had gotten a couple minutes at the end?

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Soccer Thorns

Three Takeaways from Portland 0, OL Reign 0

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.

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Soccer Thorns

Third Time’s the Charm

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Soccer Thorns

Just the Beginning for Bella Bixby

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Two Takeaways from the Thorns’ 1–1 Draw Against Washington

The Thorns settled for a 1–1 draw tonight against the Washington Spirit, with Lindsey Horan scoring a diving header off a free kick in the 69th minute, and conceding one, also on a set piece, a few minutes later. Let’s dig into what happened:

1. The Thorns are wide now

With each game in this tournament, we’ve seen a slightly different facet of the Thorns’ shiny new diamond midfield. Against North Carolina, we saw the team’s dual No. 8s, Lindsey Horan and Rocky Rodríguez, put wide defensive pressure on the opposing outside backs and No. 10s. On the offensive side, the duo succeeded in breaking the Courage’s press in the center of the field. In this game, we saw Horan and Rodríguez both spend a lot of time attacking in wide areas, with the bulk of Portland’s chances coming on crosses, especially in the first half.

A diamond midfield is often thought of as quite narrow, but not the way the Thorns are playing. Portland attempted an almost Courage-like 19 crosses, and players all up and down the field—from Meghan Klingenberg and Christen Westphal in the back, to Rodríguez and Horan, to Morgan Weaver up top—contributed in that area. Unfortunately, nobody managed to put any of those in the net—though a few came close.

The attack was less focused down the wings in the second half, with Horan finding a few penetrating passes toward Tyler Lussi. According to Mark Parsons, though, that wasn’t by design. “I think the desperateness to score meant that we were gravitating centrally,” he said after the game. “Width is key, and we’re going to get width from multiple areas. You can see from our forwards and also our midfield, and also fullbacks when the shape allows, and the buildup allows the fullbacks to push on. So it wasn’t a switch, unfortunately.”

The question here—and for once, despite my perennial (and fact-based) insistence that the Thorns don’t actually struggle to score goals, I think it’s a fair one—is who’s going to get on the end of those crosses. Horan, obviously, is an extremely dangerous header of the ball. Other than her, of the current healthy players, Lussi seems best suited to that role, but she seems to still be finding her way into this tournament. On the other hand, Portland did find 10 shots from inside the box, even if only four of them were on frame.

2. Lindsey Horan: too good?

Before the tournament started, I asked whether Horan (tonight’s Budweiser Woman of the Match) is such a dominant player that she ends up posing a problem when it comes to squad-building. At the time, I was assuming the Thorns would be using a three-woman midfield as they generally have the past few years; Rodríguez’s strong showing, along with the backing of a true No. 6 in Angela Salem, have proven that specific concern wrong.

However, I still think there’s a potential issue here. Horan is so good, in so many areas of the field, that Portland would be foolish not to let her do as much as possible. She’s been ridiculous in this tournament, the most impactful single player in any of the games she’s played. She disrupts, sets play in motion, and then moves all the way up the field with it, often ending up taking the eventual shot (or, in this game, cross). In tonight’s match, she produced the majority of the chances, took the most touches, conceded the most fouls, and scored Portland’s lone goal.

It’s been a surprise to me to see both her and Christine Sinclair—with whom there’s a similar issue, if not quite to the same extent—starting every game and playing the majority of the available minutes. Parsons says she’s in the best shape of her life and can handle this week; the Thorns also now have a full, luxurious week of no games. Sinclair, meanwhile, is famously fastidious in her recovery protocol. Regardless, I still wonder why these two players started every game, especially given the amount of squad rotation the team has otherwise undergone from day to day.

I don’t have anything particularly smart to say here, but it reminds me of this: I used to play on a rec-league softball team with a friend who was a ludicrously gifted athlete. He nominally played shortstop, but because our roster tended to be split 50-50 between what I’ll call “real athletes” and “the others,” he inevitably ended up covering half the infield. He’d catch a fly ball, tag a runner, and then sprint 40 feet to ever-so-gently toss the ball underhanded to one of the lesser mortals on the team. On top of that, his movements were graceful and beautiful to watch. When he played, we could win. When he didn’t? Things… were harder.

I don’t think winning is the Thorns’ priority in this tournament, at least not at this stage; I think getting everybody minutes and figuring out how the team functions is the point. What I wonder is whether Horan is so central to the team, because she does so much, that playing without her would be a pointless exercise. I also wonder if, in the long term, relying that much on a single talismanic player might make things harder.