It seemed as though the Thorns were picking up momentum headed down the final stretch of games coming off of a very positive 2-0 beating of OL Reign, but all that momentum sputtered to a halt in their Saturday night home defeat to the San Diego Wave this past weekend. All season the Thorns have been unable to string together three wins in a row across all competitions, which is puzzling due to the calibre of players on the team and the strong culture that the Thorns have been building over the past two years.
Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, but I think that the lack of consistent success comes from head coach Mike Norris being too reliant on certain players and formations as opposed to adapting his deep roster to the specific tactics of the team that they’re playing. On paper, the Thorns are an incredibly dominant team. Against San Diego they had 1.10 expected goals to the Wave’s 0.53 from 15 total shots. Portland had a staggering nine corners and eleven additional crosses into the box. However, none of this attacking firepower was able to translate into a goal.
I may be biased because I voted for Morgan Weaver as the SPOTY, but it frequently felt as though Weaver was playing hero ball, trying to shoot from absurd angles and hoping that something would slip by Sheridan. Unfortunately, none of her team-leading five shots were on target. The lack of systemic breakdown of San Diego’s very strong defense meant that all of the Thorns’ closest chances came off of rebounds or parries by Sheirdan, which were few and far between.
Oftentimes a team’s best eleven players on the team overall are the eleven in the starting lineup. However, because the Thorns have more than eleven starting-calibre players on their roster they have more freedom than most teams. Despite this, Norris heavily favours playing the same players in the same positions game after game.
Looking at the breakdown of regular season minutes, the thing that stands out to me the most is the vast spread between the total minutes played for different players. Sam Coffey and Weaver are the only two players to have started and plate in every game, with Natalia Kuikka, Bella Bixby, Kelli Hubly, Meghan Klingenberg, and Crystal Dunn have started and played in over 90% of the games. That right there is seven out of eleven players consistently getting time together on the pitch, and should theoretically lead to a large amount of chemistry and consistency across games. So, why hasn’t that been the case?
Of the 23 players who have earned regular season minutes this year, 10 of them have played over 1000 out of 1780 (56%) minutes. Nine players have less than 500 (28%) total minutes. Using Sam Coffey’s 1780 minutes as the highest number, 12 players have played more than 50% of the Thorns total regular season minutes, 890. These players are Bella, Kling, Natu, Kelly, Menges, Coffey, Sinc, Moultire, Hina, Dunn, Sophia Smith, and Morgan Weaver, which coincidentally is the lineup that Norris uses most weeks. Of course, injuries to players like Rocky and Becky Sauerbrunn affected their available minutes, as Norris has shown in the past two games that if they are available they will start.
Players like Reyna Reyes and Michele Vasconcelos have earned not-insignificant minutes this year, but have largely gotten them coming off the bench, Reyes typically for Kling and Vasconcelos for Weaver. To go back to the game against the Wave, while Kling was an excellent service provider, she got burned on the wing by Rachel Hill and Jaedyn Shaw multiple times. Instead of recognizing this mismatch in the first half, where the Wave scored both of their goals, Norris decided to wait until the 74th minute to sub Reyes in, but took out Kuikka, not Kling, allowing the mismatch to continue. While Kling has much more experience and is an excellent defender, Norris cannot keep her in the game on principle, and instead must adjust his personnel to the game that is being played at that very moment. Maybe if Reyes had gone in at the half she would have been able to use her speed and dribbling skills to open up the left wing and systematically play Weaver in on goal.
Post game, Norris said, “At halftime we addressed some things. We addressed the energy. We structurally changed a couple of things,” and I would like to argue against this idea.
While technically the Thorns didn’t concede any more goals in the second half, they didn’t look any close to scoring any themselves. There were no formation or personnel changes at the half— it was as though Norris was instead relying on the individual brilliance of the players on the field in order to try and forge a comeback. Unfortunately, even in a league as competitive and chaotic as the NWSL, good tactics will always win out over the individual.
Looking at the passing network of the game, it’s clear that the Thorns heavily relied on the left side of the pitch. However, against a team as defensively sound as the Wave, if one path up the field is being consistently blocked, it’s probably time to try a different way, either more direct up the middle or up the right flank, as opposed to sending in the same passes for Weaver to try her luck on. Adding a player like Moultrie on the field as a ten would be a great idea. Her visionary passes through backline are one of her strongest assets and should have been used as a way for Betfort and her speed or Weaver and her runs to get behind the backline. Unfortunately Moultrie didn’t get enough time on the pitch to showcase her brilliance.
The Thorns have one more home game before the playoffs begin, and it’s probably too late in the season to expect a sudden change of tactics from Norris, who has been so stubborn all season, but I do hope that next year the new coach uses the full depth of the Thorns’ roster.