It’s Challenge Cup time again, and the Thorns opened their tournament on Friday with a 1-1 draw to OL Reign. Even with a couple missed chances, it wasn’t a bad start to Portland’s first non-preseason game of 2022—and it left us with a lot of positives for what this team can become.
The Thorns are generally a team that have high expectations for themselves—take just last year, when they set out with the goal to “win everything”—and they’ll want better than a draw. But with a new team and a new head coach and a number of key players out, I don’t think we can read the team’s performance or the game’s outcome as a bad result.
Thorns head coach Rhian Wilkinson put it best in the postgame press conference. “I thought the team put in a performance, in a lot of ways, that we can be proud of,” she said. Although she said that Portland has room to grow, and that they did miss a couple good opportunities, “they gritted out a tie, and winning teams get points on the road. I was really proud of that piece of it.”
Not only did the Thorns pick up a draw, but they did so without the likes of Crystal Dunn, Madison Pogarch, Rocky Rodríguez, and Becky Sauerbrunn.
Those absences—along with the temporary departure of Lindsay Horan and Angela Salem’s retirement—meant Friday night’s Thorns were in a very different position from last year. Instead of leaning on an internationally-experienced midfield that had at least a couple years in Portland’s system under their belt, the Thorns started relatively young midfield that hadn’t really played together before. Hina Sugita and Sam Coffey—while both clearly very talented—are new to the team, and Yazmeen Ryan played less than 400 minutes in the regular season last year.
It’s not surprising that it took the Thorns a second to settle in. In the opening minutes of the match, Portland looked happy to give the Reign time on the ball, sitting back using pressure to force OL to play out of the back.
In Sauerbrunn’s absence, the Thorns also started Meaghan Nally in defense, who had played 19 minutes for Portland in 2022. Despite a dodgy moment early on, she grew into the game and helped hold Portland to one goal against. Wilkinson called her “unflappable” after the match.
“It took us a second to get organized and communicate a little bit better,” Christine Sinclair said after the match, “but I think we figured it out pretty quickly.”
Even though it was fun to watch Portland’s midfield settle in and more effectively contain world class players like Jess Fishlock and Quinn, I’m not sure how much to read into that performance. Rodríguez, Dunn, and, presumably, Horan will be coming back into the fold as the season progresses, and I won’t be surprised if Wilkinson experiments with formations as she and the players get used to working with each other. Still, Coffey, Ryan, and Sugita all put in solid shifts on Friday, and I’m excited to see how they develop as the season progresses.
“We’re definitely up for the challenge,” Sinclair said, “and we’re only going to grow more and more each game.”
And as the Thorns grow into this new iteration of the team, they’ll still have the likes of a number of more experienced players to lean on. Sinclair, Natalia Kuikka, and Sophia Smith showed as much with the goal they worked to create against the Reign.
Sincy on the spot. #BAONPDX | #NWSLChallengeCup pic.twitter.com/sqm1d1cwHd
— Portland Thorns FC (@ThornsFC) March 19, 2022
