PORTLAND, Ore. – “I wanted a 120 minutes.”
It’s 16 hours after Portland Thorns FC head coach Mark Parsons found out who would face his team in Saturday’s NWSL Championship (1:30pm PT, Lifetime | NWSL Playoffs presented by Tillamook Yogurt), but he’s still unwilling to concede preference beyond advantage. In fact, it’s the second time in Wednesday’s media session that he has mentioned it – his want for both teams (Tuesday's semifinalists of the North Carolina Courage and Chicago Red Stars), facing shorter rest than the Thorns on Saturday, to be tested with an extra 30 minutes.
“Seriously, I wanted 120 minutes,” he reiterates, “because … yeah, that’s my answer.”
He clearly doesn’t want to overthink it. Or, he doesn’t want to think about what could have been. Because come Saturday’s final at Providence Park between Tuesday's ultimate victors in North Carolina (they prevailed 2-0 over Chicago), he only has to deal with what is.
And that “is” is a rematch. It’s a battle of the two teams that have claimed every major NWSL honor since 2015. It’s the game that almost played out to a bludgeoned stand-still during last year’s NWSL Championship in Orlando and, after the team’s three meetings this year, sees a Thorns side defending their title against a Courage team they haven’t beaten since last fall.
“Chicago might have pushed us into a false security because it’s a team that we’ve played and we haven’t lost to, this year,” Parsons said, “and that might have mentally pushed us into a place like with the second game with Seattle, into a false security with what’s coming.”
That second game with Seattle was last weekend’s 2-1 victory over Reign FC, a performance that, for the second straight game, saw Portland concede the first goal only to surge back and thwart their rivals. Two weeks ago, the result was 3-1, with the Thorns steamrolling to a regular-season finale win that clinched home-field advantage for the teams’ semifinal rematch. But five days ago, needing a late Lindsey Horan goal to advance, the battle was tougher.
“There’s no false security with Carolina,” Parsons said. “We know what this means to them. We know what this means, to us. This is two high-quality, fired-up teams ready to go.”
“It was going to be a good match, either way,” Thorns defender Emily Sonnett said, when asked about the result of Tuesday’s semifinal. Her “no, not really” when asked about a North Carolina-Chicago preference was echoed through most of Portland squad, who seemed more concerned with their form than the performance of their challengers.
“I’ve been saying it for a couple of weeks, now: if there’s a definition in the dictionary about peaking, you might find the Thorns’ 2018 season there,” Sonnett said. “I think we were really, really rough in the beginning. Whatever we’re doing, now – whether you’re concentrating on the attack; whether you’re defensive-minded, sticking to a game plan -- I think everything is falling into place, for us, and hopefully into the next game, falling into the same patterns that we’ve done in the past month or so.”
“Whichever team was going to win, it doesn’t really matter to us,” midfielder Celeste Boureille explained. “They’re both good-quality teams. They both have a lot of threats. Either way, we knew that it didn’t matter, for us.”
From the outside, that ambivalence flies in the face of a matchup that has been one-sided, throughout the season. But as the Thorns’ results since the teams’ last meeting suggests, Portland may be a different group, now, then when the teams last met on Aug. 8 in Cary, North Carolina.
That 2-1 defeat was the last of Portland’s season. Since, the team has gone 5-0-1, outscored their opponents 12 goals to five, and gone 2-0-1 against playoff opponents.
“When we have our backs against the wall and we have a big challenge ahead, we find our best, and we are at our best,” Parsons said, speaking to the North Carolina challenge when talking about his preference of the Courage or Chicago. “We sometimes get complacent when we don’t have that.
“Because it’s a rematch,” of last fall’s NWSL final, “because of the way it went last year, we know what we’re facing, and that’s going to bring out the best in us. Because we’re going to be forced to be at our best, it’s not a bad position to be in.”
It’s a position that sparked the team’s six-game run, one that’s put them in position to defend their title, and one that’s convinced some that the Courage, despite only losing one of 25 competitive games this season, may actually be Saturday’s underdog. Playing a final on another team’s ground will do that to you, as will the two fewer days’ rest North Carolina will have, although one of those is mitigated for, now, having gotten their travel day to Portland out of the way.
Still, the Thorns know the task they’re up against, and they know for all the trouble the Courage had against the Red Stars on Tuesday – a Chicago team that has normally played North Carolina very close – the Championship game may present a much tougher opponent.
“The first thing I said to the team this morning is that’s not the Carolina we’re facing Saturday,” Parsons revealed, “and you’re naïve if you think it is.”
