PORTLAND, Ore. – With Wednesday’s training session at Providence Park, one of the most anticipated points of Portland Thorns FC’s 2019 season arrived, yet it did so with little mention of why it was so anticipated. Nursing the scars of 2015, many in the Thorns universe looked at the next World Cup year, this one, encamped in a state of doubt. The last set of absences sunk our team, they reminded. This one may do the same, too.
Yet when Adrianna Franch, Tobin Heath, Lindsey Horan and Emily Sonnett, this week, returned to Providence Park, they did so with the Thorns in a familiar position. The team ended the 2018 regular season in second place, behind the Shield-winning North Carolina Courage. Going into Friday’s match in Sandy, Utah, the Thorns will be in second place, behind (on a tiebreaker) the league-leading Courage.
What happened to that doubt? The World Cup was supposed to sink the season. At least, that’s what the sentiment said, a sentiment that lingered for years despite that team doing so well in 2016, when many of its talents missed time because of the Olympics. It was the myriad absences, the reasoning went, that pushed the Thorns from to sixth place in 2015. But the Shield-winning season Portland had in 2016? Well, that I guess that wasn’t a World Cup.
The Thorns had nine players at France 2019, a number which, if absences explained 2015, should have pushed Portland downward. Instead, thanks to a coaching staff and squad who, rather than be defined by it, met this year’s challenge head on, Portland reached their anticipated moment with triumph, able to look down at much of the NWSL.
“We felt confident in this period that we’re coming out of,” head coach Mark Parsons said this week. “This period has exceeded expectations on how many players would grow in a short amount of time.”
Those players include Midge Purce, who surged to the team lead in goals during her first prolonged stretch playing forward in Portland. They include Elizabeth Ball, who has held down a starting spot at right-center back in her second professional season. They include Britt Eckerstrom, who provided a foundation for the defense while stepping up in goal, and they include Gabby Seiler, whose play in central midfield put her among the team’s top performers over the least two months.
As Tyler Lussi’s Sunday goal reminded a national television audience, there are other players in the team who are capable of contributing. Some will claim playing time as the season continues. Some will settle into bench roles. Some may be caught in a numbers game created by the team’s strong World Cup months.
“Looking at the list of players who just won’t travel (to Utah), these players could be starting for other teams,” Parsons explained, “never mind the people who will be on the bench, for us.
“It’s an exciting time to have so much quality available, and at the same time, we have to harness and bring that together to make sure everyone’s objective is to be fighting for this team.”
That’s why this period was undoubtedly one of Parsons’ most anticipated, too. If everything went right in June, his preseason self might say, it would create a series of nice problems in July: too many players; too little playing time; so many decisions for the coaches. Now, those decisions are here, with an almost-full arsenal of Thorns set to meet the Utah Royals FC Friday (7pm PT, Yahoo! Sports).
Here are three keys to the matchup.
How quickly do they play?
From Parsons, that’s all anybody wants to know. OK, Coach, you have these four World Cup winners back. How quickly will they be in the lineup?
Yeah, about that.
“Because they’re on the same team doesn’t mean they’re in the same spot, returning,” Parsons said, when asked about the potential for Franch, Heath, Horan and Sonnett to step back into the team. “They’re going to be in different spots. We have to be aware of that, and I’m learning that.
“I hope they call can (play),” he continued, “but it’s selection, as well. Yes, there’s the physical and emotional. What are they ready for? Are they prepared?
“I hope that they can all be involved (at Utah), but it’s also tactical, and it’s selection. We have a lot of players playing well, players who are in sync. We have a lot of great talent coming back in … We’ve got a team in a good place, I hope.”
Without naming specific players, Parsons later said, “we’ll definitely see a couple” U.S. players in Utah. Given Dagny Brynjarsdottir is in Iceland for her wedding, Horan might be one of the “couple.” But seeing how vague Parsons was with his language, the best bet would be on zero to four Thorns playing Friday in Utah.
Life on the road (vs. home)
It might be too early to say this definitively, but there appears to be a minor identity problem with the Thorns. On the road, they’re an abrasive team that combines their physical gifts with pragmatism to ruin hosts’ plans. They’re 4-1-3 away there, this season. At Providence Park, though, they become the type of team their road selves foil. Portland is 2-1-1 at home this season, but that second victory, on Sunday against Orlando, featured more drama than persuasion.
“We had to become this road team, and everything was almost built for the road,” Parsons conceded, alluding the Portland playing its first six games of 2019 away from Providence Park. “Tactics, mentality, going in and spoiling the party …
“But you have to dominate at home,” he admitted. “You have to be the superior team.”
He pointed to the first parts of the Orlando match as an example. The Pride certainly helped, in that regard, but Parsons was happy with his team’s dominance. Yet he also pointed to the Thorns’ game against Reign FC as a counterpoint – an example of what Portland tries to do to their opponents away from home.
“A couple of other games, we were in transition,” Parsons said, a nod toward the constantly changing nature of his squads. The team was at full strength in spring, then lose five key players, then lost four more within a fortnight (thanks, World Cup). Now, the players returning from France 2019 have started a new transition. The Thorns can now start striving toward their potential.
“We’re learning to be the dominant team, again,” he said. “We’re learning to be the team that’s superior and has to drive the game.
“We took some big strides in that (against Orlando). It’s a combination of those two things” – the dominant team and the road distributor – “as we go to Utah.”
Speaking of disruptors: Utah
Even after this season’s two losses, the Thorns weren’t as frustrated as they were following their game with Utah – a 0-0, Friday night draw at Providence Park on June 21 that left players upset with their lack of execution.
The chances where there, the feeling was. Utah asked Portland to complete one more pass, win one more battle, make the final good decision. And it never came off. For the first time all year, Portland was kept off the scoreboard.
“They wanted the ball to be in a certain area of the field for us, and they wanted to let us have it, and they wanted to slow us down,” Parsons remembered. “They didn’t want our pace and our energy and our intensity to a factor.”
It was a constant pattern, that Friday night. Portland would appear to attack certain spaces with ease only to, when they approached goal, lack the ability to make a bad chance into a good one. Willing to sacrifice contesting for containing, the Royals challenged the Thorns to craft something on their own. It never happened.
“They wanted to slow us down, and they got us a little bit …,” Parsons admitted. “We had loads of half-chances. We didn’t have the quality to create a good chance, but we had loads of half ones. One of them should have gone in.”
Parsons doesn’t know if his team would see the same approach on Friday. It’s possible, he explained, but there are also two other alternatives.
“I’ll be very honest,” he said, “three things they could do: they do their normal stuff; they do what they did to us here – they changed drastically for us; or, because of their last two results” – losses to Sky Blue and Reign FC – “they can go off in a different direction completely, because they figure they need to change.”
Portland’s solution, per Parsons? Be aware of who Utah has – including three returning U.S. internationals – what those players do well, and don’t make your game plan dependent on other assumptions.
“We have to be aware of their individual threats,” he said. “We have to really strong and clear with what we’re doing, but flexible …
“We have a 50 percent, 33 percent chance of being wrong. (We have to be) really open minded about what they can be, but we just have to be aware of the individual threats … They’ve got other players back in, now, that we have to be aware of.”
