(Finally) Tordin Time

Pietra Tordin immediately announces herself as an offensive weapon in her first career start, and the Thorns steamroll over Houston 4-1

May 19, 2025

Game #10: Portland Thorns 4 - Houston Dash 1
4 wins - 4 draws - 2 losses
16 points | 4th place

At this moment, the Thorns and Dash find themselves at completely different places in the NWSL standings. Portland, with 16 points, sits in 4th place. That’s the same amount of points as the 3rd-place Orlando Pride, and just one point behind the 2nd-place San Diego Wave. With 10 points, the Dash sit in 12th place, craning their necks to look up at the playoff spots.

But, at the moment this game kicked off, the teams were relatively even. In fact, if Houston had won the game, then both squads would each be holding 13 points today.

Those high competitive stakes make it all the more confusing why the Dash played both sides of the ball incredibly conservatively in the first half. Close-ups of Houston players saw a vaguely bored and annoyed team that was rarely talking to each other. The Dash took about 40 minutes to get off their first offensive shot on goal. So, not much was happening on that side of the ball.

Then, defensively, Houston sat back incredibly deep, and did not pressure the ball even when the Thorns advanced it into the final third. Here’s a snapshot from early in the game when Sam Coffey can literally stand still in an attacking position, getting a breather while taking a leisurely gander around to see if anyone is open:

Let’s contrast that with a moment from a recent game, against the Orlando Pride. Coincidentally, Coffey has the ball at the same point in the field at almost exactly the same second of the game. While the Pride have gone through a relative slump this month, the difference in intensity is obvious, even in a still image. Two Orlando defenders pursue Coffey with the ball, with a third defender as back-up, all working in concert to push Coffey up against the sideline:

Since Houston wasn’t putting any of this type of pressure for the Thorns to simply keep possession, Portland immediately began firing an avalanche of shots on goal. And, eventually, many of them went in:

26’: Tordin monster solo effort

There has been clamoring here at Thorn Town for rookie Pietra Tordin to get a much larger minutes load, due to her obvious high work rate, aggression, and physicality. It may have taken squad rotation for the upcoming CONCACAF W Champions Cup (more on that tomorrow) for Tordin to receive her first career start in this game. It’s a high-pressure moment for a young player who has been kept out of the first 90% of games for about three straight months— and Tordin unquestionably made her case to be a regular starter.

After receiving the assist from Mimi Alidou, Tordin still has a lot of work to do, being surrounded by six Dash players, and eventually sending a powerful finish into the bottom corner. Also, while the Houston players are pretty much in the right place, no Dash player is actually right in front of Tordin to disrupt a potential shot:

30’: Linnehan finishes a Coffey moonball

A scant few minutes later, Coffey delivers a gigantic looping ball, from nearly half-field, to find an open Payton Linnehan in the penalty area. Linnehan immediately recognizes the lack of pressure from Houston defenders, and buries her shot in the same bottom-left corner that had just worked for Tordin.

At this point, it was pretty much one-way traffic for the Thorns, and the game felt effectively over. Still, the clock meant there was a lot of work to do, and Portland finished the game out strong, instead of easing off and letting Houston get themselves back in the game.

45+8’: Coffey converts Tordin’s penalty

As the first half wound down, Tordin was tripped in the penalty area — a play that was absolutely the result of that aggressiveness and high work rate. With Jayden Perry on the bench for this game, Coffey strode up to convert the penalty kick. After former Thorn Abby Smith engaged in some pretty extensive kick-delaying tactics in goal for Houston, she didn’t really make much of a reach or dive for the shot:

It probably wouldn’t have mattered: Coffey put this one very precisely inside the right goalpost. The Thorns have been the recipients of six of the 21 total penalty kicks in the league this year.

54’ Hanks’ turn to solo

Near the start of the second half, Reyna Reyes makes a fantastic sliding interception/pass to Hanks, all with one touch. Hanks then takes it the entire third of the field on her own, ending with a Dash defender on the ground, and Smith also frozen in place, not making a play on a creative, looping ball that dropped in for the score.

Low-stakes mistake

From there, we had a long way to go to finish out the game. Houston actually began to put together competitive offensive pushes in the last 20 minutes — but it was very clearly too little, too late. The Dash’s goal came on a fast break by Michelle Alozie, and it felt unfair to me that it was marked in the record books as an own-goal by Sam Hiatt. It’s an unlucky moment for the Thorns, as Alozie’s shot deflects off of Hiatt’s hip — which suddenly wrong-foots Bella Bixby in goal. I’ve always thought that it took a more intentional touch on the ball from a defender to be called an own-goal. Either way: this inconsequential goal was the first time an opponent scored on the Thorns in the second half all year.

It still doesn’t take away from a quietly sterling year from Hiatt. When she has been on the field this year, Thorns opponents score once every 157.5 minutes — including this little mishap. When she is off the field? Thorns opponents score once every 38.5 minutes. With that stat alone, you could make a valid case that Hiatt has been the team’s most valuable player.

Li’l Notes

Mallie McKenzie once again reshapes the Thorns’ depth chart with her versatility. In her third career start, and tenth overall career game, McKenzie made her positional debut at center-back in this contest, moving from the outside to pair with Hiatt in the middle. McKenzie was very lucky to avoid a card on an early fast-break contest against Houston’s Bárbara Olivieri. The play looked very similar to the moment that got San Diego’s Kennedy Wesley red-carded against Olivia Moultrie last week. Aside from that, it was a strong game by McKenzie. Having such a capable utility defender on the bench will no doubt continue to be valuable for Portland as the year goes on.
For most of the year, Thorn Town has been tracking the team’s struggle with goal kicks. A new, promising step forward in this game: Bixby was instructed to just launch almost all of them to a waiting cluster of players at half-field. While that’s not necessarily an offensive weapon on its own, those kicks are certainly not a weakness. And that actually really does count as huge positive progress forward.
Speaking of Bixby: after an awkward transactional offseason, Portland is actually really succeeding with a timeshare at goal between Bixby and Arnold. After 10 games, the split has gone six starts to Arnold, with four to Bixby. Both keepers are also saving 72% of shots, with a tiny decimal-place difference between them. Now, Arnold has allowed more total goals — but that’s because Arnold has been seeing way more shots per minute. And that might be because: out of the three games Sam Hiatt has missed this year, all of them were started by Arnold.
In addition to Arnold, Bixby, and third-string keeper Morgan Messner, this week the Thorns also signed training camp goalie Hailey Craig to a short-term contract, which will actually only last a few weeks.

Perry earns more years

Every so often on Thorn Town, I’ve got my eagle eyes trained sharp enough on this team, I’ll make a prediction that makes me want to toot my own horn. (Uh, please don’t go back and investigate my league-wide ranking predictions from March. Very scarce horn-tooting coming out of that.)

Back on April 25th, I wrote this about the strong debut of rookie defender Jayden Perry:

The top priority right now for the Thorns’ front office is to get a comprehensive evaluation of Perry: so far, she is just under contract for the 2025 season, scheduled to leave at the end of the year. If the next handful of games go as well as the last few have gone, expect the team and player to agree to a contract extension somewhere around the mid-summer break.

Those words were written after Perry had converted just one of her three penalty kicks on the year. Basically, those handful of games went so well that it would be too long to wait until the mid-summer break, and GM Jeff Agoos quickly signs Perry to an extension through the end of the 2028 season. The deal was announced on Thursday, the day before the team’s game at Houston. Potentially interesting here: there was such an eagerness for both sides to agree to this deal that it got done with everyone on the road. No time to wait!

The three additional years this adds to Perry’s contract is a very significant commitment. Especially coming from Agoos, who himself was an elite central defender during his own MLS career. Perry now joins Caiya Hanks and the injured Morgan Weaver as the only three players on the Thorns who are under contract for that 2028 season. With just seven professional games under her belt, Perry is still at the point of her career when many eventually very good players are still working to catch up to professional speed. The first chapter of Perry’s career has already been characterized by veteran poise.

This offseason, it was very frustrating to watch so many weeks trickle by before Agoos and the front office (including Lucy Rushton and Angus McNab) were installed. That came on January 7th. Perry was then signed on January 22nd. It’s an absolutely phenomenal move to make, especially considering it came in just the first few days on the job. (And, while we’re at it: let’s remember that Tordin was signed almost immediately by the regime, on January 8th.)

Up Next: Mexico Mandate

From Houston, the Thorns have travelled south, down into Mexico, to continue competition in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup, which started last fall. On Wednesday night on Paramount+, the Thorns will take on the Mexican team Tigres UANL Feminil. Thorn Town will return tomorrow with the complete details of just what the heck this is all about.

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