Playoff Plausibility
The Thorns stick themselves squarely in the playoff picture with a 1-0 victory over a full-squad Orlando Pride team
Game #8: Portland Thorns 1 - Orlando Pride 0
3 wins - 3 draws - 2 losses
12 points | 5th place
A few weeks ago, the Thorns lost a game to the Seattle Reign when Maddie Dahlien fired off a wonder-strike of a shot. From a seemingly harmless angle on the field, well-covered by the defense, the ball still lasered its way through the crowd, and purposefully into the back of the net.
This time, the Thorns were on the giving end, not the receiving end, of exactly this type of brilliant shot, coming from defender Reyna Reyes.
When the ball falls to Reyes, at the top of the penalty box, in the 16th minute, it does not feel like a goal is imminent. Portland did a fantastic job of controlling possession in the opening minutes of this game, and definitely did feel like they would be the first team to score — eventually. When Reyes releases the shot, though, the statistic Expected Goals only gives it a 5% chance of going in. And then, the statistic Post-Shot Expected Goals — which is evaluating the shot a split-second later, as it approaches the goal — gives it a huge 43% chance of going in. Reyes gives the shot perfect weight and speed, avoiding a crowd of Pride defenders, while placing it just on the inside of the goalpost. It’s an astonishing piece of career-highlight scoring from anybody — never mind a defender.
While the Thorns would give up the possession advantage to Orlando as the game wore on, Portland’s defense never allowed the dangerous attacking pair of Barbra Banda and Marta to get in a groove. From central defense, Sam Hiatt was especially tasked with tracking Banda — including literally following Banda around wherever she went in the penalty area on set pieces and corner kicks. In the 62nd minute, goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold made a truly phenomenal kick-save, against a fast-breaking Banda and Ally Watt, to preserve the shutout. But, the entire Thorns defensive group mostly shut down an Orlando team that came into town averaging 2.33 goals scored per game this season.
Clock lockdown
The Pride are officially in the middle of a slump. Still, they are tied with the Kansas City Current for the most points in the league. And, Orlando’s high place in the league hierarchy was definitely confirmed by watching the third act of this game. With the 1-0 lead, Portland went into clock-killing mode early — with about 70 minutes on the clock. In the 71st minute, and again in the 88th minute, coach Rob Gale pulled a forward off the field, in favor of a midfielder substitute.
This was, in my opinion, way too early to start playing games with the clock — especially on only a one-goal advantage. Also, some long pauses to tend to injuries early in the second half meant that both sides should have expected a serious chunk of stoppage time. I guessed eight minutes, and it ended up being 11 — which was tough, but fair. That means the Thorns were trying to kill clock for a full half-hour.
It’s my personal opinion that, prior to maybe the last five minutes of a game, it’s counter-productive for a team to be so focused on the clock. While you don’t want to send every defender forward with a late lead, I feel that the most effective way to make the clock drain away is to stay in a natural offensive rhythm. Offensive attacks take time! It keeps the ball far from the goal you’re defending, and gives you the advantage of: potentially scoring another goal. Either way, I think shameless proponents of clock-killing would say this was a bit early to pack the offense in.
Li’l Notes
Still some clean up from last week’s foul-fest against Racing Louisville. Racing forward Ary Borges has been suspended three games by the NWSL for making contact with the official after the game. I don’t think the moment was captured on the broadcast, so it took until this week for the news to come out.
Speaking of suspensions: the Thorns’ own Reyes actually leads the entire league in yellow cards, with four. And, league rules are: you do receive a one-game suspension with a fifth yellow card. Now, in 2025, the NWSL has introduced a “Good Behavior Incentive.” That means that your running tally of yellow cards gets reduced by one if you play five consecutive games (appearing for at least ten minutes in each game) without getting a card. But, uh, yeah: expect Reyes to tip the scales and get that suspension at some point. Thanks to the growth of Mallie McKenzie, this suspension can look like normal roster rotation for the Thorns — rotation that probably would have happened anyway.
While the Thorns sit in fifth place for now, both Portland and Gotham FC have one more game played than every other team in the league, after their midweek contest last week. Now, it’s helpful to have those points in hand — but, if you look at Points Won Per Match, today Portland actually sits in 8th place, at 1.50. However, things are really compact in this part of the playoff picture. The four teams from 8th place to 5th place all have between 1.50 and 1.57 Points Won Per Match.
Coming in as a substitute for the last 20 minutes, Payton Linnehan had her strongest appearance of the year. Linnehan had several commanding runs down the left side, and actually led the team overall with 0.4 Expected Goals. Linnehan’s fantastic shot, in the 74th minute, could have been a goal — the Orlando goalkeeper could only deflect it, sending the ball bouncing dangerously into the middle of the penalty area. But, alas, the deflection happened to fall to Orlando defenders, instead of Olivia Moultrie, who was on a mad sprint down the field, looking to clean up that spillage.
Orlando Pride goalkeeper Anna Moorhouse had to substitute out of the game, early in the second half, after an inadvertent collision with Mimi Alidou. Moorhouse was down on the ground for several minutes before she was able to exit. Fortunately, Taylor Vincent of Spotrac.com noticed that Moorhouse was smiling as she returned to the Pride bench by the end of the game. However, between NWSL teams’ own opaque injury updates, and the lack of locally embedded beat reporters, I wasn’t able to find any sort of update on Moorhouse’s status several days later. Here’s hoping she is able to return to play as soon as this weekend.
The goal by Reyes was the second one of her career. I had totally forgotten about her first: it came back in May of 2023, in just the seventh appearance of Reyes’ career. All the way in the 90th minute of the game, Reyes scores a header off of a corner kick to turn a 1-0 lead by the San Diego Wave into a 1-1 tie. At that time, the Wave would have been championship contenders at the top of the standings, just like the Orlando Pride in this week’s game:
Nice News From Up North
Last month, the six-team Northern Super League (NSL) — a fully professional, six-team women’s league in Canada — got off to a triumphant start on its inaugural season. In the league’s first-ever game, the Vancouver Rise (partially owned by Christine Sinclair) got a 1-0 victory over Calgary FC, in front of a strong home crowd of 14,000.
NSL rosters in 2025 have a surprising number of veteran players who played in the NWSL in 2024, including:
Quinn - Seattle Reign to Vancouver Rise
Jasmyne Spencer - Angel City to Vancouver Rise
Meggie Dougherty Howard - Angel City to Calgary Wild
Desiree Scott - Kansas City Current to Ottawa Rapid FC
Also, there are five players already loaned from the NWSL to NSL teams for the season, giving each player the opportunity to play more minutes and accelerate their development. The most notable of these is probably Milly Clegg, the 19-year-old prospect who has made cameo appearances for Racing Louisville and the New Zealand national team, now joining the Halifax Tides for 2025. Everything about the NSL feels like it’s adding a really exciting new dimension to the global game, especially as a neighbor to the NWSL.
Up next: The sojourn begins
Game #9: Portland Thorns at San Diego Wave
Saturday, May 10th | 7:00 PM
Broadcast: ION Network
Uh, how are my preseason predictions going? I predicted the Wave would be the very worst team in the league, after San Diego spent the offseason acquiring young prospects en masse. Today, the Wave sit in 3rd place in the standings.
Credit veteran European coach Jonas Eidevall for turning San Diego’s lack of star power into a seemingly bottomless well of depth. The Wave have scored 13 goals on the season — and they have come from 11 different players. That means the Thorns can’t focus in on a single offensive threat: San Diego is building their attack as an entire team. (By the way, for the Thorns: 11 goals scored by eight different players.)
On the flip side, none of San Diego’s four victories have come against a current playoff team. The Wave have defeated the Utah Royals, Racing Louisville, Chicago Stars, and Bay FC — that’s four of the bottom five squads in the NWSL. I still expect this to be a very even match, as both San Diego and Portland find themselves in very similar situations: full of new, young players, and still a bit unsure if they are playoff contenders, or early-season pretenders. A victory would establish a ton of confidence in the winning team. Getting a draw on the road would still be a very positive result for Portland in this situation.
This is also the first game in a massive, massive road trip for the Thorns. Portland’s next home game comes all the way on June 15th. That covers three NWSL regular season games, and two games in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup. (More on that side-quest tournament in a few weeks.) I’ll be curious to learn how often the Thorns will be returning to Portland between games, or if there will be a week or two when they stay out on the road between contests. This road trip is going to require some serious heavy lifting from a logistical standpoint, and we’ll have to see what role fatigue plays as the weeks go on.