The Thorns are crashing into the season with the energy of a college student turning in a paper, due all semester, with minutes to spare before the midnight deadline. Visa delays involving new coach Robert Vilahamn means he has still not actually set foot in Portland. Instead, he has just met up with the team for the first time on the East Coast, before tonight’s season-opening game in Washington, DC. It’s a wildly hectic, jet-lagged way to start out a new job on the opposite side of the world. Honestly: I really respect Vilahamn for smiling his way through this itinerary, and this blizzard:
The busy-ness of life did, unfortunately, prevent me from being able to lock into the team’s preseason slate of games. This puts me in a shockingly similar position as Vilahamn for today’s season-opening game: stoked to get the season started, but in a bit of a scramble to keep up with everyone’s names on the back end of the roster — never mind knowing their actual play styles. With the Washington Spirit feeling spurned after losing the last two NWSL Finals, I’m feeling both incredibly optimistic about the Thorns’ season, and incredibly pessimistic about how Game #1 will go. There is a bit too much of a feeling like Portland is building up momentum for their first preseason game here. This isn’t the preseason. This one will count, and the Spirit won’t be easing into anything.
There are 31 Thorns who are currently on the team’s payroll. That’s more than the NWSL roster cap of 26, because several players are still on the Season-Ending Injury List, from injuries sustained in 2025. (Players on the SEI are paid their full contracts, but do not count towards the roster total.)
The active team includes eight new players, who will be listed in bold when they come up in their position groups, below. Although the Thorns received significant influxes of cash for the deals that saw Hina Sugita and Sam Coffey leave town, the team continued to invest in youth this offseason, rather than find veteran replacements with similarly big profiles. Between the eight newcomers, there are exactly three NWSL games played, with seven players prepared to make their NWSL debuts.
Each player is also listed with their uniform number, which is real, and my projected role for each player — which is only coming from me, and so could end up being wildly inaccurate.
Goalkeeper
Starter: Mackenzie Arnold (#18)
Backups: Erin McKinney (#31), Moran Messner (#35), Mackenzie Wood (#28)
Season-Ending Injury List: Bella Bixby (#1)
It was a devastating piece of news to hear that Portland stalwart Bixby tore her ACL in the preseason. Bixby had already missed the entire 2024 season on maternity leave, working her way back into playing shape for seven stellar starts in 2025. (Bixby gave up just four total goals across those games.) Here’s just hoping this isn’t the end of Bixby’s playing career, or her time in Portland.
Bixby’s injury erases any debate over the starter for this season: the team will look to have Arnold play all 30 games, in an ideal world. In the actual, un-ideal world, though, Arnold is currently back in Australia, playing with her national team in the every-four-years continental Asian championship. The final in that tournament is scheduled for March 21st, meaning the Thorns could get three or four games in before Arnold is ready to make an appearance. In the first chapter of the season, the Thorns are guaranteed to start a keeper who is making their regular-season debut for the team.
The backups are potentially led by Messner, who was the third-string option for the Thorns throughout 2025, after also being on the San Diego Wave roster in 2024. Also, just yesterday, the team traded for Wood from the Chicago Stars, and she will technically be on a season-long loan with the Thorns in 2026. Wood had been with Chicago since 2023, and appeared in three total games — since playing time is understandably scarce behind Alyssa Naeher. McKinney is also in her third season in the league, and without a regular season appearance: she was signed by the team last week to an extremely short contract, due to expire at the end of March.
Defender
Starters: Sam Hiatt (#16), Marie Müller (#23), Isabella Obaze (#5), Reyna Reyes (#2)
Frequent Rotation: Carolyn Calzada (#4), Mallie McKenzie (#29), Jayden Perry (#24), M.A. Vignola (#25)
Bench Depth: Jennie Immethun (#40)
Away on Loan: Daiane (#34 - loaned to Mexican team Monterrey)
There is continuity galore among this group. That couldn’t be said at this time last year, when outside consensus thought the Thorns defenders would be left reeling from the retirement of Becky Sauerbrunn. This unit lost an all-time legend and still finished tied for fourth-best in the league in goals allowed. I’m most excited about the return of a healthy Müller, a two-way threat whose presence is, in my opinion, one of the most subtly impactful offseason changes across the entire NWSL.
At first glance, this group actually looks, if anything, a bit crowded. Each game will see virtually an entire second line of capable defenders starting off on the bench. It feels like one or two players are going to be left holding a very short stick in the minutes distribution. While Vignola is a capable player, for the moment it does feel a bit odd that the Thorns traded away Hina Sugita, only to add a player at the one position where they were arguably deepest.
Calzada (Notre Dame) and Immethun (UCLA) are both incoming NCAA rookies. However, the team has made a significantly bigger investment in Calzada, with a contract guaranteed through 2027, and a mutual option for 2028. Immethun is on a short-term deal that will expire at the end of May.
The Thorns never quite seemed to be on the same page as Daiane. That started when she was signed — early last offseason, before the hiring of GM Jeff Agoos. I predict Daiane’s contract will be converted from a loan to a permanent deal, without a return to Portland.
Midfielder
Starters: Cassandra Bogere (#6), Jessie Fleming (#21), Olivia Moultrie (#13)
Frequent Rotation: Deyna Castellanos (#10), Shae Harvey (#15)
Bench Depth: Renee Lyles (#41)
And here the scales rebalance: the Thorns’ tremendous depth at defense is simply not here at midfield. This position is both the thinnest and the youngest for the Thorns. You could imagine situations where the team does some experiments — maybe intentionally, and maybe under injury duress — with having the forward-pushing Müller and Vignola on the midfield line.
The signing of Bogere is the Thorns’ biggest move since the last time Thorn Town recapped the transactional news. A Norwegian player, the 20-year-old Bogere fits the ultra-young profile that Agoos has been prioritizing throughout his tenure. Bogere already has four years of experience in her native country’s Toppserien, and has been signed on a guaranteed deal through the 2028 season, with a team option for 2029. The Thorns are looking for some combination of Bogere and Harvey, a rookie out of Stanford, to fill some gigantic, Sam Coffey-sized shoes at defensive midfielder. This is the one position where the Thorns are relying entirely on NWSL rookies, with no other backup plan currently employed on the roster.
Castellanos is, interestingly, now being listed as a midfielder, and not a forward, in some online spaces. A short-term hip injury means that Castellanos will be the only Thorn who is not formally placed on the Season-Ending Injury List, to be unavailable for this game against Washington.
Much like Immethun, the rookie Lyles (Clemson) is also signed to a deal that expires May 31st.
Forward
Starters: Pietra Tordin (#19), Reilyn Turner (#66), Sophia Wilson (#9)
Frequent Rotation: Mimi Alidou (#26), Valerin Loboa (#88)
Bench Depth: Maddie Padelski (#11), Alexa Spaanstra (#77)
Injured List: Julie Dufour (#27), Caiya Hanks (#7), Morgan Weaver (#22)
There’s so much going on in this group of nine players. Almost every forward is a returning Thorn, but a wave of long-term absences means very few of these players have actually been on the field together. We know this group is full of dynamic threats — but we don’t really know how they are best played together, in what positions, or in what balance of minutes. For instance: the group of Tordin, Turner, and Wilson is the leading healthy option in goals per minute. However, the comparative lack of passing from Tordin and Turner means that combination may not actually thrive in practice.
The anticipated mid-season returns of Dufour, Hanks, and Weaver — all from ACL tears — should add some significant electricity and momentum to the second half of the Thorns’ season. The short-term contracts given to debutants McKinney, Immethun, and Lyles are lining up with each of these forwards’ projected return to full health. It’s a lot of maneuvering of people and contracts, but it does maximize the Thorns’ usage of all 26 roster spots, at all points in the season. Between the late arrival of Vilahamn, and this trio still rehabilitating, expect the second half of the Thorns’ season to be stronger than the first.
Let’s also keep in mind that the rookie Padelski (University of Alabama) is screaming into the NWSL after just two collegiate seasons, at just 18 years old. She may be a phenom in the making — this group is so deep, though, that any rookie will begin the year in an uphill battle for regular minutes.
Wait — someone is missing
On December 2nd — about a month after the end of the season — the Thorns published a video on YouTube that featured two players talking about their long-term futures with the team. One of the players was the 18-year-old Valerin Loboa, the Colombian forward prospect the team signed to a contract guaranteed through the 2028 season, with a team option for the 2029 season. The other player was, at the time, not actually under contract with the Thorns at all: 18-year-old English midfield prospect Laila Harbert.
Harbert’s arrival in Portland last August felt odd to me because there felt like no path for her to get minutes, in the late-season push for the playoffs, before her contract expired at the end of the season. That proved to be true, as Harbert’s 62 total minutes played felt like too little time to understand what she could contribute on the field. Making such a young player move across the world for a few short weeks of warming the bench felt like such an odd inconvenience, I figured that a long-term deal between Harbert and the Thorns simply had to be coming. The thoughtfully produced video felt like further evidence a deal would be announced momentarily.
Well: that deal officially never came. Harbert is back in England, currently on the roster for Everton. In a way, it’s even more confusing inconvenience for Harbert, who is technically still part of the system with Arsenal. The Gunners have now loaned her out to four different teams before her first game played with the parent squad. This is not anybody’s textbook idea of how to develop a prospect.
In the last game of Portland’s regular season last year, the Thorns saw an opposing prospect get pulled in even more confusing directions. In 2023, Chloe Ricketts made headlines for signing with the Washington Spirit as a 15-year-old. In 2025, the Spirit last played her in a game in May before trading Ricketts away, in October, to the Houston Dash. Like Harbert, Ricketts’ contract was also due to expire at the end of the season. In exchange for moving halfway across the country, it turned out that Ricketts’ entire tenure with the Dash consisted of a single eight-minute substitute appearance against the Thorns, at the bitter end of a lopsided, season-ending shutout. A few weeks later, as a free agent, Ricketts would sign a three-year deal with the expansion Boston Legacy.
Recent years have seen the NWSL aspire to sign younger and younger players. However, with teams regularly firing coaching staffs and/or front offices, those same prospects are frequently getting lost in the transactional shuffle. The seamless, multi-year development of Olivia Moultrie is definitely more the exception than the rule. (And, with Moultrie heading into her sixth season with the Thorns: she has still not been led by the same head coach for two full consecutive seasons.) One can understand how the possibility of turning professional so early would appeal to both the players and their families. After seeing how these careers are actually getting treated in the NWSL, though, the no-trades, no-cuts stability of the NCAA officially comes with some major advantages as well.
Programming note
For the 2026 season, Thorn Town is going to come out about twice a month, and not after every single game. I started writing Thorn Town just after the 2023 season concluded — and a part of me still feels like that year and its 22-game schedule are the good ol’ days. We are absolutely getting more soccer with this year’s massive 30-game slate. But, I fear the trade-off could be a lot more games where substitutes have to be rotated in for starters, and just generally much lower playoff-seeding stakes with each contest. I’m hoping I’ll be able to give more of an accurate picture of the team’s year by zooming out like this a little.
As always, I remain incredibly grateful that so many people are reading Thorn Town! Thank you!
Glad your back for '26! Given the late hire of Vilhamn and the probably return of Hanks & Weaver in July, I agree the Thorns will reach their full potental in the 2nd half, hopefully with a healthy squad for the playoffs.