The Sophia Smith Minutes Fiasco -- Fully Explained

Both the Thorns and the USWNT have been wildly spending a precious resource that needs to be conserved

I honestly believe it: Sophia Smith is the most underrated player in the NWSL.

In last summer’s Olympics, Smith’s notoriety exploded out of NWSL circles and into wider consciousness as part of the dangerous Triple Espresso lineup. Or: as part of an ensemble cast. But, when it comes to NWSL performance, Smith isn’t part of an ensemble. Since her full-season debut in 2021, Smith has absolute and complete control over everyone when it comes to goal-scoring across that four-year span. She is a full, productive season of scoring ahead of second place, never mind third and beyond:

Most NWSL Goals Since 2021

1. Sophia Smith - 44

2. Ashley Hatch - 35

3. Bethany Balcer - 30

T4. Alex Morgan - 27

T4. Debinha - 27

The other two members of Triple Espresso — Mallory Swanson and Trinity Rodman — combine to have 46 goals in the NWSL over the same time period, just the slightest bit ahead of Smith.

Smith has lapped the field even though a clear problem has developed: she has become less effective, and more injured, in the second halves of seasons.

The second half problem

Smith played essentially the entire second half of the 2024 season — that’s one-eighth of her whole career — in a gigantic slump. In the first half of the year (first 13 regular season games), Smith scored nine goals and contributed six assists. Those are killer MVP numbers. Or, to be specific, a goal contribution once every 64.4 minutes. Across the second half of the regular season, plus the Thorns’ postseason loss to Gotham FC, Smith contributed three goals and zero assists. Or: a goal contribution only once every 223.6 minutes.

Not only was Smith was less effective per-minute as the 2024 season wore on, she was also available less often as the season progressed. After appearing in 82.5% of total minutes in the first half of the year, Smith was only on the field for 53.2% of minutes in the second half of the year.

The Thorns could have been able to see this problem coming, since the exact same thing happened to Smith the previous season:

2023

First half: 90% of minutes played

Second half: 36.2% of minutes played

But, let’s be clear: the reason for this decline isn’t Smith’s fault. Instead, Smith is playing for not one, but two programs — the Thorns and the USWNT — who are simply playing her way too many minutes, at all points in the soccer calendar. As tempting as it is to have Smith on the field at all times, both the Thorns and the national team are depleting their own chances at long-term success by giving Smith an unsustainably large workload.

Smith’s minutes are not like regular minutes. Forwards need to be rotated off the field more often than other positions in the first place. But Smith takes the issue to another level, with a play style that involves frequently screaming away on fast breaks that are one-vs.-the-entire-defense. When Smith is fouled, it tends to be at full-speed, by a desperate defender who knows they will be completely toasted unless they roll the dice with card-worthy tackling. When it comes to Smith’s minutes, different math needs to be used.

The unsustainable workload

I want to look again on the percentage of total minutes the Thorns played Smith in the first half of the last two seasons. This is essentially how often Smith was played when all was well, health-wise. So, it feels like this is the team’s Plan A:

First half of season - minutes %:

2023: 90%

2024: 82.5%

Average: 86.25%

There were, actually, a handful of forwards in the NWSL who played more than 86.25% of their team’s minutes across the entire regular season last year. But, just a handful. Here were the league’s top five full-time forwards (that is: leaving out players who also play in midfield) in total workload:

2024 NWSL Forwards - Highest NWSL Workload

1. Alyssa Thompson - Angel City - 91.6% of total minutes

2. Temwa Chawinga - Kansas City - 91.5%

3. Mallory Swanson - Red Stars - 86.5%

4. Claire Emslie - Angel City - 83.8%

5. Asisat Oshoala - Bay FC - 79.8%

So, it can be done — but just barely. The Thorns are hoping to play Smith essentially the absolute maximum percentage than an NWSL forward can be played.

The additional problem is: these are just the minutes for the Thorns. Or: only one of Smith’s two jobs. Once you add in Smith’s national team minutes, you can see how she was pushed to the absolute limit for all of 2024. This is despite the fact Smith missed one of the most crucial months of the year for Portland, a dead-out sprint for the playoffs from mid-September to mid-October.

2024 NWSL Forwards - Highest Full-Calendar Workload

1. Swanson: 2,024 NWSL minutes + 1,120 international minutes = 3,144 total minutes

2. Emslie: 1,960 NWSL minutes + 789 international minutes = 2,749 total minutes

3. Smith: 1,548 NWSL minutes + 1,193 international minutes = 2,741 total minutes

4. Thompson: 2,144 NWSL minutes + 231 international minutes = 2,375 total minutes

5. Chawinga: 2,142 NWSL minutes + 0 international minutes = 2,142 total minutes

6. Oshoala: 1,867 NWSL minutes + 133 international minutes* = 2,000 total minutes

So, even though Smith was a very tame-looking 94th overall among all NWSL players in minutes played last year, the truth is that she is constantly being pushed to the absolute maximum. Emslie and Swanson were the only NWSL forwards with more total competitive minutes played than Smith last year. And, yes, despite having career-best stretches in 2024, both of those players ended up suffering second-half burnout as well. In their last ten NWSL appearances — that’s nearly half the season — Emslie scored only one goal, and Swanson scored none.

The good ol’ days: 2022

The Thorns’ latest championship year seems surprisingly long ago now, when current Wales national team coach Rhian Wilkinson was holding things down on the touchline. Let’s just say this: Wilkinson got it. In the first half of the 2022 regular season, Wilkinson played Smith a breezy 70.2% of total minutes. With Smith healthy, Wilkinson was actually able to increase that rate up to 79.6% in the second half of the season. That includes the Thorns’ two playoff games, which ended with the iconic image of Smith floating by the Kansas City Current in the NWSL Final for a championship-clinching goal.

As we look forward to the future, though, there are actually a lot of meaningful catches that even come with the 2022 dream season:

• In that year, Smith played in a relatively low 880 national team minutes. And, 693 of those minutes came in friendlies, where Smith was able to comparatively — apologies to Paraguay and Uzbekistan! — coast against the competition. That toothpaste isn’t getting put back in the tube: Smith is playing major minutes for the USWNT every year, and the Thorns need to account for that.

• Since 2022, the NWSL schedule has grown by four regular season games, and an additional playoff round for the top two seeds.

• Even this far back, Smith still showed signs of fatigue as the season went on. In the first half of 2022 for the Thorns: a goal contribution every 69.5 minutes. In the second half: every 116.5 minutes.

A new plan for 2025

While Sophia Smith is under contract for 2025 for the Thorns, she holds a player option for 2026, which gives her a phenomenal amount of leverage within the organization. Smith’s decision on that player option is the most impactful fork in the road in Thorns history since…since Smith decided to sign this contract extension a year ago.

But, really, Smith’s call on her 2026 player option is going to be an all-time important moment for the franchise. It will go a long way towards determining if the Thorns stay in a position of power in the NWSL, or if the team will go through its first-ever period of wandering through the desert. The team saw Smith get derailed by injury in the second half of 2023, but responded with a virtually identical plan for 2024. Something dramatic needs to change for 2025, and I think it looks like this:

In the first half of the season, Smith plays 55% of Thorns minutes. In the second half of the season, Smith plays 70% of Thorns minutes.

If this feels like a dramatic change, it really isn’t. That would be a total of 1,462 minutes (62.5% of minutes) — which is not different at all from the 1,548 minutes that Smith ended up playing for the Thorns, after injuries, in 2024 (66.2%). What is changing dramatically is how those minutes are going to get distributed over the entire calendar.

Fortunately, there are a lot of helpful practical steps the Thorns can take to reach this totally bodacious New Year’s resolution:

Before the season starts, pencil in four games where Smith plays about 30 substitute minutes, four games where Smith plays about 15 substitute minutes, and four games where Smith rests completely.

Right now, as the team is booking its flights and hotel rooms for the year, the team needs to circle these 12 games where you plan to get Smith out of the starting lineup. As the team looks at the schedule, these non-starting days should be weighted to the first half of the year. For instance: from April 18 - April 27, the Thorns have a stretch of playing three games in ten days. Smith should only get a full-on start in one of those contests, coupled with one short substitute appearance and one off day.

If it feels aggressive to completely hold Smith out for four games of the 26-game season: 22 games played would be her career high, and she has a career average of 18.7 regular season appearances per year. The big difference is significantly lightening Smith’s workload by using her as a substitute more often.

Plan to pull Smith off the field early in several of her starts.

In the first half of 2024, if Smith started, the Thorns basically played her all the way to the final whistle, playing 88, 89, or 90 minutes virtually every game. Hitting the year-long minutes goal is going to get a lot easier if the Thorns play Smith 65-70 minutes in a game as often as they play her 88-90 minutes.

Do not play Smith in a “shenanigan game.”

Twenty or thirty years ago, the world’s best women’s players often had to go long months between chances to get on the field in a competitive contest. It’s a good problem to have the opposite issue now — but it is still a problem: the global soccer schedule is over-cluttered with games that both players and fans know have no stakes. In May, the Thorns will continue to play games in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup. These are shenanigan games.

This goes for the USWNT too. Hint: the SheBelieves Cup (scheduled for late February) has become a group of shenanigan games. When the four-team tournament format was first conceived as the Algarve Cup in Portugal in 1992, it was a rare opportunity for the USWNT and other countries to know they had games on the schedule, period. In 2024, the USWNT had eight friendlies outside of the SheBelieves Cup, and played 23 games total. I think that gives the country’s best players more than enough time to gel and understand each other. (The key difference for me is: countries are invited to the SheBelieves Cup, while countries must qualify for competitive, non-shenanigan tournaments.)

Smith comes off the field immediately if: the goal differential gets to 3 in either direction. Or: if the Thorns have a lead of at least 2 with 20 minutes left in the game.

This doesn’t account for a ton of minutes, but, it did happen a couple of times in 2024. Hey, look: a minute saved is a minute earned. And: seeing Smith out there in an already-decided game, while Portland midfielders and defenders were getting rotated out, felt like a tip-off that the team was careening through the 2024 season without a plan for their star’s workload.

- - -

More so than any of these specific minutes targets, what is important is that the Thorns move through the 2025 season with a proactive, thoughtful plan for when to play their best player. And, no matter what, a thoughtful plan is going to involve finding ways to cut Smith’s minutes somehow, especially early in the season. There’s just no way around it. But, the potential payoff — Smith firing in goals in October and November as often she does in her historic first halves — could not be more immense.

*This number should be considered incomplete, as exact statistics are hard to come by for games with Oshoala’s Nigerian national team. However, the Nigerian team played in eight total games before the end of the 2024 NWSL regular season, compared to 21 for America. So, Oshoala’s total workload is likely much lower than Smith’s.

Stats from fbref.com, international stats from soccerway.com.