The Wish List
Santa may be recuperating back up at the North Pole, but the Thorns still have a long wish list ahead of the 2025 season
So far, the Thorns offseason has been way too slow for comfort. Portland has endured some historic levels of change, with two inner-circle Hall of Famers — Christine Sinclair and Becky Sauerbrunn — both announcing their retirements a few weeks apart from each other. While those are both personal decisions that are outside of the team’s control, the Thorns currently feel unprepared to handle this level of change. The team still does not have an official GM, now two-and-a-half months after announcing that Karina LeBlanc would be transitioned out of the role.
In the last 24 months, the team has had three coaches, two front offices (well, presumably — one to come), and two ownership groups, all while sliding from dominant champion to the outskirts of the playoff mix. If there aren’t moves before February that signal meaningful stability and long-term vision, the 2025 Thorns will continue to fall behind the increasingly ambitious NWSL teams that have built their way to the top of the standings. And, yes, that’s with a genuine candidate for the greatest women’s player of all time — Sophia Smith — still on the roster.
The good news is: there’s still enough time to get a talented team in place for this season, and beyond. No NWSL team has their entire 2025 roster set at this moment — every team still has meaningful moves that need to be made. So, let’s take a look at the 21 players the Thorns currently have under contract, before addressing our letter to the North Pole and asking Santa for the handful of additions who could take a supremely talented foundation of a roster, and lift it into championship contention.
The 2025 Thorns — right now
If I had to take a guess, here’s how I would pencil in the best starting lineup for the Thorns, out of the players under contract. In alphabetical order by position:
Forwards: Sophia Smith, Reilyn Turner, Morgan Weaver
Midfielders: Sam Coffey, Olivia Moultrie, Hina Sugita
Defenders: Daiane (or: Daiane Limeria), Sam Hiatt, Marie Müller, Reyna Reyes
Goalkeeper: Shelby Hogan
Even if that’s not 100% in-line with what the coaching staff is thinking, it’s most of the way there. That would leave the bench looking like this (Thorn Town will break down the increasingly complex goalie situation next week):
Forwards: Payton Linnehan, Alexa Spaanstra
Midfielders: Jessie Fleming, Sophie Hirst, Mallie McKenzie, Olivia Wade-Katoa
Defenders: Isabella Obaze, Nicole Payne
Goalkeepers: Mackenzie Arnold, Bella Bixby
With that roster picture in mind, here are three types of players I really view as completely essential for the team to sign before the 2025 season begins. I say “types of players” because, in the international world of soccer, it can be a lot harder to identify individual players compared to, say, the NFL, where everyone capable of playing in the league, is already in the league. While there are dozens of NWSL veterans who are currently free agents, that list contains way more players on the fringes of rosters, than surefire starters. It’s very possible that the type of player the Thorns are looking for simply isn’t in that free agent list, and it’s necessary to look abroad.
1. A veteran, cerebral defender who calmly reads the entire game
The most recent era of the Thorns defense was cerebral above all. Players like Meghan Klingenberg and Becky Sauerbrunn are definitely not physically imposing — but their ultra-high IQ meant Portland played at a championship level. With Sauerbrunn retired, and both Klingenberg and Kelli Hubly currently free agents, the state of the position is changing rapidly. At the moment, the oldest defender on the roster is 27-year-old Daiane, who is coming to America and the NWSL for the first time. (26-year-old Sam Hiatt is just a few months younger.) The Thorns’ shakiest moments of the 2024 season came when they put out the youngest combinations of their back line. At least one veteran presence is definitely needed in order to keep things steady across the long, 26-game journey.
The target that leaps out here is 35-year-old New Zealand defender Abby Erceg, who will be leaving Racing Louisville as a free agent. In two years in Louisville, Erceg played 100% of the minutes, period. Erceg is a three-time NWSL champion, and was an every-game starter for the dominant North Carolina Courage teams of the late-2010s. While only Erceg knows how many years exactly she has left in the tank, she is definitely closer to the end of her career than the beginning, and presumably is looking for an opportunity that should get her closer to the top of the standings than Louisville could manage. The addition of Erceg would immediately give the Thorns’ group of young defensive prospects an unquestioned leader to follow.
2. Energetic, physically imposing depth at center forward
While the Thorns have five forwards I feel good about already on the roster, the team needs to build more depth at this position than any other. Leaving Smith out on the field for too long in early-season games has been a major oversight for the team in both 2023 and 2024. Smith plays at an extreme pace and commands a lot of physical attacks from opposing defenders — her minutes are way more “dense,” if you will, than any other player on the roster. And, in response, the team needs to have trustworthy options to cycle in from the bench on an every-game basis in both quantity and quality.
The potential connection between Smith on the wing and the imposing 5’9” Turner in the middle is, in my mind, the team’s clearest pathway to championship-level play next year. Both of the reserve forwards on the roster now, Linehan and Spaanstra, are connecting, creative players on the wing. It feels essential to acquire another player who is more like Turner — more like prime Christine Sinclair — and can finish and head-in goals at the goalmouth with size and strength. NWSL teams have ensured that their top forwards, more than any other position, are kept under contract, so the available free agents here are sparse. The Thorns will need to scout abroad to meet this need.
3. A defensive midfielder to reignite the two-defensive-midfielder revival alongside Sam Coffey
It feels like a long time ago now, but, as recently as the 2023 season, every advanced stat you wanted to look at showed that the Thorns were clearly the league’s best team on a per-minute basis. At the end of that season, the team fell into a productive rhythm by starting Rocky Rodríguez alongside Sam Coffey as defensive central midfielders. The two-way skillset from both Rodríguez and Coffey ensured that the Thorns were ultra-strong defensively, and had the creativity and sharp decision-making to ignite the offensive attack. It’s a very subtle strategy that got completely discarded for all of 2024. But, it feels useful to bring back, because it’s really hard to pinpoint the downside of this fundamentally strong formation. (It would also change the 4-3-3 formation I speculated about, above, into a 4-4-2, and help out the minutes-load situation with the forwards.)
It would have been nice to get Rodríguez back, especially because the price tag to bring her in in a trade was $100,000 in intra-league transfer funds. The bad news is: the Kansas City Current just did that exact trade a few days ago, and will no doubt resurrect Rodríguez’s career after she went through something of a lost year with Angel City FC in 2024.
One option here is to poach longtime Seattle Reign member Quinn, a free agent from the Cascadia rivals to the north. Quinn played in just 46% of Seattle’s total minutes last year, and the team had a -1 goal differential with them on the field. But, Quinn just might have been holding everything together: the Reign suffered a staggering -16 goal differential during the 54% of minutes Quinn was on the bench. With one goal and three assists in 82 career NWSL games, Quinn definitely leans into the “defensive” assignment of being a “defensive midfielder.” However, since Moultrie and Sugita play their best on the offensive side of the field, Quinn could slot in as an amazing complimentary piece to boost the strengths of everyone else in the starting lineup.