Thorns FC: ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς

Plutarch’s Moralia contains this quote, supposed offered to her son by a Spartan mother as she handed him his aspis, the famous round shield carried by Greek soldiers; “ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τᾶς”

“Son, either with this, or on this.”

So when you marched out with Leonidas & Co you carried all your kit, including the big shield. You lost, and your dead ass was laid down on it. You were supposed to win, or die; there was no in-between.

Fun folks, those Spartans.

Last Sunday the stakes weren’t nearly as desperate, but there was a Shield involved – the NWSL Supporters’ Shield for the best team over the regular season. Our pals the Dandilions had helped us out earlier in the weekend by getting thoroughly hammered, giving up two goals to Washington.

Now the Thorns had their mission; beat the Houston Dash and win the Shield.

Lose or draw to the Dash? Get knocked down, and find themselves at the mercy of Gotham winning out and snatching the top honor on the last day of the season.

As you surely know, the Thorns took the Shield in a scrappy match that saw only one goal, a Lindsey Horan rocket in the 43rd minute.

The Thorns’ play mirrored in many respects the previous match against Tacoma except without the bad penalty call, and…wait. What?

In the second minute Coach Parsons and the Thorns – surely supercharged after the antics of Simon and Penso in the preceding week – were howling for a penalty shout as Horan and Katie Naughton body-slammed and Horan went to ground.

Seconds later the shout went out at center referee Luis Guardia again…

…when Sophie Schmidt stuck out a foot and Christine Sinclair went rolling to the turf.

Twenty-four minutes later a third collision got the Thorns arsed up…

…as yet another Houston body – I think it was Abby Dahlkemper but I’m not certain – shoved Lindsey Horan down during the scrum in front of a free kick.

How do these look to me?

The first Horan collision seems the most unlikely; both Horan and Naughton were coming together looking up at the ball. Naughton is retreating back and sideways and so Horan gets a bump and goes to ground. Seems “incidental” to me.

The Schmidt toe-poke looks a little more culpable; certainly I’ve seen stabs like that punished before. The difficulty is trying to pick out the force of the actual contact; it looked pretty minimal from Row XX in the screenshot above, but you don’t need to stomp on someone’s ankle like a mad clog-dancer to hack them down. Call that one a definite “maybe”.

To me the third, the 26th minute contact, looks the most punishable. The Houston defender comes in hard from behind, with an arm out, and Horan gets pushed down. Me? I’d have called that one.

Guardia called none of them, however, and so the Thorns had to rely on Horan not to draw the foul but to hammer the ball into the net like the Wrath of God.

The goal was set up, though, by – who else? – Sophia Smith and Morgan Weaver.

Smith with the strong left-side run finished with a cross in to Weaver in the box. Weaver was covered like a blanket so she dropped the ball into the open space behind her where two Thorns were hovering; Horan and Natalia Kuikka.

This is where I almost vapor-locked.

I love me some Kuikka; since May she’s become among the best of Portland’s backs. She does it all; marks, tackles, pulls strings and passes. But there’s one thing about her I don’t love quite so much:

Shooting.

A typical Kuikka shot is a blast from distance that goes either 1) at the keeper, or 2) six feet over the crossbar. As the loose ball rolled back towards them I had a mental image of that rising shot headed for low Earth orbit. Noooooooo! I was getting ready to moan, when…

…Kuikka pulled up, Horan loaded and fired, and it was 0-1 and that was all Portland needed.

The xG chart shows why:

We’ll talk more about the “why” when we get to the comments.

Suffice to say, though, that the Thorns returned to Portland with their Shield.

Εις υγείαν, Thorns!

SHORT PASSES

Passing the Passing Test: Both teams were sloppy in Houston; the Dash won the race to the bottom with 68% completion, but the Thorns only managed 69%, so nobody came off looking slick.

Here’s Arielle Dror’s passing network chart, and you can see who was doing the heavy lifting – the fullbacks and Raquel Rodriguez. Both centerbacks pushed passes up a fair bit but with some connection issues, and at the top of midfield both Horan and Sinclair weren’t connecting very well either.

When you look at the other Portland stats – only 48% possession, and less than 400 passes – that all kind of makes sense. This wasn’t a fast passing game or one where Portland ran Houston off the pitch. Both teams dug in and slugged it out; one converted, the other didn’t.

Corner Kicks

The Thorns took six corners in Houston; five long into the box, one short.

Time	Taker	Short/Long?	Result
28′	Salem	Long	Naughton headed clear.
29′	Klingenberg	Long	Cleared out but no further than Menges, who blasted a shot four yards over the bar.
51′	Salem	Long	Rolled all the way through the box; Sauerbrunn attacked the ball and her blast was deflected wide for another corner.
51′	Weaver	Short	Trying for the quick restart Weaver went short to Smith, who was fouled. On the subsequent free kick Horan blasted high over the bar.
67′	Klingenberg	Long	Cleared, recycled, cleared again, recycled…finally Horan found herself in possession, but the defense help up and the play went nowhere
74′	Kuikka	Long	Showing why she doesn’t take these, Kuikka curled her corner directly over the byline

So…nothing, really. The 54th minute corner was an interesting variation, but if there was supposed to be a pre-set play on the foul cut it off before it could develop. Other than that, we’re still not really making anything off these setpieces, a trend that we’ve seen all season to date.

PLAYER RATINGS AND COMMENTS

Smith (75′ – +7/-1 : +5/-2 : +12/-3) Helped make the goal, and all of the usual Smith positives; forechecking and disrupting the Houston backline, and creating good chances. Unfortunately also the usual Smith negative; four shots, none on frame.

So far we’ve been lucky and when we’ve needed them other Thorns have found the goals Smith hasn’t been scoring. At some point – hopefully soon – Smith will find where in the back of the locker she hid her shooting boots, because at some point we’re going to actually need them.

Charley (15′ – +6/-2) Simone Charley was part of the sub pattern that Coach Parsons seems to have developed against Tacoma and continued into this match. Which makes sense; same game state, similar opponents, so Charley did in Houston what she’d done here on Wednesday – ran around making as much havoc as possible. It worked, too, so I’d call that pretty cunning.

Weaver (87′ – +10/-1 ” +4/-3 : +14/-4) Picked up the assist, and, as with Smith, all the usual positives that her speed and energy bring. Also not doing much to directly threaten the goal (although one of her two shots was on frame…) and it’d be nice to see a bit more of that.

Still…good shift, and was fading towards the end, so well subbed off.

Lussi (1′ – +0/-3) At some point on of the veteran forwards needs to take Tyler Lussi aside and explain that when it’s deep in injury time the coach shouts “Corner! Take it to the corner!” what he means is that he wants you to dribble into the opponent’s corner and then stand over the ball and fight for it; make the opponent boot it into touch, or over the byline.

Just dribbling to the corner and letting the ball roll immediately over the touchline? That spoils the whole strategy! It’s supposed to be time-wasting, not turning the ball over directly to the opponent.

You’d think that Lussi had known about this before. But she did it twice in three minutes in second half injury time, so…WTF?

Sinclair (75′ – +8/-2 : +4/-0 : +12/-2) In the 68th minute Sinc did something that was crazy skilled even for Sinc, and I thought I’d seen her do everything. Klingenberg served up a looping cross into the box as Sinc made a diagonal run;

The Dash defender had Sinclair pretty well marked up; she headed the ball high into the air, though, and when it came down Sinc got it on her foot as Jane Campbell charged out down on her.

And then…Sinc did some sort of wild crazy spin-move and cut the ball back 180 degrees against the direction of her run, under Campbell, and into the goalmouth.

It was an insanely tight angle, and Sinc was moving so fast the other direction the shot didn’t have a ton of pace on it. But that was the only thing that saved Houston. Campbell was flat-out beat, and had Allysha Chapman not been in front of goal it could very easily have been 0-2.

I know she’s gotta be headed for retirement, but…it’s this kind of stuff that keeps me from just handing her the shawl and the rocker.

Dunn (15′ – +1/-1) So this appears to be the system; it’s either Dunn or Sinclair, and one starts and plays the first hour or so, the other takes over and sees out the match. Didn’t do much of anything for good or ill, so hard to say how valuable as a late-match defensive sub Dunn was. Didn’t actively interfere with Sinclair, tho, so there’s that.

Horan (+4/-3 : +6/-3 : +10/-6) Obviously good with the matchwinner, and generally solid all game. Not “great” but didn’t really have to be just because this was a team effort and her team was taking care of business.

Salem (+3/-1 : +5/-3 : +8/-4) It looks increasingly likely that Angela Salem will win the Supporters’ Player of the Year. That’s fine; she’s been rock-solid at the back of midfield all season.

Salem always seems to me to the the ultimate “team defender”. She seldom makes big tackles or brilliant passes, she seldom step out into the light as an individual. Instead she’s always with a teammate; applying pressure, forcing turnovers, picking up loose balls, making little passes in the midfield.

She’s not Amandine Henry. That’s okay – nobody is – but she’s doing the Henry job this season, and doing it pretty damn well.

Rodriguez (90+3′ – +5/-3 : +5/-3 : +10/-6) Continuing her excellent work from the Tacoma match, Rodriguez was a mixture of solid tackling and marking, ball-hawking, and sleek passing and dribbling. Not quite at the WotM level as Wednesday…but an excellent outing and solid on both sides of the ball.

Ryan (<1′ – no rating) Pure timewasting.

Klingenberg (90′ – +7/-0 : +5/-1 : +12/-1) This match marked the return of something we’d come to expect from Kling and had been missing for a while; service from setpieces as well as providing service in general. Got forward effectively as well as good cover defensively, in particular in nerfing Nichelle Prince. Prince took four shots and put three on goal, but because of Kling all three were straight at Bella Bixby and easily handled.

Hubly (4′ – no rating)

Sauerbrunn (+1/-0 : +3/-3 : +4/-3) Much better than her PMR suggests, and as against Tacoma, even sturdier as a centerback wall with her partner Menges. Something has changed that has let ‘Brunn off the leash, and she’s now getting forward to cut off passes and tackle away dangerous attacks. I’m not sure what, but I’m happy to see it.

Menges (+9/-4 : +4/-3 : +13/-7) While ‘Brunn was good, Menges was outstanding, particularly aggressively defending, ranging out wide to cut out Houston attacks before they could directly threaten the goal. Excellent match.

Kuikka (+9/-2 : +6/-3 : +15/-5) My pick for Woman of the Match; tireless on both sides of the ball, and great passing vision.

Bixby (+3/-0 : +3/-0 : +6/-0) Bixby was doing stuff like this…

…all evening, including saves in the 27th, 42nd, 70th, and 84th minutes and strong takes on crosses in the 46th and 86th minutes (this is the latter). Tied the league record for clean sheets with this one.

Coach Parsons: I think Parsons is still seething about the penalty calls; he really wanted the 2nd minute penalty/penalties and was just kind of grumpy and fussy all match which, given the tense nature of the game, I kinda get.

Once again he crafted a tactical setup that stymied Houston and executed substitutions to support that setup, and in so doing set the “wins” record for NWSL coaches and secured the second Supporters’ Shield of his tenure.

Now comes the hard part.

Coach and club have to scatter and play a bunch of international fixtures and then regroup here in two weeks to play the final, more-or-less-meaningless-for-Portland-match against the Damned Courage, a club that has been undergoing what in commercial aviation is called a “controlled flight into terrain” since Riley was canned.

I’m not sure how seriously the club will take that match. It’s a great opportunity for major rotation and to get players like Everett and Pogarch minutes.

On the other hand, it’s The Damned, and nobody likes backing into the playoffs. So we may see the full squad.

Until then, though, we can celebrate.

I’m weird in that I actually care about the Shield. For me it is “winning the league”; playoffs are fun and make money, but being the best club over a full season is the true measure of quality.

And this season, that measure is here in Portland.