Thorns FC: Two Golazos and a Derp

Happily the golazos came last, though, and took the Thorns to the Final.

I won’t kid you; I was nervous as a cat going into this match. I worried about the regular season meetings. I worried about the respective coaches. I worried about…well, everything. At least, that’s what I told the ESPN guy when he came up to me on Morrison Street and asked about the game.

Of course, he didn’t want to talk about that; he wanted to talk about Yates. And I told him that wasn’t why I was there that day.

There’s my fifteen seconds of fame, then.

And by rights, I should have worried; here’s how the teams looked in front of each other’s goal:

The derp is there, in the eighth minute, when Meghan Klingenberg give Alex Morgan all the time and space in southwest Portland to dime Taylor Kornieck unmarked inside the Portland box (I shrieked on the Stumptown match thread: “Have we learned nothing??!!”) as Kelli Hubly missed her attempted headed clearance and Kornieck calmly nodded home the cross to put the visitors up one.

Fuckfuckfuck! The worst possible start; putting the defend-and-counter Wave up on a horrific defensive breakdown. Doom! Gloom! The Inner Eeyore in me slurped down 4/5ths of my 12-buck Widmer in mourning for the exit sure to come in an hour and change.

Then Raquel Rodriguez showed up with golazo number one:

That’s a fucking banger.

Look back up at Dror’s chart; that sucker barely moves the xG needle – it’s so far out and so long across the pitch that the algorithm assumes the chances of success are virtually nil.

As Rocky would say; don’t tell me the odds. Never tell me the odds.

So it was all square at the half because of that and because Bella Bixby reacted to the next defensive breakdown like your cat when there’s a bug in the house:

I know a lot of people aren’t high on Ciao Bella! She’s not a “badass” keeper like A.D. Franch or Kailen Sheridan (who is the Best XI keeper this season because…ummm…reasons?). She looks gawky in action, and she seems hesitant coming out at times.

But, goddamn it. You can keep your badass keepers; I’ll have me some Bella Ciao.

After the restart the match turned cagy. I don’t recall thinking this at the time simply because I was so intent on hoping for a goal, but for the first quarter hour neither team created much (again, look back up at the xG race).

Lots of mishit passes, lots of turnovers. Both squads looked tight, seemingly worried more about conceding a matchwinner than scoring one.

After the hour, though…

64′ – SDW; dangerous cross in to Korneick is well-defended by Hina Sugita, goes out for a goal kick.
78′ – POR; Sophia Smith with a sweet touch to control and a slide-rule pass to Morgan Weaver running into the top of the 18, but Weaver shoots tamely to Sheridan,
79′ – SDW; good spell of possession in front of goal, Morgan’s close-range shot is blocked by Becky Sauerbrunn.
85′ – POR; another long spell of possession outside the San Diego box culminates in a Crystal Dunn looper to the back post. Janine Beckie heads the ball over Sheridan’s flapping hand with Hina-san charging into the goalmouth, but Sheridan recovers and gathers the ball.
85′ – POR; moments later Weaver crosses to Smith, but Sheridan saves her strong shot.
89′ – POR; Beckie crosses in to Weaver, Weaver heads just over the bar.
90+3′ – POR; Smith wins a corner…

It’s hard to do justice to this moment. Dying seconds, ball in the northwest corner, Kling poised to deliver and both teams milling inside the 18, and the entire stadium roaring “PT! FC!”.

It was the Thunderdome and, sure as hell, two teams entered…

…and Kling delivered, a low rainbow into the scrum. A San Diego defender got a head to the ball, but no further than the middle of the 18, where McKenzie Doniak saw the uncleared delivery and put a low head to it.

Notice former Thorns Christen Westphal at the far right of the screenshot above. She’s frozen, seeing the header coming towards her but not…

…Dunn coming from behind her.

One team left.

After a wild rumpus…

…the whistle blew.

Portland was in the Final.

It’s hard not to see this as catharsis. A green rebirth after a long, hot, dry summer of discontent.

I hope that’s true.

But for me it’s enough to see the joy on these faces and know that, if just for that blissful moment, it was unconfined.

Short Passes

Passing the Passing Test: The Thorns weren’t great – 72% completion – but San Diego was utter rubbish at 65%.

The chart mirrors what I saw on the pitch. Both Thorns fullbacks were working like animals. Weaver and Smith were lit (tho Smith was effective as a decoy much of the time) and connecting well – that’s becoming a thing, and I couldn’t be happier – and Sam Coffey had busy day. Sugita-senshu, though, was not on her usual game.

Well…we knew Kornieck was trouble, and she was on Sunday.

Note that the Thorns defenders did a number on Sofia Jakobsson who’d been such a pest against Chicago, and McNabb was stone cold, forcing the Wave to play through Westphal to get traction.

When your goalkeeper is among your top passers? You got a passing problem.

Corner Kicks

Six. All long into the box, two first half, four second

Time	Taker	Short/Long?	Result
5′	Klingenberg	Long	Went all the way through the scrum to Hubly, but her shot was wide right.
20′	Klingenberg	Long	Headed clear but only to Sugita on the far side; Hina-san‘s put-back was also cleared, but only to Rocky who teed the ball up and smashed home the equalizer.
53′	Klingenberg	Long	Into the scrum, cleared, recycled into a long cross right to Sheridan.
57′	Klingenberg	Long	Fairly short to the near post and cleared from there but only back to Portland, who knocked the ball around for a bit. Finally Rocky boomed a shot over the crossbar.
63′	Klingenberg	Long	Pinged off several heads, cleared but recycled to Kling whose cross went long to Sheridan.
90+3′	Klingenberg	Long	Landed near the goal, dinked out, Doniak headed short for Dunn to win the match.

Two goals off six corners is terrific; turns out that the Great Horan isn’t critical for Corner Kick Magic. Rocky and Crystal will do juuuuust fine.

Player Ratings and Comments

Smith (97′ – +6/-3 : +6/-3 : +12/-6) Not in her usual style, but a solid and effective match overall. If she’d have been able to get the ball out from under her feet in the 26th minute, though, we’d be writing about her and not Marcel’s mom.

Sinclair (<1′ – no rating) If you were still pogoing after the matchwinner like I was you missed the captain coming on. I had no idea Sinc had played until I saw the NWSL website.

Weaver (+9/-1 : +9/-4 : +18/-5) It’s hard to give Woman of the Match to someone who wasn’t one of the goalscorers, but the Chaos Muppet ran wild against San Diego, and a lot of the backline disruption that kept the Wave on their heels was her doing.

Still needs to work on that pesky finishing; good looks, tame shots. Coaches, eh? Help the woman out.

Ryan (77′ – +6/-2 : +4/-0 : +10/-2) Yazmeen Ryan had a hell of a good afternoon that was largely lost between the golazos. But she was terrific on both sides of the ball; her forechecking has become one of the most valuable points of her game. I’ll talk about this in her comment, but Coach Wilkinson took a risk starting Ryan over Sinclair in such a match. It was a good decision, but Ryan had to validate it and did.

Beckie (13′ – +3/-0) I normally worry about the step down Beckie means to the forechecking defense when she replaces Ryan. Last Sunday she didn’t; she stepped in and continued to trouble the San Diego midfield and backline as well as providing her usual good service.

Rodriguez (62′ – +6/-2 : +2/-0 : +8/-2) I have no better comment that to simply replay that goal, but all her usual energy defending. Must have been a relief to have a couple of midfield teammates who were also defending, too…

Dunn (28′ – +9/-2) Think about it; that works out to +27/-6 over a full match.

Dunn has been sporadic – in both appearances and performance – until last weekend. It’s not exactly shocking; let’s remember this:

That’s…pretty damn heroic.

Now, here’s what I don’t know; was this a one-off? Was this a player playing over her head? Or…is this the New Crystal Dunn?

Dear God I hope.

But we’ll see. For now, it’s enough. I’m so happy and proud of your mom, kiddo. She done good.

Coffey (+2/-2 : +5/-1 : +7/-3) Struggled to get involved in the first half, grew into the second. Here’s an intriguing look at two Portland midfielders.

First, Sam Coffey:

Then…Diego Chara.

Both defensive midfielders. But the difference in style! Chara the classic midfield destroyer and Coffey the creator and distributor. Twin kids of very different mothers.

Sugita (+6/-0 : +7/-5 : +13/-5) Hina-san was mostly her usual self – clever, active – while being surprisingly careless with the ball, especially in the second half. Not exactly bad, but not up to her own standards. Part of that was having to do a lot of wrestling with Kornieck.

Klingenberg (+5/-3 : +7/-2 : +12/-5) I worried about her pace before the match, but Kling was solid against Jaedyn Shaw, who was kind of rubbish last Sunday. Hockey assists for the corner kicks, too. Take ten bucks out of petty cash.

Sauerbrunn (+3/-3 : +5/-3 : +8/-6) Did just fine; clearly got the message about “put a body on Alex Morgan” and did, and was solid in the air. Well played.

Hubly (+1/-3 : +3/-1 : +4/-4) Culpable on the Kornieck goal; first ballwatching, then just poor defending. Turned things around in the second half, though, and shared ‘Brunn’s affection for giving Morgan a Glasgow Kiss

(in her defense – because I read a number of Portland fans accusing her of diva-dom, Morgan gets laid out a lot. I don’t blame her for trying to work the refs – that’s part of the game, too – and I kinda wish Smith would learn from that. I don’t enjoy it, but part of a striker’s toolkit is making sure that the referee protects her if they aren’t naturally so inclined.)

Kuikka (+4/-9 : +5/-2 : +9/-11) Like Hubly only tighter and flailed more in the first half; all her minuses are for turnovers or other losses. Like Hubly, righted herself in the second half, and the bottom line is that her unit didn’t let San Diego pee a drop after the 8th minute, so…

Bixby (+1/-0 : +1/-0 : +2/-0) We’ve mentioned the monster save in first half injury time. Not really at fault on the concession. Solid other than that, but with the caveat that San Diego didn’t test her that hard, either.

Coach Wilkinson: As discussed, I was worried about the coaching matchup.

I shouldn’t have. RW made all the right moves; picked the right XI, made the right subs, even set the right tactics…although when you’re gifted a couple of bangers like those? You don’t exactly have to be Sir Alex Ferguson.

The coach did a solid last Sunday, though, and I can only take off my hat. Chapeau, you.

Now.

Let’s see if we can all do this again in Washington, eh?