2024 Final Grades: Forwards

We’re finally at the top of the pitch in our look back at the Thorns’ 2024 season, the strikers, the people who put the biscuit in the basket, the forwards.

The earlier installments are here: goalkeepers, defenders, and midfielders.

Before we look at the players as individuals, let’s take a moment to discuss the forwards as a group.

The Forwards from Overhead

Here’s Portland’s record over the past four seasons, including goals-for (GF), goals-against (GA), goal differential (GD), and where each statistic ranked in the league:

Season	Finish	Record	GF	Rank	GA	Rank	GD	Rank
2021	1st	13-5-6	33	2nd	17	1st	+16	1st
2022	2nd	10-9-3	49	1st	24	3rd	+25	1st
2023	2nd	10-5-7	42	1st	32	10th	+10	1st
2024	6th	10-4-12	37	5th	35	6th	+2	6th

The biggest difference between the “Parsons Thorns” (or perhaps we should call them the “Parsons/Smith Thorns”) as we last saw them in 2021, and the others since then, is the defending.

Parsons’ teams were typically fairly sturdy in back; lowest GA in 2016, 2017, and 2021 and seldom worse than third- or fourth-best GA in the table. Scoring? Kinda all over; second in the league in 2016, down to fifth the following season, second in 2018 (but waaayyyy behind The Damned Courage), third in 2019.

But starting with Wilkinson’s club in 2022 that started to change.

That season the playoff run rested in Sophia Smith’s massive MVP year; her 15 goals were almost a third of the team’s total, and tho the defense finished behind Seattle and San Diego her money paid the freight.

The following year Mike Norris’ squad kind of did the same only worse in back; 10th of 12, only better than the woeful Current and Red Stars, but with Smith running wild up front (11 of the squad’s 42 GF) to keep the GD top.

Last season, with Smith injured, or out with the Nats, and KenBall in effect, the wheels came off. Without a goalscoring beast up front and with repeated (often multiple) concessions in back, the sixth place finish and quick playoff exit reflected the issues all across the pitch.

How Did Portland Score?

Back in 2018 the Thorns had a Season With No Forwards; something like 60% of the goals were scored by three midfielders led by Lindsey Horan’s 13-goal MVP season.

Ever since then I’ve kept a side-eye on where Portland’s goals come from. Where was that in 2024?

Well…Smith again, duh; 12 of 37, just about a third of the total.

Here’s the others with position and goals scored: Moultrie (MF – 4), Sinclair (notional FW – 4), Turner (FW – 4), Weaver (FW – 4), Beckie (MF – 3), four with 2 each (two forwards, two midfielders).

So out of the 37 GF, 28 goals came from the front line, just a hair over 75%. So…the forwards were doing what their paychecks were for.

Nice.

Now let’s look at the forwards individually.

The Forwards

Portland rostered a total of eight forwards in 2024. Two played relatively little and are already gone, so we can look at (and dismiss) them quickly

Ana Dias

Age: 23 (will be 24 in September 2025)
Games played 2024: 10 played, 2 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
Not applicable; signed from Zenit St. Petersburg in March, 2024

The Portuguese international also scored one goal, at Houston in May during the six-match Dead-Cat KenBounce.

Her only other start came in Utah at the end of June. She appeared once more – two minutes to see out the home win over San Diego in early July – then nothing until she was dealt to Tigres in the LigaMX Feminil in late August.

Dias’ shooting stats peg her problems pretty thoroughly:

Lots of shots (almost five per 90 minutes) but terrible accuracy – less than 8% on frame – and brutally wasteful; Dias’ “non-penalty goals minus xG per 90 minutes” – a measure of how well she did compared to how her xG predicted she’d do – was -0.46 per match, meaning she missed what should have been a goal almost every two matches.

When she was signed, though, Dias’ c.v. looked promising; big 2022 with Zenit St. Petersburg in the Russian top flight (nine goals) and 36 goals in 70 appearances going back to 2021.

Which just drives home the lesson that Ana-Maria Crnogorčević should have taught us and the FO back in Parsons’ day; context is everything.

The Russian top flight isn’t the NWSL, and the player who thrived under Olga Poryadina’s system at Zenit didn’t in KenBall here. It’s difficult to say how visible that should have been before her signing, but her limited minutes (112 in seven caps, no starts) for the Seleção Portuguesa might have been a hint.

Pretty clear miss, though.

Izzy D’Aquila

Age: 23 (will be 24 in September 2025)
Games played 2024: 14 played, 4 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
2023 Final Grade: F

At the end of last season I wrote:

“She is trying to keep her dream of professional soccer alive. I’d like that to happen. But for it to happen, D”Aquila has got to be better than she was last season. If she can’t be, well…the NWSL rosters are small, and if she can’t even be decent depth she can’t remain on ours.”

Now she isn’t.

The story of D’Aquila here in Portland is kind of a dreary tale of development failure, misuse, and poor choices from the management and technical staff.

D’Aquila was a first-rounder, drafted 12th overall in 2023. At the time most assessments of the pick were pretty positive. Chris Henderson gave the pick an A/A- grade, noting that D’Aquila was a strong, aggressive center forward/#9 that would be very useful with Smith gone at the World Cup.

Well…

D’Aquila appeared in 21 matches in 2023 (15 in the league, six more in the Challenge Cup) but started only twice and scored only once, in a home Cup win over Angel City. As my final grade attests, 2023 was not a good year for D’Aquila.

Her stat line below shows her problems; she took a ton of shots – over four per match – but put only about a quarter of that on frame, and her conversion rate – zero on an xG of 0.34 per game – was shocking.

Last season she started hitting the target (putting about three of four shots on frame) and finally scored but, again, well below her xG.

D’Aquila had two problems.

One was completely on Ken. Despite her c.v. as a poacher, a true #9, Gale used her as a winger when he wasn’t throwing her all over the pitch; right mid, left mid, d-mid, left wing when Weaver was injured, right wing, and even at center forward now and then. Ken kept throwing D’Aquila at the winger wall hoping she’d stick. Well, hope is not a plan and neither was that shit.

But the other was her ball skills. D’Aquila often had a brutal first touch, and her ability to turn a dangerous opportunity into nothing was almost superhuman; perhaps never so perfectly encapsulated by her 88th minute crossbar in the loss in Washington. Unmarked, twelve yards out, with Kingsbury at her mercy…nothing but woodwork.

The question I can’t shake is; what if D’Aquila had played for someone who had real coaching ability? Someone who could help a young player develop her foot skills and scoring touch? Someone who could use her in ways that took advantage of D’Aquila’s strengths instead of exposing her weaknesses?

Unfortunately who she got was Mike and Ken.

Grade: D

It’s tempting to hand out another F to D’Aquila. I mean, she was waived after two utterly undistinguished seasons. That’s pretty much “failing” at professional soccer.

That said, D’Aquila’s metrics improved a bit in 2024, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that she was hard done by her coaches and the management that picked her up without any real plan to use her effectively.

So.

A third now-former player was rostered at forward (though played as an attacking midfielder as often as not) and, though she’s also gone can’t really be dismissed quickly or easily given her status with the squad and what she represented on the pitch:

Christine Sinclair

Age: 41 (will be 42 in June 2025)
Games played 2024: 25 played, 19 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
2022 Final Grade: C- (by team standards) D- (by her own standards)
2023 Final Grade: D-

It’s always been difficult to be objective about Sinc.

On the one hand, the player is a legitimate living legend, one of the greatest ever to play the game. The final remaining player from the championship season of 2013, through all the Shields and stars since then, the player who has captained the club in fact, and led it in spirit, every season for a decade.

On the other, well…

Sinclair’s form relative to her squad has been declining since 2017. In 2019 the drop was brutally obvious, and in 2022 her net fell below the squad average for the first time on record. Since 2023 her play has been a drag on the club’s form; even with a tiny uptick in 2024 she’s below the team mean.

Last season I wrote:

“As fatigue begins to tear away at those thirty-something legs her form starts to slide. By midseason Sinc is struggling to make an impact; she’s still got the skills, but she can’t run with her opponents long enough to use them. By the playoffs she’s cooked.

I’ll admit that Sinc still has some soccer in her. Every so often she’ll do something that reminds you who she is (she’s the maestra of the flick-on-header, for one…) but you have to sit through hours of her lumbering around midfield to find them.

It’s time to move on. Seriously. Shit, it was time to move on several years ago, and it’s past time now.”

It was true then. Now that she has instead of floating away on a cloud of championship celebration smoke like the final scene from Princess Kaguya…

…(and FWIW I think that’s Hina-san to her left in the green cocktail frock but I’m gonna pass on who plays The Buddha. Ken??? Nooooo, so not going there…) she leaves after the worst season since 2015, and her – and her club’s insistence on her – playing time had a lot to do with that low finish.

Yet it feels low, and mean, to pick on her for that.

Yes. Sinc should have retired after 2022.

She didn’t because she’s driven by the heat of the same sacred fire that fuels her greatness. The problem with “never say die!” is when it’s past time to turn things over to the next generation.

When your heart and mind still say yes but your body says no.

Grade: D (for 2024); A+ (for her career)

I’m thankful the Sinclair Era is done. Now we can bask in the memories of that era, raise a fuss about her casting in bronze replacing the goofy face mask at the corner of SW 18th and Morrison, and look forward to her second act without dreading the slow curtain of the first.

Whew. Okay. That was harder than I thought.

That leaves five:

Sophia Smith

Age: 24 (will be 25 in August 2025)
Games played 2024: 19 played, 18 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
2022 Final Grade: A+
2023 Final Grade: A+

The Franchise.

It’s just that simple. For the past three seasons as goes Smith so go the Thorns.

The final grade here isn’t really at issue. The question instead is; how good is Smith compared to the best in the league? Well…

Here’s her comparison with some of the top forwards in the league last season; Temwa Chawinga, Barbara Band, Esther Gonzalez, Trinity Rodman, and Ouleymata Sarr. Pretty elite company.

Unsurprisingly Smith looks right at home, even with the big goal guns Banda and Chawinga. Look at the goals plus assists (“G+A”) column; all within a margin of error of 1G+A per 90 minutes. Subtract Smith’s two PK goals and she’s still within 0.1G+A per game of the other two.

Shooting?

Smith and Esther bossed the “made something out of nothing” role – look at the far right column (non-penalty goals minus xG per 90 minutes) – and Smith is right behind Esther in exceeding her expected goals by +0.1.

In possession?

Again, right up there. Note that Smith lost more “take-on” duels than any of her comps outside of young Sarr. That’s the price of Ken’s relying on Smith Hero-Ball. If Smith couldn’t make it happen, none of her teammates could, either. Opponents knew that, swarmed her, and tackled her for loss.

Also meaning that when she missed time to callups, the squad suffered, And though her plus-minus rating was among the best on the squad…

…look at the right-hand side:

Smith returned from the Olympics seriously off-form; injured, messed-up headspace, both? Hard to tell, but as we’ve seen; when The Franchise isn’t in top form, the Thorns franchise pays for it.

Grade: A-

For the first time in three seasons Smith was wrestled to earth in the run-up to the playoffs. By her own issues, by fatigue and a knock or knocks picked up in France, by her club’s crude “tactics” and lack of support. She started trying to Do It All, and found that good teams can beat even the greatest individual.

Morgan Weaver

Age: 27 (will be 28 in October 2025)
Games played 2024: 14 played, 11 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
2022 Final Grade: B+
2023 Final Grade: A+

Morgan Weaver’s PMR plot kinda shows how her 2024 went:

Started strong, slumped as the team did under Norris, then her first big injury on Matchday 7 in LA.
– Out until September, then a roller-coaster late season struggling to find form through her return to match-fitness. You can see how tough that was;
– A goal and a strong hour in LA, then nothing in San Diego,
– Another goal in a strong hour, then a knock that sent her off in the Orlando Trap Game,
– Twenty meh minutes in Louisville followed by the third of her four 2024 goals in a good seventy minutes against ACFC,
– Finally a full ninety-plus working her ass off in Jersey, but “Weaver needs teammates, Smith in particular, and Gotham did a good job isolating them and Ken couldn’t figure out how to unlock that”. So that was that.

Weaver, injury and all, had a decent season. Here’s her numbers compared to some of the better left wing/attacking midfield players in the league (Mal Swanson, Debinha, Maria Sanchez, Ashley Hatch, and Temwa Chawinga):

Between her injury and Smith’s struggles the WeaverSmith hivemind never developed last season, and it shows most strongly in Weaver’s zero in the “assist” column. Her goals per 90 minutes – 0.38 – is right up alongside everyone other than Chawinga (no shame there…). But “G+A”? Behind everyone but Maria Sanchez, whose season was kind of a hot mess.

How about shooting?

Fair enough. Decent accuracy, conversion close to her xG (better than Sanchez and Debinha, by God…).

Possession?

Strong in possession (her “take-on” success is over 60%, best in the group) and carried upfield as well or better than anyone not Swanson or Chawinga.

So for all her trouble, a solid season as an individual.

The problem being, as we say here repeatedly, that soccer is among the “team-y-est” of team sports. Between her injury, Smith’s late-season form, the other forwards issues, and above all her gaffers’ inability to craft a working tactical scheme Weaver’s skillful play fell short along with her squad.

Grade: B+/A-

The mess that is KenBall makes it difficult to figure out whether Weaver’s late-season form was her own struggles peaking and crashing or Ken’s incompetence, or some medley of both.

Okay, so. We’ve disposed of the Gone Girls, and run down the Twin Peaks, the two veteran starters.

What’s left are three part-timers; Payton Linnehan (18 matches, 6 starts), Alexa Spaanstra (8 matches, 4 starts), and Reilyn Turner (6 matches, 1 start). We’ll take them in that order.

Payton Linnehan

Age: 23 (will be 24 in March 2025)
Games played 2024: 18 played, 6 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
Not applicable; drafted (11th overall) in January 2024.

When I was in the service I had a friend whose Army pedigree went back to the close of the Vietnam War and who was, in fact, selected in the final draft call – to date, anyway – of the U.S. Army. His Basic Training company motto was “December ’72, last of the Chosen Few.”

I’m sure it was not nearly as quirky and funny at the time as it seems now.

Linnehan is among the Last of the NWSL Draftees. I wonder how she feels about that?

Anyway, one of the biggest KenWTF? questions last season was “Why is D’Aquila the first forward off your bench not Linnehan, ma’dude?” because…

And I think it’s because Ken is an “assistant-coach-grade” guy, fixated on detail and isolated metrics compared to the bigger tactical picture.

Because if you look just at the numbers D’Aquila is doing more; bigger xG, more shots on frame, more “goals per 90 minutes”.

But if you look at who’s converting, well…and if you compare their PMRs head-to-head:

Again, that’s something an “assistant-coach” would see; more consistent play from the more veteran player versus more volatile but more-often-more-gifted play from the rookie. A mediocre coach like Ken would prefer the less-ingenious but more predictable D”Aquila.

And it’s worth noting that fan frustration with D’Aquila tended to make this more of an issue that it really was. Linnehan got 739 minutes in 18 appearances, D’Aquila only 454 in 14, and four of D’Aquila’s 14 appearances were single-digit garbage-time minutes.

The end result was that neither Linnehan nor D’Aquila ended up getting enough minutes to show anything but glimpses. D’Aquila’s were barren enough to get her cut. Linnehan’s – as her comps suggest and the club has since confirmed – were not. Hopefully we can see more of her in 2025 to get a better idea of her quality.

Grade: Incomplete (but passing)

Alexa Spaanstra

Age: 24 (will be 25 in February 2025)
Games played for Portland in 2024: 8 played, 4 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
Not applicable; drafted (10th overall) by Kansas City in January 2023 and sold to Portland in August 2024.

If Linnehan is hard to suss out because of KenBall Spaanstra is a KenRiddle inside a KEnigma wrapped in KenMystery.

She got four straight starts, from Matchday 17 at Gotham in August to Chicago here on Matchday 21 in September. Four straight losses, the nadir of KenBall, and after each of four games I typed something like:

“Spaanstra (76′ – +4/-1 : +4/-0 : +8/-1) Showed some promising ideas and pace, with the same team problems as everyone else – just not better as the sum of the parts.”

That’s from the BayFC loss on Matchday 18.

Here’s Chicago:

“Spaanstra (75′ – +4/-1 : +2/-1 : +6/-2) Spaanstra is a good winger; three of her pluses are for terrific crosses that, unfortunately, were either well defended or couldn’t find a target. She’s a promisingly pacey and intelligent player hampered by a slow, dumbed-down system.”

After that nothing but garbage minutes.

Overall you can see what happened between the ’23 draft and today here…

…and here:

After a promising 2023 Spaanstra’s 2024 wasn’t great, so Vlatko sold her here. Ken isn’t Vlatko-adjacent, or even in the same Vlatko-hemisphere, so he made Spaanstra’s form no better or (if her xG and progression numbers are any indication) even worse.

So it’s difficult to tell what we have in Spaanstra. I can see her being useful depth under a clever gaffer. For Ken? Not so much.

Grade: Incomplete

Of these final three I’m least excited about Spaanstra. Not a hater, just nothing I see suggests she’s depth with anything that Linnehan or Turner hasn’t, and we need a starting right winger before we need more depth.

Still, she came cheap and there’s no such thing as too much depth if it’s cheap.

Reilyn Turner

Age: 22 (will be 23 in October 2025)
Games played for Portland in 2024: 6 played, 1 started
Comparison with previous seasons:
Not applicable; drafted (6th overall) by Racing Louisville in January 2024 and traded to Portland for Janine Beckie in August 2024.

Got her first sub minutes in the Gotham away loss in August, then a steady string of appearances; 37 minutes for Smith in the Bay FC home loss, a full half and her only start at Washington (another loss), a quarter-hour for Spaanstra in the Chicago home loss, finally a point in LA but had to replace Weaver and suffered by comparison.

Turner mercifully missed the ugly loss to San Diego and the Orlando Trap Win, but reappeared in Louisville where she missed an absolute sitter in the 94th minute that could have rescued the road point.

Back to the bench for Sinclair’s Finale. Came in for Sinclair in the quarterfinal, where she nicked her only and Portland’s only playoff goal but was sorta victimized on Gotham’s opening goal, so good-news-bad-news.

Looks kind of like Spaanstra, dunnit? Decent work for another club, comes to Portland, takes a KenTorpedo in the hull to sink without a trace.

Grade: Incomplete

All three of these players are intensely frustrating because all three were first-round picks, all showed some promise, and all three were fucking nerfed by poor tactical direction or the lack of same.

All three still look like probable depth or even possible starters. But at the moment? Who knows?

Summing Up

After 2023 I wrote this about the forward line:

“The keys to 2024 and beyond are, first and most obviously, keeping Smith and Weaver healthy and happy. But right after that is providing them with solid backups and additional support. Can we do that? I hope so; those two have soldiered for several seasons now. It’s be nice if we could help them out.

Overall Grade: A-

The half-grade deduction is purely for the lack of depth.”

Well…

1. Smith was hurt (a bit) and unhappy (a lot),
2. Weaver got hurt (badly), and
3. The depth couldn’t step up, largely because
4. KenBall continued Norris’ Smith hero-ball stuff that doesn’t work without Smith.

That’s a steep hill, but not an unexpected one. Injuries are a black swan, but it doesn’t take Sir Alex Ferguson to figure out that throwing Smith against the hero-ball wall over and over would 1) eventually piss Smith off and 2) be fairly simple to defend against (even given Smith, who can do magic even smothered with defenders…just not enough).

The club had a whole offseason to come up with a better plan and didn’t, so

Overall Grade: C

I’m giving the grade primarily to the management and technical staff and giving them credit for the Weaver injury and the Smith post-OG slump they couldn’t plan for.

Without that this mark would be substantially lower. When you have Smith there’s no excuse; not having a scheme to use her effectively is like having a Lamborghini and running it around on those goofy donut spare tires.

That’s an ignorant, self-inflicted injury.

The club must do better next season.

Next up: The Coaches, Trainers, and Management