I’d thought to do a standard TFC match report for Sunday’s preseason game against Angel City FC at the “Coachella Valley Invitational” thing in Indio (“the prestigious Empire Polo Club”) California.
By the quarter hour I gave up. Coach Ken fielded a pickup side, the rules apparently allowed free substitution (i.e. players could go in and out seemingly at random, the way the NCAA does), and in the resulting primordial chaos there was no real value to doing that deep a dive.
So instead I’m going to give you just my general observations.
Undercooked.
The squad as a whole looked really preseason-raw. We’ll talk about that next, but once the formation changed I saw a lot of players who obviously had no idea what their teammates would do or where to look for them. Passes went astray, people got skinned, or their pockets picked. Angel City didn’t look ready for prime time, either, but the Thorns seem to be in the very early stages of tuning up.
We’ll talk about individual players later but the backline in general had a lot of trouble playing out. Mackenzie Arnold (who went the distance) is still fairly good in distributing forward but the Thorns field players still don’t really work with her to make that into an effective weapon. Obaze and Reyes looked solid, Muller not quite as much on both sides of the ball.
The Angels definitely had the better of the chances, and most of that was due to a combination of individual turnovers and lack of practice together in back as well as the Angels slightly-further-along training form.
Up front the various Thorns forward lines didn’t create much danger; the Thorns goal came off a brutal Angels turnover deep in their own end and Payton Linnehan crashing the box. Linnehan looked the best of the lot, Moultrie busy but not dangerous, Castellanos absent. The lack of Weaver (knee repair surgery) and Wilson (personal?) was obvious.
Formation: 4-4-2 or 4-3-3?
The match opened with what looked like a 4-4-2 diamond (call it a “4-1-2-1-2”); Arnold in goal, Reyes-Obaze-Jayden Perry (rookie out of UCLA)-Muller across the back, Sam Coffey at the #6, Hina Sugita and Jessie Fleming as the wide midfielders/dual #8s, Deyna Castellanos at the ACM/#10, with Olivia Moultrie and Payton Linnehan as forwards.
I thought it worked pretty well right up to the top of the pitch, where the attackers just didn’t have any idea what they wanted to do with each other. Castellanos was invisible, Moultrie and Linnehan active and energetic but lacking nous or any sort of connection with each other or Castellanos.
About half an hour in, though, Ken swapped several players and (I’m pretty sure) the formation. It looked sort of like a 4-3-3; Moultrie went to CF with Linnehan and Castellanos wide, Fleming, Spaanstra, and Coffey in midfield (Sugita came off at that point) and the same back four.
That…didn’t work as well. Players looked poorly distributed and the passing, never precise to begin with, got sloppier. ACFC got several good looks at goal, Portland nothing really until the turnover and Linnehan.
Who stood out? Who Didn’t?
Arnold looked sharp, making several reaction stops on point-blank headers as well as turning a (fairly weak, IMO) Christen Press penalty attempt wide of her post. The ACFC goals were largely on her field players.
Sugita was much like her usual clever self, though her teammates not being in synch meant she was tackled more often than usual.
Coffey was strong defensively as always but also did some good attacking passing, especially in the 4-4-2.
Linnehan overcame some early turnovers to keep pushing up and got the goal. I thought she had a decent match but, like the rest of the squad, looked deep in early-season form.
Reyna Reyes looked on point defensively and was more clinical passing than Marie Muller, which surprised me. Muller was caught out of position upfield several times and her passing eye was off. Again, hopefully just preseason.
Who didn’t look good? I won’t really say anyone was truly dire. Several commenters on the Stumptown thread liked what they saw from Perry but I was unimpressed. Not awful, just made the expected rookie mistakes. This organization is fairly iffy at training up young players; I’d like to see it but wouldn’t surprise me if Perry can’t make the jump to the pros. Right now? Depth.
The other new centerback signing Daiane came on late, did nothing grotesquely wrong, but was brutally skinned on the second ACFC goal, getting caught woolgathering as the AC midfielder skated past her. Not seeing a lot there, either. Replacement level? If she’s also depth, that’s fine. If she’s a starter? Not so much.
I’d have liked to see Sam Hiatt, but I’m hearing she might be nursing a knock.
Random notes
Right after the Linnehan goal Ken pretty much swapped out the whole squad on the hour mark, at which point Angel City – which Big Sam kept at full strength for the most part – pounced on the Amateur Night XI to nick a couple of goals which says effectively nothing about either side.
Late in the match Nicola Payne took a tackle that put her down hard. She was stretchered off and may be out for some time (or worse). That’s not good given how thin the roster is at fullback.
If Morgan Weaver really is out several months from surgery and Sophia Wilson is pregnant? We got problems, because the attack looked, as we’ve discussed, pretty barren. Not sure why Ken left Reilyn Turner off the pitch; she might be a spark.
The Thorns play Houston next Saturday. FOX does not have that game on their schedule, so whether we can see it or not is a real question. If we can…I’d like to see this squad look a bit more put together.
Opening Day is less than a month away.
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I finally got a chance to watch this game, or at least minutes 6-60 minutes of it, from when the replay starts (it’s missing the first 6 minutes) up until the mass substitution. We looked, well, okay, in a pre-season-y, missing-Wilson-and-Weaver sort of way. ACFC had a lot of the ball but for the most part didn’t look threatening, so that was good. We looked even less threatening, though, and I can only hope we have both Wilson and Weaver because it will be a long year otherwise. Obaze going down on a non-contact injury was really scary, but she continued playing, so hopefully there are no long-term consequences. This did, however, make me think once again about the shallowness of our backline depth. Given Obaze’s apparent fragility, this will likely be a real problem this year.
The biggest positive for me was Linnehan’s goal – not so much that she scored it, but HOW she scored it. She didn’t just whack the ball as hard as possible in the general direction of the goal, which is what she seemed to do a lot last year. Instead she placed it carefully into the far netting. This was very encouraging because it suggests growth in her game. Not long before the goal she had also tried a chip; she missed, but at least she was attempting a different way to score goals, and that can only be good.
I thought that the real takeaway from the “attack” was…that it wasn’t. Nice to see Linnehan get her goal, but until ACFC coughed up that turnover the Thorns, as you noted, created diddly-squat. Weaver is out up to 6 weeks post-op (she had “clean-up” work done on her knee, suggesting that the original repair hadn’t been rehabbing that well) and I think Wilson may be trying to start a kiddo, meaning she MIGHT be on ML this season.
If so? Ken needs a workaround most quick smart.
We don’t have any idea because this FO, but we may be down a FB – Payne was stretchered off – and, yes, the backline is very fragile. Daiane looked pretty meh, Hiatt was not played…yikes.
Hopefully the squad looks more put together Saturday.