The Portland Thorns 2026 NWSL preseason officially begins in one month. February 15, 2026.
That’s when the squad runs out against Angel City at the Great Carrot Festival in Coachella Valley.
Which means that the RAJ organization now has about two weeks to sign an agreement with someone to coach the team if they don’t want to start the run-up to the regular season with one of Rob Gale’s former assistants in the technical box.
Or…tap another interim manager? Try and hire a full-time gaffer in midsummer after the European season ends?
Which will they choose?
I honestly don’t know.
When will they choose it?
Dunno that, either. I’d have thought “before the New Year”, but that ship’s almost sailed.
At this point it seems unlikely that any new permanent hire announced in the next month or so will be able to do much with the roster outside tweaking the edges.
To give you an idea of the way this has gone previously:
- Cindy Parlow-Cone’s hiring was announced December 22, 2012, giving her about a month to prepare for the 2013 Draft (and the “supplemental draft” in February) though the bulk of the roster was already set. Her resignation was announced December 5, 2013.
- Paul Riley (spit!) was announced December 16, 2013. He had a heavy hand on the 2014-15 rosters (including two drafts) before being released in late September 2015.
- Mark Parsons was signed October 5, 2015 and coached through the end of the 2021 season (his departure was announced as early as May, so the club had a long lead time). We all know how critical Parsons’ and Gavin Wilkinson’s roster construction, through both drafts and deals, was to the 2016-2018 run of results
- Rhian Wilkinson was named head coach in late November 2021, won the 2022 star, and then was forced out in early December 2022 after L’Affaire Mengison.
- Mike Norris was a panic hire made January 10, 2023 to stabilize the club after the combined $1M fine/Paulson sale/Wilkinson defenestration. As we know, he lasted four games into the 2024 season.
- Rob Gale was moved into the technical box April 16, 2024, made permanent in July, and here we are.
So, in order:
Norris was the latest permanent coaching hire in Thorns history. Given that the final NWSL Draft was two days later it’s unlikely that he had much, if any, input and even then the only signing of note that season was Reyna Reyes (first-round draft pick). The Horan “loan” was not his doing, and he was clearly in place to act as a continuation of Wilkinson’s tenure. So very late, yes, but also not really a problem because he wasn’t there to shake things up and roster-build.
Wilkinson had a long run-up to her official takeover in November, but even then the 2022 offseason was busy, including the expansion drafts (trading away Simone Charley, Tyler Lussi, Christen Westphal, and Amirah Ali), the NWSL Draft (the infamous Nasello-Tweetgate), along with numerous roster moves (Sam Coffey and Hina Sugita in, along with Taylor Porter and Janine Beckie, with Britt Eckerstrom and Angela Salem moving out along with Horan). I’m unsure of how much input RW had in all this (the story I’ve heard is that Coffey and Hina-san were Parsons projects) but my guess is some, at least. So I don’t think the timing of her hiring was critical.
Gale we know about. Followed a ruinous 2024 with a fairly decent 2025, but, a lot like Rikey (spit!), couldn’t pull together the squad he needed or wanted well enough, or for long enough, enough to get to the top step. Let go November 25, 2025.
Parlow-Cone is hard to assess. I’m not really confident how much effect she had on the roster; clearly the biggest pieces (Sinclair and Morgan) were allocated. And tactics? In 2013 the rumors abounded that she was there to “hand out the orange slices” while the stars ran the club.
Parsons we know, too, and more consequently than Gale. Combined with Gavin Wilkinson as GM the team was hands-down the most consequential manager/GM combination in club history. The hiring of Parsons was even more consequential than we knew at the time, but even without the understanding we now have of what had been happening on the downlow his stamp on the club was huge, and getting him in ASAP after Riley (spit!) fled the scene of the crime was a huge part of that.
It’s hard to look past the loathsome behavior of the man himself, but Riley (spit!) was an active and effective partner with GW in roster building in his two (or one-and-a-half) offseasons. His problem, however, was that he had a sort of Platonic ideal roster he wanted – built around internationals like Nadine Angerer, Jodi Taylor, Genoveva Anonma, and Vero Boquete and U.S.-products like Emily Menges and Sinead Farelly – but that team never really came together. How much of that was just bad luck, how much was timing, and how much was Riley (spit!) being a creepy sex pest is hard to now unravel.
Now?
If the coaching hire is announced tomorrow it will be the second-latest, and latest non-emergency, HC hiring the club has made.
The “good news” is that GM Agoos seems to be working the phones. Most of the known names are signed, and the roster holes look fairly small (tho presumably at least one CB). I don’t see needing the new gaffer to be all over the roster for preseason.
But tactics? Team play?
Ohhellyes. If this club goes back to fucking Wilson Hero-ball in 2026 I might just break the screen of my laptop shouting at it. The new hire will have about 90 days to lay out a vision of how they see the squad playing, sell the players on it, set up and train on it, and then roll it out in the face of the enemy.
Can that happen?
We’re gonna find out, aren’t we?
Update 1/7: Per Phuoc Nguyen at Stumptown a “team source” says “…the Portland Thorns head coaching search is down to a final shortlist of candidates.”
Which is fine….provided the short list is a good one, which we won’t actually know until the signing is announced. Again, even then we’ll just have to 1) wait and see who the new gaffer is, and then 2) wait and see how this person actually manages the roster and tactics, which, as I noted in the comments, could mean waiting through a significant chunk of the season itself! Festina lente, as the Romans would say.
In other news announced in the same post:
- The club hired a former San Diego scouting exec, Mark Carr, to run the RAJ organization’s scouting combine, and
- Apparently one of the current centerbacks (Daiane) is in process of being
dealt(traded? sold? the post simply says “moving”) loaned to Monterey in LigaMX Feminil.
Thoughts?
Carr seems like a solid get on the merits; his work at SDW included scouting/signing several decent-or-better players including Trinity Armstrong and Dudinha. In the comments on the post longtime Thorns savant kielbj notes that Carr has had some HR issues (accused of assholishness in the NCAA), and combined with my opinion of San Diego as “overhyped” – a big name roster that never seems to come up big on the pitch – makes me tend to be kind of “what have you done for me lately” about this. Throw in the other SDW issues – the brutal Stoneyball the outfit played in 2022, the internal fuckery of Burkle and Ellis and Landycakes, and the tame way Eidevall’s side slid out of the quarterfinal this past season? I’m gonna wait and see what this dude comes up with once the new gaffer is set in place; simply pointing to his SDW c.v. doesn’t light up the room for me.
Daiane was a pretty fringe player in 2025; decent enough when she appeared, but not really a critical element in the side. I liked what I saw well enough, but I saw so little that it’s difficult to feel the loss particularly hard. That said…in a roster unit that’s possibly the thinnest of all the club’s positions, the loss of another centerback seems like a questionable move unless Agoos & Co. have some ideas. Do they? Again; we’ll see.
Update 1/9: I don’t see the move being a loan as changing anything I wrote here. Seems odd to be shedding a CB given how thin the roster is there, but I’ve got to hope that Agoos has a cunning plan more cunning than a cunning fox appointed Dean of Cunning at Cunning University.
Conclusions?
My guess is we’ll see a coach announcement before the middle/end of January, and the new gaffer will work with Lowdon to transition before the first preseason games in February. Lowdon might stay on, though if the new hire is someone with any sort of respectable c.v (which it should be!) they will want their own staff assistants. Sadly (because he’s a good dude) Vytas Andriuškevičius is likely to be out; his backline was the most troubled of the Gale units, and if the newcoming boss is any sort of leader (which she should be!) they’ll want their own assistant in to tighten up the shot group there.
Final Note: If you don’t subscribe to Andre’ Carlisle’s newsletter it might be worth getting a subscription to read the sensei’s brutal takedown of the NWSL league management’s fuckery over the past six months or so.
The tl:dr? The NWSL suits, and Commissioner Berman, seem to have only one central concern, and it’s not “soccer”. The post rips particularly hard on the indefensible “High Impact Player” nonsense I slapped around up above.
Professional sport in general, and professional soccer in particular, has long since left the fold of “sport” to become “business” and as such is about making money and, as such, is about getting as much of it’s hand in our – the fans’ – wallets as possible. I get that. I hate it, but I get it.
But there’s “mulcting the fans” and then there’s this. There’s ways to jerk money out of the fans while still providing good sport. What the NWSL suits’ actions show, however, is that the current leadership isn’t particularly interested in that
- Notes on the Silly Season, Part WTF!? - January 8, 2026
- Notes on the Silly Season, Part 2.5 - December 29, 2025
- Notes on the silly season, part 1 - December 2, 2025
It is curious that the thorns would move on from Ken without a clear replacement in the wings. Maybe they thought if Ken can win with this squad, anyone can.
Prior to the Wilson signing, I was fine with a take your time and get the “right” person approach. Now, we are on a win this year clock that is ticking away. We need to get someone good in asap so we aren’t wasting what could be Sophia’s last season if this thing doesn’t fly.
I think that the whole “clear replacement” thing assumes a degree of certainty the FO couldn’t possibly have had in October 2025.
For one thing, it was still possible – I know those of us Ken-skeptics didn’t believe it, but – that Ken could win it all. He rolled the right dice and finished third! He then scuffed past San Diego into the semi! He was 180 minutes away from a star!
As I discussed in my reply below, I reeeeally disagree with the whole “Agoos has been hunting a Ken-replacement since June” trope. The downside – that it would leak and completely dynamite the relationship between Gale and the FO – was WAY too big. So, no, as long as Ken had the squad in the hunt last season, any feelers Agoos put out had to be tiny and tentative.
So, nope; as long as Ken and the 2025 squad had a chance, I don’t see how there’s anyone in the wings.
But they stumbled, and at that point the “well, we COULD stick with this guy, but why not see if we can do better?” option comes in play. And now they are searching, but at the toughest time to find a top-tier professional. the NCAA is a possibility, being out of season, but that’s always a crapshoot.
So I’m not arsed about the delay so much as concerned that, seeing the days counting down, the FO will lunge for someone, anyone, to just fill the empty space. That’s how we got Mike Norris, and that should be a cautionary tale..!
I agree, with the caveat that maybe they *do* have a clear replacement in mind, it’s just that she/he is with another club right now and they want to delay announcing it for as long as possible to allow this person to continue to be effective at their current club. I find it hard to believe Agoos hasn’t been working his contacts for months on this. Also, given that Wilson could go nearly anywhere in the world, would she have re-upped if she didn’t know who the coach was going to be? I kind of think it’s a done deal.
But who really knows.
I’ve heard the “Oh, sure, Goose has had someone in play since July” trope repeatedly now, and every time I hear it (as days pass without a peep) it sounds less and less probable.
First, because it would have been (as Dave points out) difficult for either Ken or the Mystery Coach to have not been nerfed had that been going on. Pro soccer is a small world, pro WoSo even smaller, and I’d be shocked if even the most cunning GM could be looking for, finding, and negotiating with, a new HC without someone in one or the other orgnizationss spilling the beans. Once word was out…well.
Second, even if they had there’s no real point in maintaining that level of secrecy now, and many reasons for announcing it.
As with the Netherlands, the Thorns, and Parsons in 2021, it will give the gaining club time to openly negotiate with the replacement while preparing the current squad for the transition. It’s only common courtesy to the losing club and allows them to plan for their own future.
So I don’t think they ARE close to signing anyone yet. I’m guessing they might likely be down to a final cut. Maybe. Who knows. But as with the coaching search, my thought is that if the actual announcement was imminent the usual suspects would have posted something about it.
And – regardless of timing – the “right” hire is still important. The “lesson learned” of both Gale and Riley (spit!) is that it’s not enough to just be a happy vibe-er, or good at roster building, or clever at tactics. A consistently successful team has to have all the above; and that’s a hell of a huge ask. The process is almost designed to take time.
In our case I think we’re still okay if that happens. The roster is pretty stacked – as noted in the post, another solid starting CB is the only real hole I see now – so it’s going to be more about tactics; formations, play-style, sub patterns…and that doesn’t have to be in place by mid-January so long as it’s well rounding into form by April.
But, as usual, there’s nothing by silence from the FO, so we won’t know until we do.
Welp, I was one of those who felt that Agoos would have a plan in place regarding the Head Coach, so now I’m going to eat some crow on that belief. Now I’m stuck hoping that the “No Information” approach is what the franchise is taking and that there is some sort of plan in place.
That being said, getting this decision right is much more important that getting it done quickly, so some time to completion isn’t the worst thing in the world. Getting Wilson to sign up for another season is a really good first step, and it would be great if some depth was signed. If Shea Harvey can create decent depth in the midfield (still not sure what her position there is going to be), then the focus needs to be on the CB position.
In spite of the lack of information, I am getting excited for this year. With decent coaching, the Thorns should be a good team, and with Wilson returning and the younger talent improving it could be a great team.
As I discussed above, the bottom line is and has always been 1) Ken had a legit shot at the title until November 2025, meaning that 2) any “plan in place” HAD to avoid the possibility of detonating the HC/FO relationship in case the club won it all.
So there’s no way – assuming that by “plan in place” you mean beginning a serious replacement hunt prior to mid-November – that Goose could have been headhunting early enough to have locked someone down by now, or sooner.
So the HC replacement process had to BEGIN after the club finished out of contention for a star (and, I’ll argue, that had Ken got the club into the Final match he might still have saved his job. Much as I will insist that the “over” wasn’t THAT big an “over”, it’s hard to argue for your coach wasn’t “overachieving” when he gets within 90 minutes of another championship with the casualty list his club had in 2025!).
Hence here we are.
My curiosity is most sparked by the lack of obvious available candidates. The UEFA region is in midseason, so there’s nobody out of work there now, and the non-UEFA prospects (largely NWSL retreads, NCAA and USSF coach-candidates) are very much crapshoots at the league level – that is, someone who’s a very clear NWSL-success-type lock, an obvious “OMFG you MUST sign this coach!!!” candidates – I can see.
We’ll have to wait and see who turns up
As far as the 2026 squad goes, in the immortal words of James Ubriacco, could be peaches, could be lunch meat.
Remember that we’ve had a fairly stacked roster for the past several years, including Smith/Wilson at her peak, and have gotten a star out of it through a combination of good work but a LOT of luck. We’ve never during that time had anything like a “great team”. Team of (some) great players? Yes. But I can’t think of anytime during the post-Parsons Era that anyone – including us here – considered the Thorns a legitimately “great team” in the way that the 2016-2019 Damned were, or the 2024 Pride was.
If everyone returns, and returns in form? Yes; on paper this looks like a marquee roster.
Can it play that way?
We’ll also have to see…
Some of the young players that helped get this team to third place in 2025 are going to be sitting on the bench a lot in 2026, but if they are it means the team will be deep. So yeah I am excited that this could be a great team. Also, I am pretty certain the coach will be an improvement and even though there will be some rough spots, this looks like a really interesting season.
See my reply above.
I’m…I won’t say “excited”. I’ve seen way too many “team of great players” squads fail to gel around the title chase, too many coaching prospects fail to make their vision work on the pitch to get spun up by a squad we’ve never actually seen on the field consistently playing for someone we don’t even have signed yet.
Intrigued? Oh fuck yes! This promises to be a fascinatingly unpredicable season, with the run of results going anywhere from “Oh, well, it’s a rebuilding season…” to “Holy shit, this may just be the most dominant squad in league history!” and everything in-between.
Also worth noting that “third place” was VERY much an artifact of 1) drawing a hugely disinterested ACFC on Matchday 25 and Houston on Decision Day so picking up six points over the final two matchdays plus 2) the other chasers having problems:
Orlando crashed out of the top three after June, going 3W-6D-5L (and we were one of their three W’s!) as well as needing a huge win over Washington on MD25 to hang onto fourth but still finished level on points with us, and…
Seattle had a really mediocre season (10-7-9) but finished only one point below us.
San Diego finished three points behind us (40-37) but was solidly in 2nd-3rd in midseason and had to collapse (2-2-6 after mid-August) to crash to 6th
So had the other three been a skosh better, had we had a couple of shitty games against Utah (who’d beat us once, remember) and ACFC we’d have struggled into the playoffs in 6th or worse.
Like I wrote earlier; I’ll give Ken a sort-of-backhanded “yeah, you overachieved, bro…” pat on the back. But I’m not sure that the 2025 squad was “third place” quality.
To me there was one outstanding squad in 2025. Behind Kansas City I’d agree that Washington was a pretty clear #2, and Orlando would have been #3 had Banda not been crocked. So lump us in the “decent” group below the top three.
Another caveat about finishing third is that we finished *25 points* behind the leaders. I too think that Gale overachieved, and kudos to him for that, but he had a ceiling. Even with a lot of good players back, gaining 25 points on KC wasn’t going to happen with him in charge.
I don’t know that PTFC would have made up the difference to KC had Alex Ferguson been in charge. They were just that much better than everyone else.
(Which just rubs in how ridiculous the idea of playoffs is. KC thumped the entire goddamn league over 26 games, and because they had one unlucky afternoon Gotham are “champions”. I get it; if not for playoffs Portland would have only two stars instead of three! But, still…if I was a Current supporter I’d be pretty chapped.)
That said, while Gale did manage to work the club up to a better finish than I thought he would, his squad dropped far too many points to poor opponents (Utah!) than they should have given the quality on the pitch.
Having the playoffs be the league championship is what happens when you have businesspeople in charge of a league, which is pretty much what we have in all sports leagues nowadays. Honestly playoffs are great for drama, which is great for pulling viewers in, which is great for pulling cash in – to the delight of the businesspeople. But as you note, playoffs are *terrible* for deciding who the best team in the league is, which is what I, as a fan, want to honor.
I’m glad soccer, both here and abroad, still recognizes the team having the best record with a trophy. And in most places in the world it’s the highest prize in the league, largely because that tradition was established when leagues were run by soccer people instead of marketing people. In a lot of US sports, which have a longer history of putting businesspeople in charge, the best record in the league gets you bupkis.
And now Coffey is apparently on the way to Man City. Damn, she’s one of my favorite players, and also one of the best in the league.