Thorns FC: Making Up Ground

Thanks to Friend of the Rivet ABell4 I was able to review the home win against Orlando that through my own carelessness I’d failed to record.

We went over the basics of the match in my apology post; fairly barren first half (for both clubs), finally an improbable Deyna Castellanos strike from distance, a nearly immediate Orlando equalizer, and then the final, heartwarming matchwinner from Caiya Hanks roughly seven minutes into her return from ACL Rehabland late in second half injury time.

So what I want to do here is just add the deets; numbers, assessments, and comments.

Let’s start here:

Short Passes

Surprisingly – since the Vilahamn Thorns have been consistent so far this season in rejecting the entire notion of “possession” as some sort of weird, creepy vaguely-Barcelona-esque thing – almost even; Portland 51% to Orlando’s 49%, Portland completing 79% of 449 passes, Orlando 77% of 414.

As we discussed in the earlier post, Vilahamn clearly prioritized collaring Barbara Banda over all that fancy-schmancy “goal-scoring” stuff we’ve been hearing The Kids Today talking about…possibly assuming that his superstriker Sophia Wilson would do her usual heroic Wilson stuff.

Instead, Wilson had a crap game and the goals had to come from her teammates (and Anna Moorhouse on the Castellanos shross – you’ll note that Moorhouse was finally so bad here that day that she shit her way off of the Orlando keeper bed/roster; Cosette Morché was between the sticks for Orlando’s win in D.C. this past weekend). The Banda thing worked, though, so, yay!

Turnover and over.

Here’s how things are going;

Opponent – Venue (Result)	Turnovers
Washington – Away (W)	26
Seattle – Home (W)	11
San Diego – Away (L)	29
Kansas City – Home (W)	23
North Carolina – Away (D)	25
Angel City – Away (W)	22
San Diego – Home (W)	17
Chicago – Away (W)	32
Louisville – Away (L)	25
Angel City – Home (D)	No data
Bay FC – Home (W)	33
Kansas City – Away (L)	29
Utah – Home (D)	23
Louisville – Home (W)	21
Seattle – Away (L)	33
Denver – Away (L)	33
Gotham – Home (D)	23
Utah – Away (L)	17
Boston – Away (W)	17
Orlando – Home (W)	24

Not great, but with Orlando coughing up 18 the dishonors were kinda even. Not much change between the halves; Portland from 11 to 13, Orlando 10 to 8.

Jayden Perry was the Biggest Loser with five, followed closely by Carolyn Calzada with four. M.A. Vignola and Pietra Tordin lost three each.

Both Perry and Vignola each had a bad (as in “in their own defensive third right in front of their own goal” bad) giveaway late in the second half, but by that time Orlando was confused and gassed and could do nothing with them. Sometimes lucky is as good as good.

Press!

Nineteenth match tracking the press. I counted either a 1) turnover (either from a tackle-for-loss or a mishit forced pass), or a 2) forced retreat or drop-pass that killed off a progressive action, as a pressing “win”.

I counted a total of 87 Portland presses. Forty-three (28 wins (65.1%) with 12 ball-winning presses) before halftime, 44 (27 wins (61.3%) and 14 takeaways) afterwards.

Orlando pressed 94 times, 52 (34 wins (65.3%) and 10 takeaways) before the break, 42 (23 wins (54.7%) and 9 takeaways) after.

Match time	Orlando presses (wins)(%)	Thorns presses (wins)(%)
0-45+2′	52(34) (65.3%)	43(28) (65.1%)
45-90+10′	42(23) (54.7%)	44(27) (61.3%)
Match Total	94(57) (60.6%)	87(55 (63.2%)

My thoughts:
1) Like the possession and turnover proportions, fairly even between the two sides.
2) Unlike the previous match the triggers were pretty similar, too. Portland pressed in Orlando’s defensive third about half the time (44 of 87), Orlando about 48% of the time (42 of 94).
3) So…not much here.

Here’s the running tally:

Match (Result)	Opponent Press (Success)	Thorns Press (Success)
Washington Away (W)	40(27) (67.5%)	69(41) (59.4%)
Seattle Home (W)	61(30) (49.1%)	35(20) (57.1%)
San Diego Away (L)	33(22) (66.6%)	88(40) (45.4%)
Kansas City Home (W)	26(15) (57.6%)	43(23) (53.4%)
North Carolina Away (D)	35(22) (62.8%)	56(26) (46.4%)
Angel City Away (W)	52(37) (71.1%)	61(32) (52.4%)
San Diego Home (W)	45(71) (63.3%)	45(80) (56.2%)
Chicago Away (W)	68(34) (50%)	97(51) (52.2%)
Louisville Away (L)	101(70) (69.5%)	62(35) (56.4%)
Angel City Home (D)	No data	No data
Bay FC Home (W)	59(34) (57.6%)	59(37) (62.7%)
Kansas City Away (L)	52(29) (55.7%)	34(20) (58.8%)
Utah Home (D)	99(55) (55.5%)	60(31) (51.6%)
Louisville Home (W)	55(31) (56.3%)	28(13) (46.4%)
Seattle Away (L)	67(46) (68.6%)	66(35) (53.0%)
Denver Away (L)	46(24) (52.1%)	53(27) (50.9%)
Gotham Home (D)	60(32) (53.3%)	58(86) (67.4%)
Utah Away (L)	86(61) (70.9%)	70(38) (54.2%)
Boston Away (W)	84(55) (65.4%)	83(44) (53%)
Orlando Home (w)	94(57) (60.6%)	87(55 (63.2%)

Corner Kicks

None. First time this season the Thorns haven’t nicked at least one corner.

Time

Taker

Short/Long?

Result

Again…kind of matches what we saw. The Thorns stifled Banda on the defensive end, but with Wilson misfiring didn’t have much in their attacking third.

Player Ratings and Comments

Wilson (+10/-3 : +5/-2 : +15/-5) When I say that Wilson had a “bad game” I don’t mean she wasn’t working. She was. But a huge amount of her work was defensive; eight of her 15 pluses were for presses or other forechecking graft.

Which is great. But she’s a goalscorer; that’s her rice bowl. It was awesome and fun to see Hanks and Castellanos get the goals, but that’s not really sustainable. Two goals on an xG of 0.77? That’s not really, either.

Muller (67′ – +5/-6 : +4/-0 : +10/-6) The whole “Muller as attacking outside mid” is fucking strange, and Solai Washington spent much of the first half eating Muller’s lunch. Much better second half, as Portland was able to sit a bit deeper and not expose Muller’s forechecking limitations as much. Still…the sooner we can have a Weaver-Hanks full 90, the better.

Weaver (23′ – +5/-0) Speaking of which…Morgan Weaver showed some good pace, and had a couple of nice moments with Wilson (her attacking run set the table for Gigi’s mom in the 74th minute, but Orlando’s backline (keying on Wilson as ours did on Banda) closed Wilson down) but overall? She hasn’t really put her stamp on a match yet. Not surprising.

Castellanos (78′ – +3/-4 : +7/-0 : +10/-4) At the time she scored the goal Castellanos was sitting on a PMR of +5/-4. Over the twenty-odd minutes after the goal? +5/-0.

If that’s not the most Castellanos fucking thing ever, what is? If the woman could put together a full 90 the way she played her final 20 minutes against Orlando? She’d be a goddamn MVP candidate and wouldn’t be looking for work this fall.

I don’t get it. She can do some incredible skill-stuff. Her lob-from-midfield goal in preseason? This goal? That’s terrific. Beautiful. Amazing. After her tally against Orlando she was suddenly everywhere; pressing, passing, intercepting, showing off pretty ball skills.

Why can’t she do that more often?

There’s a George Fraser short story called “Play Up, Play Up, and Get Tore In” from his memoir-a-clef The General Danced At Dawn in which his Highland battalion soccer team ends up (through a horrible mistake) playing the Royal Navy squad. As in, “The Navy”, the Fleet, the whole entire goddamn British Navy right after the end of WW2. So…a bunch of insanely talented, mostly ex- or future-professional players.

Brutally outclassed, the squad’s oddball, a strange, wandered passenger named McGlinchy, suddenly wakes up possessed with the spirit of Garrincha or Maradona or something, and more-or-less singlehandedly wins the match for them. Fraser’s Lieutenant Mary Sue curses the bizarre inability of the player to channel that magic on demand:

“I went over to McGlinchy, who was drying his hair and whistling. I wanted to ask: what gets into you? Why don’t you play like that all the time? But I didn’t. I knew I wouldn’t ever find out.”

It’s a wonderful story, and a terrific little book. If you can find it you should. It’s well worth the effort.

But like Lieutenant McNeil, I don’t think I’ll ever find out what goes on inside Castellanos, either.

Lyles (12′ – no rating)

Tordin (88′ – +5/-1 : +8/-1 : +13/-2) All her usual hard work and the assist on Hanks’ goal. Still not what the squad needs to see from her, and, as I think I’ve made brutally obvious, the whole “Tordin and Muller as wingers” thing isn’t really that terrific. I’d love to see Vilahamn run a genuine 4-4-2 with Tordin and Wilson up top and Hanks-Fleming-Nijstad-Weaver in midfield. Would that work? Dunno, but I’d like to see how it flies.

Hanks (2′ – +4/-1)

What more can I say? Pure poetry. If you wrote a sports movie with that ending? It’d get panned as pure schmaltz.

Fleming (+7/-2 : +2/-2: +9/-4) This was an odd match for both Portland’s DMs. I thought Fleming looked tough and in control in the first half, and then sort of disappeared in the second. Sofascore slammed her defending; eight “defensive contributions” but only one win in four duels on the ground and zero-for-one in the air. Dribbled past twice. I had her with three tackles-for-gain to their one, but, still…this backline needs Fleming to lock down the central midfield, and that didn’t happen for the full time in this one.

Nijstad (85′ – +4/-5 : +4/-1 : +8/-6) Similar to Fleming; Sofascore has her losing 6 of 11 duels on the ground and two of three in the air. Her second half pluses are mostly for contributing to the forward progress; two passes and a dangerous attack.

Both DMs pitched in to throttle Banda, so okay. But overall, I’d sure like to see a bit more sturdiness there.

Bogere (5′ – no rating)

Calzada (=6/-4 : +3/-3 : +9/-7) So I won’t say that Calzada looked head-and-shoulders better or worse than anyone else (except Vignola, but we’ll get there). The unit got the job (mostly) done, and was solid for an hour or so, which is fine.

There were some of the unfortunately-expectedly ugly moments, though a lot of that had to do with the lack of first half Portland attack. The Thorns were under the cosh from the opening whistle; I have just four Thorns semi-dangerous-or-better possessions before halftime, while Orlando mustered a dozen or so, including a 3rd minute Banda miss, a 26th minute Banda run that needed a terrific Perry solo tackle to stop, and a Washington shot that forced a huge Arnold save in the 32nd minute, which I’d like to dive into a bit, because this is a very “Portland backline” moment.

It begins with Ally Lemos over the ball – I don’t recall if this was in the run of play or a dead ball service – and 1) Washington running off Calzada’s shoulder whilst 2) Vignola, failing to step up to her teammates, keeps Washington onside…

…and suddenly then there she is, unmarked, teeing up a sitter that Arnold has to go full stretch to knock wide for the corner kick.

That’s so SpursThorny! C’mon, backline! Work like you know each other, eh? Damn.

Anyway. Got the win, so, great. Let’s take that and move on.

Perry (+5/-2 : +6/-1 : =11/-3) The concession was a mixture of 1) the fullbacks failure to cut off a dangerous cross in, 2) the centerbacks inability to box out Orlando’s runs into the six-yard-box, and 3) a poorly-executed dive by Macca Arnold that boxed the cross off Ovalle’s knee into the Thorns goal.

There’s enough oopsies to go around there that the defensive unit needs to ensure that Caiya Hanks never buys another fucking drink this season.

Obaze (72′ – +6/-0 : +2/-1 : +8/-1) Same-same; needed to work together to stop Banda & Co. and mostly did, so good enough. But…

Hiatt (18′ – no rating)

Vignola (+3/-5 : +11/-3 : +14/-8) M.A.’s second half numbers are interesting. I have her with four “gains” and four tackles/duel wins (a “gain” usually means an interception, or closing down on a loose ball, and, sure enough, Sofascore gives her three interceptions and nine recoveries) along with three attacking runs. We both agree; M.A. was Portland’s backline star if anyone was; her PMR is pretty close to their best-of-the-defenders 7.0 rating (on an overall squad average of only 6.86).

So well played, M.A.

Arnold (+2/-0 : +0/-1 : +2/-1) Huge save on the Washington shot that we’ve seen, clumsy effort on the Ovalle goal. Got the dub and kept her job, unlike her Orlando counterpart, so there’s that. Let’s call it good enough.

Coach Vilahamn Lowdon: Well, obviously nightmares of Bandas frolicking about scoring buckets haunted your dreams all week, so you told the troops to swarm her. They did, it worked, so you look like a genius, unlike poor Adrián González, who let Banda run wild for the first five three minutes of the following week’s match and paid all three points for it. Ugh.

(Though I should note that the identical scene nearly played out here! In the 3rd minute Ovalle played Banda in behind the Thorns defense only for the Zambian to shoot wide, and then three minutes later a free kick went onto Banda’s head but the header was right at Arnold. After that the defense piled on her like Portland cops swarming a civil rights activist, so danger passed. But…daaaamn.)

The bottom line in soccer, as in life, is how the thing works out. Call no man happy until he is dead, and call no coach successful until he, or she, has the three points in the bag. They are, you were, and the club is back in the top four. So good enough for now, and a bit later this week we’ll look at the Denver win and see if anything was learned from this one.

Until then, well, let’s just enjoy the Hanks Happiness again.

Nice.