Well, fuckadoo.
Everyone involved walked away from last weekend’s 1-2 loss to Washington with regrets.
The club because they missed an opportunity to jump into second on the table as well as the humiliation of coming apart in the final half hour after more-or-less controlling the match until then.
Our punters because, as we do, they all believed in our club’s victory. Barcasiempre nailed the Wilson PK so got the “assist bonus”, and everyone else called Wilson as the Thorns scorer. We even had a red card, but nobody foresaw substitute Andi Sullivan being boneheaded enough to pick up two yellows in second half injury time.
Fun points ended in a three-way tie, so I arbitrarily chose to split the points that way, too.
So here’s where we stand after Matchday 23:
| Player | Latest Round | Cumulative Score |
| PTFC Dave | 2 | 24 |
| Ken | 2 | 29 |
| Barcasiempre | 3 | 23 |
| Mi-So-Thorny | 0 | 4 |
| Irene | 2 | 2 |
How all this works:
Before the upcoming Thorns match add a comment to this post. As your first line, put your predicted result, for example 1-3 Thorns.
In the body of your comment, start with the goals and assists, like so:
Wilson (Fleming)
Reyes (Free kick)
Moultrie (Unassisted)
Rodman (PK)
Next, name the first yellow card recipient: Sophia Wilson
Then a red card. (NOTE: no points awarded for correctly calling a red-card-free match, so take a guess.) Trinity Rodman for mimicking mooning the referee after getting an undeserved yellow.
Make your fun prediction,and give a “thumbs up” to anybody else’s prediction that tickles your fancy: “Ryan gets the start against her former club. She gets through 70 minutes without fouling her former teammates until she can’t take it anymore. She pushes over Perry, gives Muller a wedgie, gives Arnold a noogie, then flips off the Riveters and runs out of Providence Park, never to be seen again. The ref issues a red card, which she later contests, and loses.” (h/t to ABell4)
Scoring:
· Correct score: 5 points
· Correct result (draw/win/loss): 3 points
· Each clean sheet: 2 points
· Each goal-scorer: 1 point
· Each FK/PK/assist/lack of assist: 1 point
· Goal/assist bonus: 1 point
· Player with the first yellow card of the match: 1 point
· A player with a red card: 1 point
· Most liked/most outrageously accurate prediction: 2 points
Some ground rules and explanations/clarifications (the fine print):
Comments must be posted before kickoff, but you can edit or amend an earlier prediction right up to the starting whistle.
Keep your scoreline predictions realistic. No crazy scores just to pad out your odds of getting goals and assists.
The goal/assist bonus is an additional point if you predict the correct scorer and assistant on the same goal, for example, you say Castellanos scores from a Moultrie assist and that is exactly what happens.
Be clear whether you think a goal will be unassisted, assisted, or from a PK/FK. Unassisted = no assist, run of play; Assisted = player who got the assist; PK/FK = dead ball, not in run of play. FK includes olimpicos from corners. No entry means unassisted.
First yellow means just that: the player – the first player and only the first player – who receives a yellow. Not the first player on each team. If more than one player listed as “first yellow” all the punter’s predictions for that category will be voided.
As we discussed in the Washington piece, tomorrow the Thorns begin the Tomato Can Trench Run towards the Playoff Exhaust Port. Instead of TIE fighters and laser cannon that means that six of the final seven matches are against opponents currently not just below the red line but tussling for – or, in the case of tomorrow’s visitor Chicago, clinging to – the Wooden Spoon.
The 2026 Red Stars are a fucking joke.
Dead last on the table, 16 points of the 69 possible (5-1-17), 13GF, 53GA, an appalling -40GD. The Chicago Story took a dark turn in 2021-22 when the fuckery of then-head coach Rory Dames exploded into the press.
Said fuckery, which would be sadly familiar to Thorns fans who had followed the NWSL from before 2015, included professional and sexual criming about which the then-owner Arnim Whistler knew about and covered up (sound familiar?).
Dames was fired and banished from professional WoSo, Whistler sold the club to “a group of Chicago business leaders led by Laura Ricketts”. This clusterfuck has proceeded to mismanage the club (including a name change from the “Red Stars” moniker that went back to the WPS league era because, supposedly, the fucking nitwits thought that the “Red Star” was the soviet symbol rather than a reference to the stars on the Chicago city flag) to what an FAA investigator would term a rapid “controlled flight into terrain” i.e. a fucking crash-and-burn.
So tomorrow should be a stroll, a casual stop to play a points-dispensing tomato can and bag some easy points.
Can the Thorns make that harder than it should be? Sure they can! The club is notorious for playing down to their opponents!
Will they?
We’ll see.
(FYI, the match is here, but if you’re looking for the stream it’s on something called “Roku”. Yeah, me neither.
Last Meeting: May 3, 2026, Martin Stadium, Evanston, Illinois, 0-2 Thorns win
- The Thorns Prediction Game: MD 27 – BOS v POR - October 1, 2026
- Thorns FC: Outworked in a Corgi race - September 29, 2026
- Thorns FC: Laughing at clouds - September 28, 2026
Thorns 6 – 0 Chicago
Wilson (Tordin)
Wilson (Tordin)
Tordin (Nijstad)
Hanks (Wilson)
Weaver (Perry)
Yellow Cards none Chicago doesn’t do Yellow Cards, why should the Thorns
Red Cards none
Sam Stabb is seen speaking to Agoos after the game Hiatt comes up and reminds Agoos that having two Sams in the backline would be unnecessarily confusing. Agoos tells them both he will need some time to think about it.
Perry’s suspended. Let there be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Forgot about Perry’s Yellow Card accumulation. Let’s give Tordin an assist on Weaver’s goal.
Two players that need to be on the National team call up for Spain are Sanchez and Tordin.
Damn. Barca beat me to it…
Thorns 6-1 RED Stars (after this horror show of a year for the entire club, I would actually not be surprised if the team folded)
Wilson (Tordin)
Wilson (Weaver)
Tordin (Nijstad)
Hanks (Arnold)
Weaver (Wilson)
Wilson (UA) (Finally gets the hat-trick)
Swanson (Gareis)
Yellow: Pinto
Red: Chicago Bench
Mal Swanson, while carrying one of the Espresso Beans, meets with S. Wilson, carrying the other Espresso Bean, takes a trip to Powell’s. After coffee and discussion, Sophia “loses” M. Swanson in the Pearl level (IYKYK) and forcing her to escape the labyrinth of Powell’s moments before the start of the game. The Chicago bench, after recruiting someone on the flight to Portland to be their new GM, declares M. Swanson head of the team when they eventually arrive at Civic Stadium. Yes, I know this is my second consecutive reference to Powell’s; it’s a trap for a very good reason…
This gets my vote.
Availability report shows Swanson out with a hip injury.
The situation in Chicago has been dire for…well, a long time. They’ve never drawn well, some of which is probably due to the series of awful venues they’ve been forced to play (whatever the name of the college stadium they played on between 2014-15 comes to mind, but I’ve heard that Bridgeview/SeatGeek/whatever is a pain in the ass to get to…) and now the dreadful mismanagement since the sale.
(and let’s not forget that Whistler was one cheap skinflint sonofabitch. He kept up his song and dance about “frugality” long past when it was clear that he was just cheap; supposedly lots of his players hated the chintzy gimmicks he forced on them, professional players having to bunk four to an apartment eating ramen like starving grad students…)
And yet…the death of this outfit has been predicted over and over and yet…there they still are. Not saying I’d be shocked if the recent run of non-form DOES kill them. But also wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t…
Thorns 3-0 Stars
Wilson (Tordin)
Tordin (Wilson)
Turner (Nijstad)
First yellow: Müller (would be Perry but she’s suspended for … yellow card accumulation)
Red: Pinto
Laura Ricketts is seen in the visitors’ box with a paper bag over her head. (We know it’s her because she accidentally leaves her Chicago Cubs sweatshirt on.) When both of the Stars fans at the game – all two of them – spot her, they start booing her, then move on to reminding her that she had pledged, at the time she bought the Stars, to spend $25 million on improving the team [this bit is true!]. Alas, their pleas fall on deaf ears and the Stars continue their controlled descent into terrain.
Call me pessimistic, but the Stars HAVE shown a modest ability to score goals this season, even if they’re much, much better at conceding them. Also I may perhaps be excessively bullish on JP, which factors into my defensive thinking. I make no apologies. I just like her vibe.
Thorns 5-2 Stars
Wilson (Tordin)
Tordin (Turner)
Tordin (FK)
Wilson (PK)
Calzada (off a corner by Fleming, idk if that counts as an assist or not, I’m new here)
Ouahabi (Bike)
Alozie (Grosso)
1/YC: Nijstad
RC: Müller (two yellows)
Berman parachutes onto the field and announces that Chicago are being relegated to the USLS. This is how the world finds out that the NWSL is adopting pro/rel and that the USLS are losing their tier one status. A civil war erupts in Kentucky between the supporters of the also-relegated Racing Louisville and the newly-promoted Lexington SC. It escalates into a small-scale nuclear exchange, poisoning the Lower Ohio and Lower Mississippi for decades. England golf clap and nod sagely that finally Americans are treating football with the proper degree of gravity.
Also, the Roku streams have been pretty good – I’ve been catching some on the side while glued to the table. More ads than NWSL+, but free with no login, so not really any worse than over-the-air TV.
Also-also, it may be time to update the boilerplate now that Castellanos has departed for more southerly and more hispanohablante climes.
Prediction adjustment now that I’ve actually seen the lineups (and it’s still six minutes to kickoff): it’s Turner, not Calzada, who gets the goal off a Fleming corner; also Franklin, not Bike, with the assist to Ouahabi.
Prolly off the grid tomorrow, so here’s what I got for Orlando:
Pride 2-3 Thorns
Wilson (Tordin)
Tordin (Turner)
Turner (Nijstad)
Banda (Ovalle)
Banda (Lemos)
Yellow: McCutcheon
Red: Angelina
The ghost of Seb Hines looms over Orlando’s stadium, spooking both players and fans and eventually causing Angelina to flee the field in fright. She promptly gets a second yellow for exiting without the referee’s permission.