Recap: Portland Thorns vs Santa Fe
Another Concacaf Champions Cup night
The Thorns played its third game in this new Concacaf competition, this time against Santa Fe FC. The fans at Providence Park saw them take the three points on a Tuesday night.
The XI and the game
Coach Rob Gale showed up in the dugout after being absent twice due to illness. The man decided to go for heavy rotation, letting the usual starters rest.
Coming to this game, Portland knew they needed to score many goals, seeing that Club América had +10 in the goal differential stat. However, after 45 minutes only Izzy D’Aquila found the back of the net in the 10’ from the penalty spot after a foul on Payton Linnehan.
The second half brought some changes: Christine Sinclair for D’Aquila, and Kelly Hubly for Isabella Obaze. Up until then, Santa Fe created some good looks that put Shelby Hogan to work.
Call it the Sinclair effect, but not even one minute passed after the legend entered the field and Linnehan intercepted a ball and went all the way to the box to beat Yennith Bailey with a diagonal shot.
More subs came in: Morgan Weaver for Linnehan and Jessie Fleming for Olivia Wade-Katoa, who had a good spell in her performance in the first half but then faded out by the end of it.
Portland created some more good looks but Santa Fe’s goalkeeper prevented what could’ve been a hammering.
The Thorns gave their opponent some life when Hogan gave the ball away and Nuria Márquez recovered it and put it in the back of the net. With little less than 10 minutes to go, Santa Fe believed they could force the draw.
However, the introduction of some of the starters to the game put things in the home team’s side favor. They created some more promising looks but no other Thorn could find the back of the net against the weakest team in the group.
Conclusions
The team got the win with a heavily rotated team. Nonetheless, it feels as if the score should’ve been higher. We know the Thorns could’ve hammered this opponent — they have the potential to do so. The gap between these two teams is very noticeable from the get go having scored only two goals so far — now one of them against the Thorns — and no points.
This result is just another reflection of what is going on with the team nowadays. Although Portland won, they’re still 3rd in the Group B table, tied in points with América but with a worse goal differential.
But forget my words, Sincy will tell you how it went:
The Thorns will finish its group phase participation on October 15th against the Vancouver Whitecaps. It’ll be an interesting end.
Just sent this to the owners:
"As a Thorns supporter since 2013 I've been here with this club through good - the stars in 2013, 2017, and 2022, the Shield in 2016 - and bad such as the on- and off-field disaster of 2015, and everything in-between.
But this may possibly be the most dismal season since that terrible year over a decade ago.
Not just the results on the pitch, but the appalling roster-building failure by General Manager LeBlanc.
Head Coach Rob Gale seems like a lovely man but is clearly out of his depth. He's been comprehensively outmanaged by some of the poorest organizations in the league; Donovan's San Diego is only the most recent.
I'd like to think that the owners recognize all this and are already actively dealing with these problems before coming to fans like me to ask for our continued support.
As of now? I don't see evidence of that.
The ownership has been completely silent and, since actions speak as well, has taken no visible action to correct the season-long problems.
I am still hopeful those actions will be taken. But I reserve my decision on renewal until - or, unfortunately, unless - they are.
Yours in hope:
John Lawes
jlawes@comcast.net
I do find it it slightly funny in a dark sort of way-- especially in the aftermath of the quite-possibly-totally-fictional Great Reddit Scandal of 2024-- that this isn't a team that looks like they don't like each other and it's not one that isn't trying. It just looks like one that is incredibly poorly coached and low on confidence. The decision making across this team is borderline farcical. That Hogan error was an utter embarrassment. Payne can't make a decision to save her life. Izzy has hit cartoonish levels of ineptitude in front of goal. I don't know how Sheva is on an NWSL roster. There's just no structure at all to this team or organization, and that has to change this offseason.
As of now, this is an organization that has been passed up by its competitors, pure and simple. A large part of that remains the remnants (namely our dear GM) of the Paulson era, but it's also partially down to past and (very possibly) present ownership taking assuming that the Thorns brand would carry the product while most of the rest of the league made sure its product was objectively better. I'd hope the owners would speak to fans or hold a presser after the season --or release a statement at the very least-- but never trust the rich to do right by fans.