The Thorns Aquire Canadian International Jessie Fleming
Fleming joins through the 2026 season for a fee of about £250,000 ($318,575).
The Portland Thorns announced today that they have acquired Jessie Fleming in a transfer with Chelsea FC, following a four-year stint for Fleming in England, where she won three consecutive Women’s Super League titles and three consecutive Women’s FA Cups. In her first season with Chelsea, she also won the FA Women’s League Cup and the Women’s FA Community Shield, finishing as the runners-up in the 2020/21 UEFA Women’s Champions League, ultimately falling to FC Barcelona.
“I am very excited to be joining the Portland Thorns. More than anything, I am looking forward to being a part of the incredible community surrounding the team that is so often talked about with Portland,” Fleming said. “I feel honored to represent these people and this city, and cannot wait to get started.”
Joining Janine Beckie and Christine Sinclair, Fleming becomes the third Canadian to be on this year’s Portland Thorns roster, all three of whom have an extensive history with the Canada National Team. The 25-year-old has 123 caps for Canada, and in 2021 scored in the final when they won Olympic gold in Tokyo.
Fleming made her Canada Women’s National Team debut in December of 2013 at 15 years old, at the time becoming the second-youngest ever to appear for the Canadian side. Since then she has gone on to play in 123 games, scoring 19 goals, while assisting an additional six goals. Fleming is the reigning Canada Women’s Player of the Year, an award she recently won for the third consecutive year, as well as a three-time U-20 Canada Women’s Player of the Year (2015, 2016, 2017) and the 2014 U-17 Canada Women’s Player of the Year.
“Adding a player of Jessie’s caliber is a big step for us as we continue to build the roster for 2024 and beyond,” Head Coach Mike Norris said. “Jessie has great ability to connect and create in midfield, which makes her a very dynamic option for us in the middle of the field. Her eye for a final pass will be a great asset for our front line. Add in her physical capabilities to go box-to-box, we feel that we have acquired a very complete world-class midfielder.”
“I’m excited for the city, the fans, definitely excited to catch another year with Sincy,” Fleming told The Athletic. She also mentioned she’s a fan of coffee, bikes, and bookstores… looks like she’s coming to the right city.
You can read the Thorns full press release on the signing here.
From the Thorns Reddit post about our newest German.
"Hey, Freiburg fan here. Since I don't watch the NWSL, I can't really make a good prediction if she can succeed with you guys. But I can tell you a bit about what made her a great player for us.
First of all, this is a HUGE blow to our team. She is easily a top 3 player for us. I'd say calendar year 2023 she was probably the best player in the squad, losing her will make an already up and down season even rougher. I expected her to leave us at some point in the future, and someone out of the Bundesliga top 3 (Bayern, Wolfsburg, Frankfurt) would have picked her up for sure - although I don't know if she would have started for Wolfsburg or Bayern right away.
Her stats are a bit all over the place, which is easily explainable by a huge strength of hers: Her versatility. Even though she was mainly a left back, we also played her as a winger and a RB, had her take a lot of set pieces when our captain was out, and basically figured out the defense around her. She was central in our build up, has good vision and a good ability to carry the ball upfield. Sometimes she's a bit too ambitious with her passing, but her bad completion stats don't really tell the full story. Often she's just trying to create when nothing else is working for us.
She came a LONG way physically as well. She used to be quite thin for a defender, now she's a lot stronger and quite good in the air as well. However, I do think that very quick or very physical opponents could be a pretty big challenge for her, especially since the Bundesliga is on average a tad less athletic as other big leagues, as far as I can tell. In general I think her abilities as a pure defender is what she needs to develop most in the next few years.
Last but not least, she's also an incredibly positive person. Rare to find a clip from a practice session, an interview or a social media thing where she isn't smiling or laughing, all her teammates also seem to love her. (Although there definitely is a switch when she's on the field)
I really hope she can succeed with you guys!
But just to be clear: She hasn't yet really struggled against those type of players, I just meant like "She's untested there".
Because the only clubs that really have those extremely fast players here are also clubs we'll have to play defensively, so she never had to, like, defend a high line against them."
I know we've had plenty of threads on which to discuss the signing since the news broke last week, but as a decade-plus Jessie Fleming fan who's wanted her in a Thorns jersey since she left UCLA, I will once again reiterate just how absolutely over the moon I am that we're going to get to watch her play in PDX for 3+ years.
Stylistically, I'm not sure there's really a player like her in the league. Her center of gravity is so low that her style is both a little jitterbug-y and extremely smooth at the same time. She excels most on the half turn because her head is always up and scanning- This is a particularly big deal because one of our biggest issues last season was that we didn't have anyone who was really good on the turn in the midfield, so balls into feet were either turned over or played back where they came. If you watch any Jessie Fleming game tape or even just highlight vids, you're going to see a whole lot of her picking up the ball in midfield, turning, gliding by a defender, and either finding space or playing a ball in behind to a forward runner. She doesn't have the raw strength of Rocky (who does, really), but she fights like hell- She has a lot more physicality to her game than Moultrie does, for instance. She'll be able to turn and possess like Rocky did, but she has an extra gear that Rocky lacks.
On paper, Coffey-Fleming-Moultrie is the best midfield in the league. The only real potential flaw is that they don't have a true ball-winner, but Sam and Fleming both have enough bite to their games that this shouldn't be too much of a problem. Most importantly, all three of them are so naturally cerebral and technically adept that if Norris has even an ounce of competency to him -- and maybe even if he doesn't-- we're going to see some realllly pretty soccer once you bring the Weaver-Smith-Hina combo into the mix.
(Last thing I'll say is that Fleming --> Soph through balls are about to be a damn movie. Both Smith and Weaver will absolutely *eat* this year on balls in behind)