At Home in the Playoff Seeds

It’s still been just a few weeks since Robert Vilahamn was hired as the Thorns’ coach. The Portland roster is still full of undetermined battles for playing time, not to mention players still ramping back up from long-term injuries. And still the team is near the top of the NWSL standings, playing with energy that few of their opponents have been able to match.

This game was immediately played at an extremely high level — a much more skilled game, I felt, than even the playoff contest between these two teams last fall. The Wave’s offense of intricate passing went through a massive forward evolution in the offseason. San Diego’s rapid-fire offensive attack was already playing with championship potency in this game. And that’s with this contest taking place moments before the official announcement of San Diego’s five-year mega-contract with USWNT star Catarina Macario. The Wave’s ability to add Macario to an already-deep offensive group really feels like a historically great salary cap masterclass. (And it’s shame we don’t get to see, from the outside, how the Wave built their team financially.)

Pietra Tordin added her monster fourth goal contribution of the year for the Thorns, a solo goal on a sharp steal off of the San Diego defensive line. But, despite giving up three goals, it was Morgan Messner who was Portland’s best player. Messner had an astonishing eight saves, single-handedly keeping the Thorns in the picture. Messner’s three-game debut went even better than the best-case scenario you would have hoped for, further guaranteeing her an opportunity as a full-time starter somewhere in the NWSL in 2027.

San Diego is officially the championship-caliber yardstick the Thorns have to measure themselves up against. In some ways, it’s a shame the return contest in Portland is so soon, and not closer to the playoffs: the Wave come to Providence Park on Wednesday, April 29.

The question for San Diego is, can they keep it up over the entire season? The Wave had a Jekyll-and-Hyde performance in 2025. Last year, San Diego started off with wins in seven of their first 12 games. Then they crashed to earth, with wins in just three of their last 15 contests.

Finally. The Thorns hadn’t defeated the Current since all the way back on April 1, 2023. In the five games between these two teams since then, the Thorns were outscored by a crushing 15-6 combined goal total.

Even more shocking: this game felt like a bit of a walk in the park. Portland immediately got things started on the front foot, with Sophia Wilson alone firing off five shots in the first 20 minutes. Portland collected their two goals early in the second half, and gently cruised home with the result from there.

Kansas City’s three losses so far already matches their total from the entire 2025 regular season. I don’t want to put too much weight into those results when Temwa Chawinga, potentially the greatest NWSL player of all time, is still sidelined with an injury from last fall. With that being said, it was still shocking to see the rest of last year’s juggernaut squad play with absolutely no urgency.

I unfortunately can’t find the original BlueSky, um tweet (?) (transmission?) that got me thinking about this in the offseason — But, it pointed out that, after Vlatko Adnonovski’s transition to the front office, the Kansas City Current didn’t really have a proper head coaching search. Instead, they ended up hiring their present coach, Chris Armas, off of a personal recommendation made to Current owners by personal connection, and men’s soccer lifer, Jesse Marsch.

In the middle of the offseason, it seemed a bit more like an academic complaint to point out the shortcut the Current took here. With Kansas City stumbling to a 1-0-3 start, though, the hiring seems inequitable and short-sighted all at once. After all: in parts of seven seasons coaching in the MLS, Armas has a career 38.6% win rate. Kansas City won 77% of their games last year.

Before this moment, I would have placed Current owners Chris and Angie Long up with Michele Kang as the most ambitious and visionary owners in the NWSL. Let’s not forget that the Longs’ investment in a purpose-built stadium and practice facility did a lot to spur our current facilities arms race.

Because of the bright new history in Kansas City, I don’t want to take away too much of a sweeping conclusion from this hire. But, as I pointed out just before the season started, the NWSL is still currently way too content to hire a man from Europe, instead of making sure there are established pathways for women, and former players, to become coaches. Let’s just go with this for now: as the NWSL grows and becomes more sophisticated, organizations taking shortcuts at any point in the team-building process are going to be punished in the standings.

In Portland’s game against San Diego, the team once again was rolled out in a 4-2-3-1 formation. Just like happened in the first two games of the season, the lack of numbers in the midfield meant the Thorns had trouble building possession. The team ended up registering their third straight game with under 40% possession, with a season-low 35% against the Wave.

Credit to Vilahamn: even in this period when he is getting to know his team, he is showing a lot of quick thinking and in-game flexibility, by moving to new formations. Immediately after two formation changes against Seattle (thanks to the two red cards), Vilahamn made two substitutions and a formation change at halftime against San Diego. For the second half against the Wave, the Thorns came out in a 4-3-3 formation, crucially adding another number to the midfield.

Although Portland got outscored in the second half, 1-0, the Thorns showed a lot of positivity, frequently matching the Wave in wide-open, end-to-end action. San Diego got their goal on a lightning-quick counter-attack — which, at least, means it didn’t come after sustained possession for the Wave. And, this specific 4-3-3 group felt to me like it had an obvious flaw: Pietra Tordin was placed on the midfield line — an odd position to put the player who had, at that point, contributed to all four of the team’s goals on the season.

The positive virtues of the 4-2-3-1 system came to life against Kansas City, most likely because Sophia Wilson was in the starting lineup for the first time. Against the uninspired Current, the Thorns held the ball 59% of the time, and took 18 shots compared to six for Kansas City.

It’s awesome the Thorns are still pulling major points out of games, even though the team’s formation still feels like it’s in a medium-to-long-term experiment. Even if Cassanda Bogere and Shea Harvey both begin to find their feet more confidently in the transition to the NWSL, it does feel like the simple numbers on Portland’s roster would balance with the signing of another midfielder.

• Forward Mimi Alidou has been given a great position in the rotation by Vilahamn. Alidou has received starts in all four games, and is fifth overall in the team in minutes. However, Alidou has yet to register a shot on target in 283 minutes of play this season.

• Against Kansas City, Jayden Perry got an assist by launching a half-field moonball up to Reilyn Turner, her college teammate at UCLA. Last weekend, Turner secured the goal with the incredibly rare jumping-reverse-header. If that play feels familiar, it’s because nearly the exact same Perry-to-Turner connection happened last April, a successful header that was named the NWSL’s Goal of the Week. These moments happened with the feeling that Perry is freestyling out there. But hey, this is clearly more effective than a lot of offensive tactics. Let’s see some players other than Perry seek out Turner’s high-caliber header from distance as well.

• A wonderful historic moment for the NWSL this weekend: for their first-ever home game, the Denver Summit packed out Mile High stadium with a shocking 63,000 fans. Denver’s starting lineup contained two former Thorns, Janine Sonis and Yazmeen Ryan. (Ryan was traded to Denver by the Houston Dash just a few days earlier). After earning a 0-0 draw against Washington Spirit, Denver is already in the playoff mix, well before the scheduled mid-season arrival of Lindsey Heaps. Denver may be setting a new high standard in the already-strong history of NWSL expansion teams.

• A step forward, a step back: with this year’s 30-game regular season schedule, there will be a lot more mid-week games. Most of the league played on Wednesday, including the Thorns, with five games on the slate. Unfortunately, I noticed that none of those five games got over 10,000 in attendance, including games at normally strong stadiums in Washington, D.C. and San Diego. The league will have to change strategies to make sure fans know there are weekday games now.

• On Wikipedia, Cassandra Bogere’s full name is listed as Cassandra Ella Archontoulis Bogere. This explains why she is wearing the nameplate “Ella” on the back of her #6 jersey. I might have missed it, but I haven’t heard a broadcaster mention this, and broadcasts continue to exclusively refer to her as Bogere (pronounced boh-GAIR-ee). Just a reminder of how early Bogere is into her Thorns tenure — we’re still figuring these basic details out. While Vilahamn gets more notice for being hired on March 4th, Bogere’s January 29th signing also did come very late in the offseason, and almost immediately before the team’s training camp and preseason in Southern California.

After last week’s two-game schedule, it almost feels like the Thorns have a relaxed week, with a “simple” cross-country trip to North Carolina. Portland and the Courage face off on Saturday, April 4, at 3:30 PM, in the team’s first match-up against the traded-away Payton Linnehan.

This is going to be a new feature of the NWSL’s thirty-game season: frantic blocks of time when games are coming fast and furious — followed by big breaks in the action. After playing North Carolina, Portland will have played their first five games, including three road trips, in 23 compressed days. Then, thanks to a FIFA break in April, the team will have a block of 21 off days until the next regular season game rolls around. Probably the first chance for Vilahamn to shake off the jet lag, maybe even unpack a box or two.

And after that, you guessed it, back to the grind: late April into May sees another sprint of eight games in 35 days, capped off by a month-long intermission for the men’s World Cup.