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We don’t need to convince the people of Portland that the Thorns are worth writing about. Fans have made that clear since Day 1. But despite the club winning more championships than any other team in the league and being home to Sophia Smith, who’s staking her claim as the best women’s soccer player in the nation, no media outlet covers the Thorns in a weekly column. We’re changing that.
The Portland Thorns were at a turning point early in the season, and they’re at another one now.
When Portland began its 2024 National Women’s Soccer League campaign with a four-game winless streak—the worst opening stretch in franchise history—head coach Mike Norris got the ax. It seemed like the right move when assistant coach Rob Gale stepped into the role in the interim. He brought the energy and results Portland had been lacking in those opening games, punctuated by an impressive collection of suits. Those first couple of matches cemented Gale’s role at the helm of the Thorns (the club removed “interim” from his title in July), but the Thorns’ recent results don’t align with the confidence the club has placed in him.
When the club officially appointed Gale to the head coach position, Portland had won eight of its 12 league matches under Gale and lost only two. They’re now on a three-game losing streak in NWSL play (though their performance was at least a little bit better in Saturday’s 2-1 loss to the Washington Spirit) and sit at sixth in the standings—good enough to qualify for the playoffs but in no danger of doing any damage there.
It’s not that Gale has personally condemned his club to a slump. Portland’s latest three league games followed a 50-day break, during which two of the Thorns’ star players, Sophia Smith and Sam Coffey, played significant minutes in the U.S. Women’s National Team’s gold-medal run at the Paris Olympics. In the recent transfer window, the club signed four new players and lost five members of its squad. Portland’s current roster has 13 players who are new to the team this year.
The Thorns were unable to fulfill multiple requests to make Gale available for an interview. But in his press conferences, Gale spoke of the team’s lack of continuity.
“If you take everything into consideration, we haven’t had a full squad since Orlando away,” Gale said after Wednesday’s matchup with Mexico’s Club América Femenil. (The game Gale alluded to is Portland’s 2-1 loss to the league-leading Orlando Pride at the end of May.) “It’s a lot of transition.”
But the Thorns aren’t the only team dealing with a fluctuating roster. Every club in the league had players at this summer’s Olympics, and most made moves during the recent transfer window.
Instead, it feels like the team is back where it started the year. The Thorns are playing uninspired soccer (in conjunction with a handful of weird lineup choices), and they’re not getting the results one would expect from a team that hangs their hat on being perennial contenders for the NWSL Championship. There’s a sense that a strong postseason run especially matters this year; it’s Portland’s first season under the Bhathal family’s RAJ Sports, which offers a clean slate after former owner Merritt Paulson sold the club following allegations of player abuse.
Whatever boost Gale has brought to the team through being a new name with a fresh perspective has worn off. Now with seven games left in the NWSL regular season, it’s time for him to prove he deserves the role he was quickly handed.
From a coaching perspective, that largely comes down to tactics and player management. Early in his interim coaching tenure, Gale demonstrated a knack for both. After the Thorns beat the Washington Spirit in May, Gale walked into the postgame press conference flanked by assistant coaches Vytas Andriuskevicius and Sarah Lowdon. “It takes the whole group,” he told the media. “After training, during set pieces yesterday, these guys work so hard in the scouting. You wouldn’t believe the turnaround time from these guys to produce scouting reports and game plans.”
Gale’s emphasis on sharing the spotlight with other members of Portland’s staff has been refreshing. Gale even brought out members of the Thorns’ medical staff after a draw in Utah. That sense of shared celebration found its way onto the field, too; Thorns star and Canadian international legend Christine Sinclair said after the Spirit victory that Gale had helped her rediscover her passion for soccer.
But now he needs to figure out how to tap back into the joy the players’ have for their game and turn that into goals and wins. The team was never going to gel instantaneously—it takes time for everyone to get on the same page and adjusted to Gale’s system—but Gale has to figure out how to grit out results in the meantime.
This 2024 Portland Thorns squad clearly isn’t the same team that placed second in the league in 2022 and took home the NWSL Championship, nor is it the one that again placed second in the league and lost in the championship semifinals last year. Whether Portland has the balance of players they’ll need for a deep postseason run is still up in the air.
But we’ve seen teams play as more than the sum of their parts time and again in soccer. It’s Gale’s job to help the Thorns do just that.
Leo Baudhuin (he/they) has been writing about the Portland Thorns and the NWSL since 2019. When he’s not working or watching soccer, you can find him reading, crocheting or obsessing over his cats, Sully and Camas.