Portland Thorns Need One Goal For 2015

Amid a sweltering Missouri sun and a field you could cook dinner on, the Portland Thorns fell 2-0 to FC Kansas City on Saturday ending their turbulent season. The Thorns could never get their offense to click and their defense had one lapse too many to overcome. A season that never fully get off the ground ended much the same way the entire year had gone, full of potential but never able to find it and keep it.

The Thorns offense never really threatened, offering up only 5 shots the entire game. Their defense did what it could but it couldn’t contain the speedy Amy Rodriguez forever as she finally found a hole in the Thorns defense thanks to Lauren Holiday’s nice through pass in the 63^rd minute. After that goal you could feel the Thorns deflate and call it a game. The Thorns were an up and down team all year long and the road was never kind to them. FC Kansas City, despite less than 3,000 in attendance for this semifinal game, simply looked the better team.

Did I mention the heat? After the game Alex Morgan tweeted this.

The picture she links shows the field being close to 160 degrees. After the game, Thorns coach Paul Riley vented not just about the field conditions but of the overall venue.

“Who wants to play in this stadium in a semifinal?” Riley said. “Terrible conditions for the players. To bring in 14 national team players and have them play under conditions like this in the semifinal, doesn’t make any sense … you can’t play football at this place. It’s impossible.”

Riley had issues not only with the bad field conditions but the lack of fans at the stadium. His point was more or less that it’s going to be hard for the league to grow if on a nationally televised playoff game it looks like nobody is watching. If you watched the game on ESPN2 then you noticed there were no camera shots of a large crowd, only those fans that were relegated to finding shade beyond the track that runs around the field. The match had the look and feel of a college game at best and even that seemed like stretch. Riley does have a point; if this league does want to grow it needs to do a better job at promoting it especially on a bigger stage. However, it might have helped if Portland played well enough during the regular season to host a playoff game, something the Thorns have never done despite being NWSL champions up until Saturday. Riley can talk all he wants to about bad field conditions but Kansas City was playing on the same field and they clearly looked more in sync than Portland. It wasn’t bad field conditions that doomed the Thorns; they simply were not the better team.

That’s what Portland will have to find a solution for next season. Hopefully the injuries will not be as abundant. Hopefully this team can find a way to be more cohesive in 2015. The Thorns showed some of the same promise during the 2014 campaign that they showed in 2013 but only for brief periods. Their defense was porous at times though it was finally showing improvements but their offense, has it did Saturday, sputtered at critical times. They had trouble all year finding that one goal that would secure a win or that one goal that would turn the game in their favor. Some of it was bad luck and some it was execution. All of it made for a shorter season than we had hoped.

As we look ahead to next year, here’s one goal the Thorns need to accomplish. Win enough to host a playoff game. Riley’s concerns over the attendance at the Kansas City game can be remedied by Riley and the Thorns themselves if Providence Park can finally play home to a playoff game. Can you imagine that stadium during a playoff game on national TV? It would showcase not only the rabid fan base for this Thorns team and the true identity of Soccer City, USA, but it would showcase nationally that there is an audience for the NWSL that is more befitting of the typical soccer crowds you see for men’s games. If Paul Riley really worries about the future of the NWSL than he should set one goal for the Thorns next year. Win the regular season. Riley said he would like to see the NWSL set stadium and attendance requirements in order to host a playoff game. I don’t necessarily agree with that but there is a solution. Just win. Win not only for yourselves and for the fans next year; win for the future of the NWSL.