The break between the 2025 and 2026 NWSL seasons has been an interesting one for the Portland Thorns. Rob Gale was let go as head coach. His replacement is yet to be hired. Sam Coffey was sold to Manchester City. Sophia Wilson tops a large list of players set to return from injury/maternity leave in the coming weeks. Although there are a lot of questions still unanswered, we got our first public peek at the Thorns in action during their preseason friendly against Angel City FC, so we let’s hazard some initial attempts at answering some questions.

In this week’s newsletter, I want to look at two aspects of the Thorn’s opening 45’ against ACFC. First, I want to look at Jessie Fleming in the defensive midfielder role and how the team approached goal kicks and playing out of the back. I’m sticking to the opening 45’ because it features what was a best approximation of the starting lineup as we have. Obviously, as players return from injury and maternity leave, the starting lineup will change, but this gives us a look who will most likely be starting on the opening day.

In an earlier post, I looked at how the Thorns might line up with the departure of Sam Coffey. Interestingly, how they Thorns lined up in their preseason match was basically a straight repeat of how they typically lined up last year after Sugita was traded, but with Fleming in Coffey’s role and Mimi Alidou in Fleming’s old role.

In that earlier post, I noted that Fleming has decent defensive numbers if utilized in a double pivot, but I never expected the Thorns to play as a straight-up, solo defensive midfielder. It’s still way too early to conclude that Fleming will be the new #6 for the Thorns, but I wanted to highlight a few positives from her performance.

I’ll speak for myself, but I’d guess I’m not alone in being surprised to see Jessie Fleming sent out as a lone defensive midfielder. Although I’m far from sold on that yet, I do think she showed some quality in her minutes in that role. To explore that, I want to first highlight some qualities you look for in a defensive midfielder. I think a fair set of qualities include tackling (to win the ball), ball recovery (to collect loose balls), movement and stamina (to cover the field), possession and passing skills (to aid distribution), and positioning (for defensive shape and limiting attacking options).

Passing and Possession

In looking at Fleming’s first half, I’ll start with possession and passing skills. I won’t go too in-depth here because I think this is already established. In her other midfield roles with the Thorns, she’s had to be a passing player, and she’s led the team in assists in previous seasons, so I think it’s known that she can pass.

As a defensive midfielder, you’re not necessarily looking to make complicated passes. Instead, you’re often making shorter passes to help transition from defense to offense, helping move the ball from the defenders to the midfielders whose primary role is facilitating the attack. But being able to split lines as a defensive midfielder is helpful to diversify patterns of play. In the friendly, there was a good example of what Fleming demonstrating this latter passing early in the match.

A ball is cleared by Angel City and gathered by Perry. She plays to a retreating Fleming who quickly turns, dribbles into a bit of space, and finds a good, line-splitting pass to Moultrie, who has drifted out wide.

In the end, Moultrie had started from an offside position, so the play was quickly ended after the pass, but the key is that Fleming can bring this kind of passing to that role. I don’t think it’s surprising, but it’s good to remember.

Tackling and Recovery

Looking at tackling, there were a couple moments that stood out early in the match. In the first moment, Savy King plays wide to Giselle Thompson who runs down the line. Thompson, who minutes earlier assisted ACFC’s goal by running down that same wing, is chased by Turner, but Thompson has her beat. The Thorns defense is retreating, and Thompson has teammates getting open centrally.

However, Fleming reads that she’s got Thompson pinned against the side line and closes her down quickly. This prevents Thompson from finding her teammate in the center and ends her run along the wing. This is an excellent read and tackle from Fleming to end a potentially dangerous attack.

The second moment happens shortly after this. Angel City take the throw-in and play the ball back. The Thorns close in the hopes of turning the ball over with a press. it initially looks like ACFC will break that press, but the pass that would continue that process gives Fleming a brief opportunity, and she closes from off screen to win the ball and allow the Thorns to get on the attack.

Positioning

Shifting to positioning, this is more difficult to assess, both in the limited time and with the limited view of the camera. Often, elements of good positioning involve factors off camera, so it’s hard to know for sure. But there were two moments I’ll highlight.

In the first, Angel City are attempting to play around the Thorns’s press, and they get by the first line, but they’re unable to get past the second line because of good positional defending from Reyes and Fleming. ACFC play to a retreating player who is double marked by Reyes and Fleming. This means the retreating player cannot turn. She has to drop the ball back. However, because of Fleming’s positioning, the next pass has to be made in Fleming’s general direction, and Fleming’s positioning makes it easy to intercept. This nearly results in a counter attack for the Thorns, but good defending from Savy King (not in gif) stops that.

In the second moment, Mallie McKenzie misplays a ball, and it puts the Thorns in a retreat situation. Angel City have the ball out wide, and they’ve got a player at the top of the box fairly open with a good amount of space in front her. As the video plays, you’ll see other ACFC players crashing that space. Fleming will come from off-screen and occupy that key space and win the ball. She could do better to clear it, but we’re highlighting this moment to show her sense of positioning and reading danger.

That space seems open, but by the time the ball is played, Fleming is there and in best position to win the ball. If she’s going to be a 6, she needs to recognize those moments and where she needs to be. Here, she does that well.

Again, I’m not trying to convince anyone that she’s the new Sam Coffey, and I’m going to stick to positives in the post. There were some moments where I think you could criticize her positioning and field coverage. In that final clip about positioning, she’s in a tight spot, but you’d want her to do better with her possession. We also have the normal caveats that come with this being the first half of a preseason match. But watching her more closely, I do think it’s easy to see why the Thorns coaching staff would trust her in the role, at least in a pinch. She has the skills to be serviceable in that position.

On Bluesky, I posted some quick observations after rewatching the first half, and my last observation was regarding the Thorns playing out of the back.

When I watched again to observe Fleming, I noticed that the Thorns did seem to be deploying a new approach to goal kicks. When I caught this, I got excited. As my above skeet suggests, I’m not a fan of when the Thorns attempt to build from the back. Under Rob Gale, I don’t think the Thorns ever did a good job of establishing good patterns of movement to build possession from the back, and I don’t think they have defenders that are good enough on the ball to compensate for ill-defined movement patterns. In watching this preseason match, Gale may have departed, but the ill-defined movement in the back hasn’t.

To start, let’s look at a couple examples of poor build up from that back that makes me state the above. The first example actually begins with a deep restart, but it’s comparable to a goal kick. Early in the clip I put a red line across the field to roughly denote the first line of defenders for Angel City. The question is, what are the Thorns doing to get past this line? And let me be clear, I’m open to an answer, but if there is one, it’s sure hard to identify.

Angel City aren’t immediately pressing the trio of Hiatt, Arnold, and Perry; however, that trio doesn’t see a way to move the ball forward. It’s not necessarily a problem that this back trio would pass among themselves to help their players upfield move and find space, but is that happening? Certainly not within the camera’s view.

As a result, Angel City bring more players forward, they isolate Hiatt from Arnold and Perry. This forces Alidou to drop to help provide an immediate outlet. Angel City trap the Thorns and nearly create a dangerous turnover.

If you’re going to play out of the back like this, the Thorns should be moving into gaps between players to create passing triangles. Instead, the next line of Thorns players (in the clip, comprised of McKenzie, Alidou, and Fleming) are barely moving at all, and that’s not because these are lazy players. Also, it’s the 20’, they’re not tired. The Thorns just have not established patterns of play. Certainly, some of this is due to the missing head coach, but frankly, this goes back to the Mike Norris days. This clip reminds me of the first matches in 2024 when Sauerbrunn, Hubley, Reyes, and Muller racked up amazing passing accuracy stats playing to each other with no idea of how to get the ball further up field.

Now, maybe they were meant to play long and the situation further up the field wasn’t developing. Sure. That may explain some of this, but still, there needs to be a plan B. If plan A was play it long, plan B seems hard to identify.

In example 2, we have a goal kick this time. Like the first clip, I draw a line at roughly the end of the first line of defense for Angel City and ask, what is the plan to get past this line?

Now, in this instance, Alidou moves centrally and opens up some space out wide. McKenzie could drop into that space, and she should be able to play off Alidou to either work a give and go or allow Alidou a channel to play to the forwards. Instead, Arnold plays to Perry who is immediately put under pressure. She handles it well, and ACFC bails out the Thorns by fouling Perry. But as the camera adjusts, I ask again, exactly what was Perry supposed to do? Had she not been fouled, all of her options were covered.

Maybe there was a pattern of play and Arnold misreads the situation or just forgets due to preseason rust. But that’s the generous assessment. What’s more likely is that the Thorns have half-finished patterns of play established when playing out of the back. Or maybe they think Jayden Perry has the dribbling skills of Marta? I don’t know.

The Observed Change

Despite these moments, I did see that they Thorns seemed to implement a new routine on goal kicks that gives me hope that they are genuinely working on this. It wasn’t a routine for playing short. Instead, it was routine for playing long beyond that initial line highlighted in the examples above, but it exploits the possibility of playing short to open space to play long.

Here it is start to finish:

I can’t be certain because I can’t see the whole field at once, but what I believe the Thorns are doing is pulling the defenders, Fleming, and Alidou in close to the box. Then they are pushing Moultrie and the forwards near the half way line. This creates a gap of space between these two groups. One of the players pushed forward retreats into that gap, and Arnold plays the ball to that player who can then distribute accordingly.

To visualize:

Naturally, the defense could adapt to this by flooding that gap. To do so, they would either (1) drop their forward lines or (2) condense their back lines. In case (2), this would expose them to long balls over everyone, so that’s far from likely. The more likely scenario is that the players defending Fleming and Alidou would retreat back. This would make it easier for the Thorns to play short by giving them more time and space to build out of the back.

The Thorns used this longer distribution a few times. Here are two more examples:

and

In the second example, Arnold under-hits the pass, and Angel City win it. Such a scenario could turn into a counter. That is part of the risk of this situation. However, when executed well, this could leverage the Thorns attacking strengths. The first example is exactly the situation the Thorns want to create. And by diversifying their distributions, they can make it more difficult for opposition defenses to anticipate what the Thorns will do, giving them an unpredictability and, hopefully, ease aggressive presses.

Additionally, in all three examples, Arnold plays to Moultrie, and I suspect that’s partially because she’s very capable in distribution, but you could also see them dropping Turner or Loboa with similar results.

This doesn’t excuse the poor patterns of play when they do play it short. And they still need to work on this to make it harder to predict and crisper in execution. But I was please to see something that addresses an issue for the Thorns.

Overall, I didn’t think it was a great outing for the Thorns, and they still very much feel like a team half-finished. We need to see more of the new players, but a couple more signings in midfield and defense seem reasonable. And, obviously, they need a permanent head coach. I’m not too panicked yet, either. Ultimately, this is a long season, and the Thorns don’t have to be perfect from the start. There’s time to get the last pieces in, get the returning players up to full fitness, and get settled, tactically.

But the lack of a head coach is disconcerting. Not, necessarily, because that head coach needs to be in place now. The Washington Spirit just recently brought in a head coach mid-season, but he was identified and hired from the beginning, so their interim could begin to implement the new style and tactics. That’s not the case with the Thorns. Currently, their interim is making do, and the new head coach may want to go in a completely different direction. Hopefully the team has a feel for how the finalist head coaches want to play so they can implement some basics, but the club really needs to get their coach finalized. That is the single most important issue facing the team.

More than anything, it’s just nice to see the Thorns playing again.