Rose City Red Card

Orlando 1-4 Portland. Four goals, four scorers.

We're back after a week off. We both had some medical stuff to deal with. We start with the episode we never recorded: Portland 1-1 Chicago on the 13th, the draw that felt like a loss.

Then Orlando. Nina Nijstad scored in the 3rd minute, her first NWSL goal, set up by Sophia Wilson. Wilson scored the penalty Caiya Hanks drew, her 11th career penalty, which passes Christi...

Portland 1-2 Washington. The first home loss of the season, and the Spirit's first win in Portland ever.

Portland had played ten at home this year and lost none of them. This was the eleventh. Washington came in missing seven players and won anyway.

Sophia Wilson scored from the spot in the 18th, her tenth career penalty from ten attempts. Only one other player in NWSL history has done that. Tara Rudd equalized from t...

Gotham 1-1 Portland. A point on the road at the team top of the table, and Portland had 26% of the ball to get it.

Jaedyn Shaw scored in the 60th. She admitted afterwards it was meant to be a cross. It still chipped Mackenzie Arnold, who was off her line. Sophia Wilson equalized from the spot in the 75th, her eleventh of the season, after Pietra Tordin got her ankle stepped on inside the box and her shoe came off. Play carri...

Portland 1-0 Denver Summit, and Tobin Heath retired as a Thorn in front of 22,017 people. She signed a one-day contract to do it.

Sophia Wilson scored in the 44th, assisted by Jessie Fleming. It was her tenth of the season and the fourth time she has hit double digits in an NWSL season. Mackenzie Arnold got her seventh clean sheet. Marissa was in the building on a media credential and went to the post-match press conference....

Portland 2-1 Orlando. Caiya Hanks came off the season-ending injury list on Friday, came on in the 88th minute, and won it in the 96th — her first match back after fourteen months out with a torn ACL.

We were in the building on media credentials for the first time. We got in late, we missed the ceremony, we sat in the press box, and Alan asked a question at the post-match press conference. Plus the two knees, a table c...

Boston Legacy 3, Portland Thorns 4.

Portland went three up inside nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds. That is the fastest three goals in NWSL history, thirty-five seconds quicker than the record Portland set themselves in July 2022. They broke their own record and then spent the next hour nearly giving the game away.

Marissa watched it from a bar in Las Vegas where the bartender would not let her touch the remote. ...

Utah 5, Portland 1. We recorded two hours after the whistle, Marissa on a mic at her parents' place in Las Vegas, and the argument she has been making for five straight episodes died on air. All season it has been the hole Sam Coffey left at the six. Somewhere in the second half she texted Alan "we need center backs. fuck a 6," and most of this episode is her working out why she changed her mind and then defending the new version f...

Portland 2, Gotham 2. A point against the league leaders, an eleventh straight home game unbeaten, and a club record — and none of it is the thing you remember. Emily Sonnett went down non-contact in the seventh minute and left Providence Park on a stretcher, and twenty-one thousand people in a building she doesn't play for anymore stood up for her. We open on that and we close on that, and we don't guess at a diagnosis in be...

Denver 2, Portland 1. Our old MVP came home to Colorado, pulled on the wrong shirt, and assisted the winner, so we gave it a full night before we sat down. That turned out to be the right call for a Lindsey Heaps homecoming. Portland are unbeaten at home and haven't won on the road all year, and this was the away day that dropped them to fourth. We get into the cohesion problem Marissa can't stop diagnosing, the clash of the North ...

Seattle 2, Portland 0. We watched the derby, stewed for two days, and then sat down at the bar to talk about it. The short version: the Thorns didn't show up. That's four trips to Lumen Field now without a single goal. Marissa's whole thing this week is that Portland has a Coffey-sized hole in the midfield and nobody to fill it. The transfer window opened the morning we recorded, and Portland still hasn't signed the player we've be...

Portland 4, Racing Louisville 0. Our first reaction episode: we watched it live, then broke it down with fresh eyes. The Thorns roll the last-place team, jump to 2nd in the NWSL, and we look ahead to a Cascadia derby at Seattle. Adults only — bring a drink.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:14 Cold open — Dank Coast IPA & Midnight Runts
02:51 The Game — Thorns 4-0 Louisville, and how it could've gone si...

The international break is over and the Thorns are back. Alan and Marissa — with a drop-in from our friend Randi and fact-checks from Brooke on the screen — run down what Portland's players got up to around the world (Marie Müller's Germany debut, the USA's ugly Brazil friendlies, Canada, Australia), then dig into a wild summer trade window headlined by Sam Kerr to Gotham, and preview Sunday's home match against Racing ...

The unfiltered Portland Thorns podcast.

Marissa is a lifelong Thorns fan and Providence Park regular. Alan is from Seattle, which makes things interesting. Match breakdowns, NWSL hot takes, and one rant per episode that probably goes too long.

Full episodes start during the 2026 NWSL season. Subscribe so episode 1 lands in your feed.

Adults only. Bring a drink.

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Hosts: Alan & Marissa