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The Portland Thorns couldn’t have written their season opening victory over the Washington Spirit any better themselves.
Actually, if they were scripting the match, they probably would’ve made sure Sophia Wilson scored on her stoppage-time shot to make the score 2–0 in her first game of professional soccer since 2024. But taking a 1–0 victory over the team that ended their 2025 playoff run—in front of an opposing sellout crowd, with so many questions surrounding the team going into the match, and with their head coach arriving in the United States just two days earlier—is plenty poetic.
“We really just showed up for each other,” goal-scorer Olivia Moultrie told the media postgame. “I think that’s what got us through this game.”
That’s about what you’d expect a player to say after a gritty road win. But the question of who shows up carries just a little more meaning for the Thorns in a year when they have a lot to prove.
A third-place finish in the 2025 NWSL table means expectations are high for the club, especially with striker extraordinaire Wilson returning to the team after spending last year on maternity leave.
But that third-place finish was followed by Portland sacking their head coach and losing team captain and playmaker Sam Coffey to the lure of playing abroad.
Those offseason changes mean the Thorns who arrive at Providence Park for their home opener this Friday will be a notably different team than the squad that Portland last saw making a surprise playoff run.
Fans had just gotten accustomed to last year’s youthful squad. Moultrie, 20, who scored the lone goal at Washington, is currently the longest-tenured active player on the Thorns roster, with five seasons under her belt. Still, most of the roster has a season of playing together and stuck around for an encore.
The obvious exception here is Coffey, who transferred to England’s Manchester City in January.
In her place, Portland has brought in a 20-year-old Norwegian, Cassandra Bogere, and a rookie out of Stanford University, Shae Harvey, who seem to be battling it out for a starting position in the Thorns midfield.
Ahead of the Thorns’ matchup against Washington, head coach Robert Vilahamn said the club’s intention is not to find a like-for-like player to fill Coffey’s role as a defensive midfielder and playmaker. Instead, the team wants to try something else in midfield, he says, “and we will see what grows from that.” Against the Spirit, that took the form of a double-pivot midfield with Jessie Fleming and Bogere playing in the center of the park, with Moultrie in a more attacking center-midfield position and Harvey subbing in for Bogere to show her stuff in the final half hour.
Neither Bogere nor Harvey have the résumé of Coffey, but they’re both talented young players who worked well alongside Fleming.
Fans tell WW it’s the potential of these youngsters that intrigues them. “I’m really excited about the youth, and I’m really excited about a lot of prospects on the team,” says Tiff Weekley, who’s been following the Thorns for the past four years.
Although midfield has been the big on-field question mark, it was encouraging to see a full-team performance against the Spirit. Portland’s defense effectively limited the attacking threats of Rosemonde Kouassi, Gift Monday and Trinity Rodman, and Portland’s attack—if not dominating on all fronts—picked their chances well and put together enough to get a goal.
Still, sharpness in the final third is the kind of thing that usually takes a couple of games to grow into—and it doesn’t hurt their future prospects to have someone like Wilson still building match minutes, and players like Caiya Hanks, Morgan Weaver and Julie Dufour working their way back from injuries to rejoin the active roster later in the season.
The leadership component of Coffey’s contributions seems to have fallen to Sam Hiatt, who donned the captain’s armband in Portland’s first match of the season. Hiatt, in her seventh NWSL season, brings veteran experience anchoring the Thorns backline. (Her name also being Sam could ease the transition, somewhat.)
And then there’s the leadership from the bench. Specifically: the whole head coach thing.
After an offseason of searching, the Thorns announced they’d hired Robert Vilahamn to lead the club this year, and that he’d be joining the club pending the approval of his work visa. That meant Vilahamn ended up joining up with the team the evening of March 11 in D.C.; when the club kicked off their 2026 campaign on March 13, he hadn’t yet set foot Portland.
Postgame, Vilahamn said he spent his limited training time focusing on defensive shape and building up attacking efforts. You really can’t complain about a shutout win in that context.
Still, we haven’t had the chance to see much of what Vilahamn brings to the team; he’s largely reaping the rewards of an offseason under assistant coach Sarah Lowdon. Portland plays their first five games in four weeks, before the league goes into a two-week international break, giving Vilahamn a little more of a chance to recalibrate.
“You’re going to add stuff every week, depending on who we play against and how much we actually take steps forward,” he says of his approach to this first stretch of matches. “But how can we win the games and still implement the game model?”
You can’t read too much into a week-one match in which both teams are shaking off rust, Vilahamn’s off to a great start.
Now it’s time for him to do it again at Providence Park.
NEXT MATCH
VS. SEATTLE REIGN
7 pm Friday, March 20
Providence Park
