Soccer

NWSL Week 9 in review: Sky Blue’s win over Portland Thorns had a high-stakes feel in midseason

Sky Blue’s always played well against the Thorns, and on Saturday the team from New Jersey did it again, rolling into Providence Park and handing Portland its first home loss in a very long time.

by Lauren Barker

Jun 19, 2017, 4:40 PM UTC

Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images

New Jersey is funny. It’s a strange place to live, one mired in a dozen made-for-TV stereotypes about big hair, big mouths, and big men who murder people for ... I have no idea why because I’ve never actually seen The Sopranos. Once, in Vermont, I found someone had affixed a sticker to my NJ license plate-bearing car. “Don’t Jersey Vermont,” it said. Arriving in Houston for last year’s NWSL final, my Uber driver, upon learning I was in town from Jersey, immediately asked if it was “anything like what’s on the TV.” No? Yes? I don’t know.

What I do know is that living here means, in some ways, living with a chip on your shoulder, the shadow of either NYC in the north, or Philly in the south, always looming large. Mostly, our sports teams don’t even claim here, even when they play here.

Sky Blue FC is, in terms of pro sports, one of the only teams that not only plays in Jersey, but also proudly claims it. Sky Blue is also, historically, not very good, either on the field or in the attendance department. It’s never been a bad team, exactly, just a not great one. In four seasons, Sky Blue’s made the playoffs just once, in 2013, and then immediately crashed out of the postseason in a way that was neither particularly interesting nor competitive.

Mostly, at least in the NWSL era, there’s never really been a marquee player that’s called this place home, either. Christie Pearce has long been the team’s biggest name, but a quiet, steady central defender who rarely scores goals and is the antithesis of flashy doesn’t exactly make a for a star marketable to the casual masses. And as far as attendance goes, Sky Blue pretty regularly comes in with some of the league’s lowest numbers.

Mostly, they’re all just there — the team, the fans — quietly going about the business of a season, good or bad, in the shadow of the league’s bigger, flashier teams, so many New Yorks to Sky Blue’s definite New Jersey.

Perhaps the biggest, New York-iest — if we’re going to continue this metaphor — of all the other teams is, obviously, Portland. The Thorns are filling Providence Park on the regular, both with fans in the stands and big names on the roster. And Portland’s also historically backed it up with results. In four seasons, the Thorns have made the playoffs three times, and won one NWSL shield and one championship. There’s a star above Portland’s crest, and it’s one earned in a league that still, you know, exists.

And maybe that’s why Sky Blue, this team that nobody comes to watch and that’s usually mediocre but also doesn’t get a ton of credit even when, like this season, they’re playing well, has pretty regularly matched up against Portland better than just about anyone else.

Even in the past, both in seasons where nothing’s going well and in ones where things are, Sky Blue’s always caused problems for the Thorns, some extra amount of pleasure derived from knocking off the shadow that’s usually looming so large over you. In 2013, the year the Thorns won the title, Portland was unbeaten in five coming into the first ever meeting with Sky Blue. Sky Blue hadn’t had a bad start to that season, but Portland was basically running the show then. And then Sky Blue rolled into Providence Park, held the high-powered Thorns goalless, and picked up a 1-0 win. The season series that year finished 1-1-1.

The following season, Sky Blue beat the Thorns twice in Portland, and the two teams played to a draw in New Jersey. That year, 2014, Portland was again a playoff team. Sky Blue finished sixth.

The story is similar in 2015, with Sky Blue taking two of three games from the Thorns. The 2015 season was, of course, the worst in Thorns history and the only year the team didn’t make the playoffs, but Portland still finished sixth while Sky Blue landed in eighth.

Last season, the year Portland won the shield, is the only time the Thorns have taken a season series from Sky Blue, winning both times the two teams met.

Portland and Sky Blue met for the first time this season two weeks ago, the last game either team played before the FIFA break, and though the Thorns escaped New Jersey with all three points thanks to a 2-0 win, it was much closer than the score would lead you to believe. It was mostly thanks to a huge game from Adrianna Franch that Sky Blue didn’t earn at least a point.

This week, with the Thorns unbeaten at home and looking to make right the loss two weeks ago, Sky Blue came into Providence Park with the same kind of chip-on-their-shoulder stuff that they’ve carried into these games so many times before. Back in 2013, it took Sky Blue 80 minutes to break through. On Saturday, it took 25 seconds.

Raquel Rodriguez’s goal less than a minute into the game not only tied the record for the fastest goal in league history, it also set the tone for the rest of the game. Sarah Killion, who had a PK saved by Franch two weeks ago, this time sent one wide. Sam Kerr, who’s become of the league’s most exciting and dangerous strikers, and who had the assist on Rodriguez’s goal, scored twice by outrunning the Portland back line on pretty perfect balls over the top. Lindsey Horan, who scored both goals in the last game, had one called back for offside.

Kailen Sheridan made a couple huge saves, including a diving stop and one through a ton of traffic to keep Portland scoreless. Franch, who was so good two weeks ago, looked uncertain and shaky. Kelley O’Hara put in a vintage Kelley O’Hara performance and got a yellow card after taking issue with how many times Hayley Raso rolled on the ground after an otherwise clean tackle. Christine Sinclair had a PK saved and then scored on the rebound in stoppage time, which made both her and Sheridan mad. The play-by-play man started calling yellow cards “mustard.” Sky Blue won 3-1, handing Portland its first regular-season loss at home since July 9 of last year.

In total, before this season, Sky Blue, a team with one playoff appearance ever, was 5-4-2 all time against Portland, a team that is, well, Portland. Now, they are 6-5-2.

All of this has added up to some kind of strange almost-rivalry. There aren’t many actual rivalries in the league beyond the obvious Seattle-Portland one and maybe also the Reign is still mad about Chicago ruining that perfect season back in ’14. Boston-Sky Blue’s never been a thing, because Boston (and Sky Blue) and Washington hasn’t been anywhere near competitive enough this season to even come close to trying to avenge last year’s title game loss to the FlashCourage.

That’s not to say there haven’t been good games this season, or crazy ones, or ones that were extra chippy, because through nine weeks we’ve seen all of that. But Saturday’s Portland-Sky Blue game felt somehow a little bigger, like both teams were playing for something beyond just a Saturday night game in the middle of June. Saturday’s game had a little bit of everything: big goals and big saves, penalties missed and made, controversial offside calls, yellow cards. It was chippy, fast, competitive, and just really fun to watch.