{"id":900198,"date":"2026-09-18T08:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/900198\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T08:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:02:12","slug":"the-portland-thorns-defense-is-one-of-its-worst-ever-equalizer-soccer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/900198\/","title":{"rendered":"The Portland Thorns defense is one of its worst ever \u2013 Equalizer Soccer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Credit: Mary Grace Grabill \/ Chicago Stars FC<\/p>\n

Not many teams would have been able to top Angel City\u2019s 2024 feat of dropping 20 points from winning or drawing positions. This season\u2019s Portland Thorns have done just that, and in the same amount of games.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s at-the-death equalizer from the visiting Chicago Stars brought the Thorns\u2019 dropped points total to 23, an astounding figure. If they\u2019d managed to hold onto even half of those, they would be Shield contenders. Instead, they are scrapping to keep their playoff position.<\/p>\n

Everyone knows why. While it may be true that the North Carolina Courage have produced a worse defensive record than the Thorns, it is also true that the Houston Dash have produced a better one. The Courage haven\u2019t dropped so many results, either. There\u2019s no hiding the 2026 Thorns\u2019 ugly defensive struggles.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the club is on track for their worst defensive season in a decade.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo Credit: Mary Grace Grabill \/ Chicago Stars FC Not many teams would have been able to top…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-900198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}