Three Takeaways from the first day of the WICC stumptownfooty.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stumptownfooty.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
OL Reign v. Houston Dash, livestream: Gametime, schedule and lineups
Share this story
It’s finally here. OL Reign has its first Challenge Cup match and competitive game in 2021. The team will face off against the Houston Dash on Friday (that’s tonight!) at 7 PM PT. The game will stream on Paramount+ for fans in the U.S. and Canada and Twitch for international viewers.
(Also, yes, you can join us in lamenting the fact that OL Reign and the Sounders have their opening match on the same day and nearly the same time. For the record, the NWSL schedule came out first.)
What to expect when youâre expecting to watch some soccer this year
By
Margaret Seiler
2/2/2021 at 5:40pm
Rocky RodrÃguez and Simone Charley, seen here in a September 2020 game against the Seattle-area OL Reign, are among the players returning to the Thorns this year. After Los Angeles and Sacramento join the league in 2022, these wonât be the only two teams on the West Coast anymore.
National Womenâs Soccer League players reported this week for preseason training. In Portland,
itâs been nearly 16 months since the Thorns last played in front of a crowd at Providence Park. The home games of the 2020 NWSL Fall Series, which the Thorns won, happened in an empty stadium, save for a handful of staff, media, and a lone operator of the red smoke machine in the stadiumâs north end, called into service whenever the Thorns scored a goal.
The recent trades of Emily Ogle and Gabby Seiler got a lot of people talking about Portland Thorns FC’s roster makeup and how the team might line up going into 2021. We are only a couple months out from getting a better idea of how the roster will look, with players reporting to their clubs on Feb. 1.
That being said, I get the feeling that the Thorns’ roster is a long way from being solidified. Portland currently holds the 7th, 12th, 22nd, 32nd, and 37th picks in the 2021 NWSL Draft. There is almost no chance that the Thorns will use all of these picks. That means the Thorns are most likely trading picks for a better pick(s) or they are trading picks for a players, allocation money, etc.