The I-5 Thoughts: Thorns soar, Timbers play with fire, Ducks rebound and a night at the rodeo
Rob Gale has earned a moment.
From the Thorns’ resurgence to the Ducks’ recruiting rebound and a Sunday night at the rodeo — here’s what’s happening up and down I-5.
PORTLAND — The head coach of the Portland Thorns is a delightful human.
Rob Gale is known for his snazzy suits, his English accent, shaking everyone’s hands in the media room before and after his press conferences and the way he shares the praise when things are going well.
When Gale was Portland’s interim manager for a stint last season and helped rescue a club that started in the drain, Gale would often bring his assistants with him to the podium and let them bask in the team’s success.
Niceties aside, I thought Gale was cooked in 2025.
First, there were the injuries.
Two weeks before the season began, the Thorns announced season-ending injuries to Morgan Weaver, Nicole Payne and Marie Müller. A week later, the Thorns announced Sophia Wilson, one of the best players in the world and Portland’s leading scorer in 2024 (12 goals), was pregnant and out.
There was also the way last season ended.
As interim manager, Gale led the Thorns to six consecutive victories and amassed an 8-2-2 record before he was named the full-time coach on July 19. As the full-time manager, Gale and the Thorns went 2-7-1 to close out the NWSL regular season and ultimately fell 2-1 to Gotham FC in the first round of the playoffs.
It was such a dismal end that there was plenty of this going around the internet circles:
So no, I didn’t think 2025 would be pretty for Gale and the Thorns, especially with the prospect of Wilson and Weaver — both members of the USWNT — never taking the pitch.
Well, hand up, I was wrong.
I covered my first Thorns match of the season on Sunday for The Oregonian, a match where the Thorns dominated a very good Washington Spirit team from the opening whistle. The Thorns won 2-0 with goals from Reilyn Turner and Pietra Tordin, timely saves from Bella Bixby and all the support in the world from a season-high Providence Park crowd of 21,268. The win moved Portland into fifth in NWSL standings, kept them undefeated at Providence Park and continued on a stretch where the team has earned points in all but one match since April 18.
This is a club that could have easily taken a step back after its five-match unbeaten streak was snapped by Bay FC a week ago, especially with the sneaky matchup against a Spirit club that came to Portland undefeated in five matches on the road. Instead, the Thorns (5-3-4, 19 points) played so clean and crisp that the only real complaint Gale had after the match was that wearing a scarf with his suit made it a little hot on the sideline.
“I thought from the first moment we controlled both sides of it,” Gale said. “I don’t think they gave us any threat in the first half. We just need to be a bit more ruthless.”
I haven’t seen the Thorns enough to know how exactly Gale has done it, but I saw enough on Sunday to admit that he’s done a heck of a job.