{"id":20757,"date":"2013-07-22T15:11:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-22T19:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=20757"},"modified":"2013-07-22T15:59:46","modified_gmt":"2013-07-22T19:59:46","slug":"thorns-in-their-sides","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=20757","title":{"rendered":"Thorns in their Sides"},"content":{"rendered":"

SOMERVILLE, Mass. – The Boston Breakers fell to the Portland Thorns, 2-1, at Dilboy Stadium on Sunday evening in front of 2,978 fans, their second biggest all-time crowd as an NWSL team.<\/p>\n

Many of those fans came to see Alex Morgan lead the Thorns and were rewarded, as she notched a goal and an assist to help beat the Breakers, who opened up the scoring in the 13th<\/sup> minute via Lianne Sanderson.<\/p>\n

The loss snaps the Breakers\u2019 four-game unbeaten streak and puts serious doubt over whether or not they will make the playoffs. On Sunday, the Breakers, who are now seven points out of playoff position in sixth place, did not look like a team ready to compete in the post-season.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>

Photo Credit: Italo Alexander Photography<\/p><\/div>\n

The theme to Boston\u2019s play was giveaways, sloppy passing, and indecision in the final third. Boston\u00a0played like a group of strangers on the field,\u00a0rather than\u00a0a team that has competed in 16 games together.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the Breakers started positively. Sanderson scored by controlling a ten-yard pass from Kyah Simon and then volleying the ball into the back of the net past Karina Leblanc for her second goal of the season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe scored and we\u2019ll take that, but it\u2019s a very disappointing result in the end,\u201d explained Sanderson. \u201cWe can a lot of positives from it. We still have to work harder to make the playoffs, which we\u2019re not out of by any means.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ashley Phillips and some luck briefly kept the Breakers in the game as the Thorns took over immediately after Sanderson\u2019s goal. Phillips knocked away a low drive by Tobin Heath in the 16th<\/sup> minute and the watched as Christine Sinclair side-footed a shot off the crossbar less than sixty seconds later.<\/p>\n

Morgan finally broke through in the 23rd<\/sup> minute, getting in behind the defense off a long, searching ball from Rachel Buehler. Phillips came out too far to meet Morgan, who wasn\u2019t even in the penalty area when she rounded the Boston goalkeeper and tucked away an easy finish into an open net.<\/p>\n

In the second half, the Thorns tired out the Breakers in midfield. More of Boston\u2019s passes didn\u2019t reach their intended targets and few attacks yielded good chances on goal. Mariah Nogueira had shot cleared off the line off a corner in the 64th<\/sup> minute and in the 67th<\/sup> minute, Heather O\u2019Reilly played through Sydney Leroux, who had a shot from close range saved by Leblanc.<\/p>\n

Morgan helped Portland win the game late in the second half, setting up a give and go between Sinclair and Meleana Shim that led to the winning goal. Shim controlled a layoff by Sinclair before firing a shot that rolled into the back of the net off the left post.<\/p>\n

“We got caught again late in the game. They were pressing. We tried pressing to get the win at home. They got an opportunity and took it well. We just need to be a little bit better,” Breakers head coach\u00a0Lisa Cole\u00a0said. “I think on some of our set pieces, we had some good chances. Within the run of play, maybe a couple, but not as many as we would\u2019ve liked.”<\/p>\n

With six games left, the Breakers will try to make up ground in the league standings at the Washington Spirit on July 27.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a pretty disheartening loss,” captain Cat Whitehill said. “Fortunately, we\u2019re playing a lot of (teams) ahead of us, so we can win those games. This is a tough loss for us, but we\u2019ve got a quick turnaround.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Breakers let an early lead slip away in a 2-1 loss to the Thorns on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[23,104],"tags":[399,1282,372,230,503],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/Alex-1.png?fit=494%2C258","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20757"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20757"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20788,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20757\/revisions\/20788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}