Diehard NWSL fans will look forward to Friday’s game because of the new faces on the Houston Dash, but it’s really the changes to the Portland Thorns that are likely to turn the week’s first game, even with one of the defending champions’ most important players set to miss the matchup.
It’s a game that could see the Houston debut of Sofia Huerta, the U.S. international who was traded to the Dash in a three-team megadeal on Monday. That swap could make life difficult for the fifth-place Thorns throughout the second-half of the 2018 season, with each team around Portland in the standings having improved ahead of a wide-open chase of the league’s last playoff spot.