Portland Thorns promote interim head coach Rob Gale to permanent role

PORTLAND, Ore. ( KOIN ) – At long last, the Portland Thorns officially have a head coach.

Rob Gale was given the gig on Friday after serving as the team’s interim head coach since April 2024. He then took the team on a six-game win streak .

“It’s pretty cool, innit? Let’s be honest,” said Gale with a laugh of leading a club he says he believes is the flagship for women’s football worldwide. “I’m super proud. Football’s a long journey. I’ve had over 200 games as a head coach across youth men’s national teams all the way up to Olympic levels, and I don’t think people really quite know until they experience it how good it is here.”

The change came after former coach Mike Norris shifted to a technical director role, temporarily moving Gale from his former assistant coaching role. The Englishman first joined the Thorns as an assistant coach prior to the 2023 season. The team said they did an international search for a new head coach, but decided Gale was the man for the job .

“I was like, ‘Make this a hard decision for us.’ And he was like, ‘I’m going to make it the hardest decision,'” said General Manager Karina LeBlanc of Gale while he had the interim tag. “In this process, after he had the six wins, it would’ve been easy at that time to say this is our person, but it was so important with ownership to make sure that all the stakeholders knew that we wanted to go through this process. That we wanted to make a long-term plan with our head coach.”

That long-term plan has definitely landed well in house, as the players were alerted early on Friday of the club’s decision and didn’t hold back their emotions.

“It was an eruption,” said LeBlanc of the team’s reaction. “That’s what we were talking about after. I go, ‘That was pretty cool.’ Obviously, you know it, but it wasn’t like, ‘Yay!’ It was like, ‘WOAH!’ It was a celebration. I think that’s a testament to him as a human being because he’s made all the players buy in.”

The team is set to begin the 2024 National Women’s Soccer League Summer Cup on Sunday, July 21 against Club Tijuana at Providence Park. They are currently fifth in the NWSL standings as they head into a break for the Olympics.

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