I don't think we're making enough noise about Pietra Tordin

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The youngest hat-trick hero in Thorns history - and nobody batted an eyelid

There is a particular kind of chaos in women's football that I have learned to treasure. Not the sloppy, "what on earth is happening" kind. The other one - the kind where the quality is so absurdly high on both sides that the scoreline starts to look like a basketball quarter. Portland 4, Boston 3. Seven goals. A red card for the coach. A hat-trick from a 22-year-old. And yet somehow, scrolling through the reaction on Sunday evening, it felt like the rest of the world had already moved on.

That's what I want to talk about.

The turn

Pietra Tordin scored after two minutes. She scored again when Jessie Fleming - a player who has featured at World Cups and Olympics - picked off a stray pass and served it on a plate. She scored a third before half-time to become the youngest player in Portland Thorns history to bag a treble. She leads the entire NWSL with 15 goals this season. She is 22 years old.

That is not a normal Sunday. That is a statement performance from a player announcing herself at the highest level of club football in the United States - in the first-ever meeting between Portland and the Boston Legacy, in what became the highest-scoring NWSL match of the campaign. And it deserved far more oxygen than it got.

The chaos that followed

I'll grant you the caveats. Boston were not bystanders in this. Bianca St-Georges pulled one back before half-time. Alba Caño and Amanda Gutierres dragged the Legacy to within one goal after the break, turning what had looked like a procession into a genuinely nerve-shredding finale. Robert Vilahamn getting himself sent off in the 58th minute for deliberately knocking a dead ball away - a decision that is either gamesmanship or idiocy depending on your allegiance - only added to the sense that anything could happen.

And that's fair. Boston showed backbone. The game was a spectacle. But spectacles need a protagonist, and this one was Tordin's.

Why I'm slightly frustrated

Last week I wrote about Jess Fishlock scoring her 50th NWSL goal at the age of 39, and the reaction was lovely - because the story had a ready-made narrative. Veteran. Pioneer. Refusing to fade. We love that arc. We know what to do with it.

Tordin's story is the opposite end of the same spectrum, and we seem to struggle with it more. Young player arrives, dominates, leads the Golden Boot race - and we nod politely and scroll to the next thing. There is no nostalgia to lean on. No "remember when" angle. Just raw, present-tense excellence that demands you pay attention right now.

Fifteen goals in an NWSL season at 22. That's not promising. That's elite. The difference matters.

What comes next

Portland held on. They survived the red card, the fightback, the wobble. And Tordin - the player who made the cushion possible in the first place - walked off the pitch with a match ball and a record next to her name.

I suspect we'll remember this game in a few years' time, not because of the seven goals or the managerial meltdown, but because it was the afternoon a 22-year-old made the NWSL stop and stare. Even if, right now, not quite enough people are staring.