Portland Thorns FC head coach Mark Parsons wasted no time moving forward from Sunday’s season opening victory when talking to the media on Wednesday. Instead of leveraging the lasting sentiment from his team’s 2-0 win at the Orlando Pride, Parsons merely nodded to a good performance while, shifting his focus to Saturday’s game at the Chicago Red Stars (12:30pm PT, Yahoo! Sports), noting the Thorns still need to improve.

“That performance that we put in was ahead of where we’ve previously been,” in other seasons, he explained, “but it won’t be enough next weekend against Chicago …

“Yes, it was a fantastic start, but we have a long, long, long way to go to get to where we’d love to get to.”

There was no greater reminder of that than Wednesday night’s scoreline. While the Thorns were still in Orlando, recovering from the latest training session in their season-opening, six-game road run, the Pride were in Cary, North Carolina, where their hopes to improve on Sunday’s disappointment were met with carnage. Losing 5-0 to the defending-champion North Carolina Courage, Orlando put the Thorns’ opening positives in a new context, reminding all that there’s work to be done to catch the league-pacing Courage.

That work gets a new, elevated test Saturday against the Red Stars, a team that drew North Carolina 1-1 in Cary on Saturday. The result, though, only furthers a curious, triangular dynamic between the league’s three most talented teams. Chicago is now 3-3-3 against North Carolina since the start of the 2017 season, when the Western New York Flash’s NWSL team moved to Cary and took on their new name. North Carolina, though, is 5-2-0 during that same stretch against Portland. Yet the Thorns have had similar, controlling success against Chicago, who they’ve gone 4-0-2 against in that window.

Despite that success, Parsons is still wary of the Thorns’ upcoming opponent.

“We’ve got great respect for Chicago,” he said, Wednesday, before describing the dynamic between the Red Stars’ two most-dangerous attackers, forward Sam Kerr and attacking midfielder Yuki Nagasato.

“The threat that they have is clear, and the threat with Sam Kerr and Yuki causes you a big headache. (Do you leave) space for Sam Kerr in behind, or do you close that space and leave too much in between? Then Yuki’s in there, getting between lines, threading passes. Do you try and stop Yuki, because that stops Sam? Do you try and stop Sam to stop Yuki?

“And then you’ve got fullbacks bombing on,” Parsons continued, describing Arin Wright and Casey Short. “And you’ve got midfielders who can control and impact the game. On the defensive side, they’re always a very tough team to try and break down. They’re always very organized.”

Right now, though, the Red Stars are also hobbled. Midfielders Morgan Brian and Vanessa DiBernardo were on the bench to start Saturday’s opener. Short didn’t make their 18, at all. Though Chicago has the quality to withstand those injuries, Brian, DiBernardo and Short can be, when completely healthy, among the league’s best players at their positions. Missing any of them always hurts.

Still, as Chicago showed at North Carolina, they’re still capable of competing when hamstrung, part of the reason why Parsons sees Saturday’s match as so important.

“I think there’s two or three games this year that will have a big impact on how the season looks for us or other teams,” he explained. “It’s weird to say this early, but this is a big game. This is a big, big game against quality opposition for us.

“It’s a great challenge, and I love it when we have big games. Because that’s when we see the best of the Portland Thorns.”