After watching OR/Ch then ranting how unbalanced the league was looking NWSL came back with three 1-1 matches. felt like Bay should of won last nite. Bay’s got a very experienced back line now with Dahlkemper, Hubly, Dydasco. But you got to wonder if the future belongs more to wunderkind’s like Sentnor as well as the other youthful Utah players? Anyways looked like Salt Lake Ciry looked like it was snowed in which could of effected Bay’s play and here’s hoping new Louisville owner, rapper Jake Harlow will be an man of his words & turn it into an FIRST CLASS operation(which btw is the name of his hit song)—their stadium looked so dead empty
Yes, Chicago was outclassed by Orlando . Note: no Kuikka, no Staab until late, no Bike, no Nesbeth, no Ava Cook, no Maitane, no Ludmila and of course as mentioned, no Swanson. Would CSFC have won had they been playing? Will not say that but the scoreline would've been much different.
regarding Chicago, Micayla Johnson came in later in second half - looked impressive. Barry (not sure if she stays) and Hayashi look promising, too.
Angel City drew at Portland Friday night to open week 2: All times US East Daylight time: SAT 22 Mar 19:30 Washington hosts Kansas City (ION) 22:00 San Diego hosts Utah (NWSL+) 22:00 Bay FC hosts Louisville (ION) SUN 23 Mar 15:00 Chicago hosts Houston (NWSL+/P+) 17:00 Gotham hosts Orlando (ESPN2/E+)
KC/Spirit was entertaining though marred by long waits on VAR calls. I was hoping that Spirit’s Spanish coach possession tacti could somehow slow down Chawinga/Debhina domination of the game, but obviously to no avail—and that’s despite using an very defensive 5-back with what should be an solid cast back there(McGowan, Morgan Krueger Carle. as well as Kingsbury in goal. Solid 2-0 win for KC despite the big home crowd of the Spirit, and a club that I think will even be stronger if attacking mid, Bia, ever returns from injury. Give them credit too from having good subs like Prince Rodriguez & Mace The good news for the Spirit is Trinity is baaack! But still coming in as a late sub. She proceeded to score right away only to have the goal taken away due to a foul in her team. Unfortunately the rest of the game the ball was stripped away from her quite a few times, so definitely lacking some pollsh upon her return. and then news of Trinity’s new romantic link to some fancy tennis star, don’t help either(please concentrate on soccer Trinity! lol) ————————————/——————— few other games worth mentioning; I’m beginning to really like Bay(2-0 win Louisville).. and just not that newbie Lena tremendous potential, but an club that went actively recruii strong defensive players like Dahlkemper Hubly Anderson—-I mean other clubs seem so much more emphasis into finding the next offensive star. Feel bad for Louisville current 0-2 record as they got a lot of solid American players on the squad though saddened by the news that one of my fav strikers, Beth Balcer, decided to step away from soccer. If I remember her NT chances got derailed when she posted something on social media that Vlatko made her cry during camp practice & she never got chosen again since(apparently Emma didn’t give her an chance either) ———————————————- final 3-2 win for SD over Utah, but looking at lineups, which in both had only 3 Americans starting to 8 foreign mercs, not a big fan of this because we’re loosing our identity an bit as an American team. Coincidentally fans were complaining about it too over at an English woso forum/ thread(too few English players on their clubs) Any thoughts about this?
It's a very common complaint in the top 5 European men's leagues. It comes in a couple flavors, the first one is annoyance at the international labor market created by the Bosman ruling in 1995 (I can kind of relate to this, because the complaint is that domestic players don't get enough play at the top level to help develop the national team, although logically, those players must be getting spots in some other league too. It's probably not unrelated that a lot of people view the 1990s as the peak for their favorite Euro leagues), and the second flavor is more racist with the main argument being that African/South American players are getting work permits or passports on favorable terms, and "pushing out" native born players. You don't really hear it so much in the leagues with less money, so I think that's really what it's all about. The leagues with the most money to invest have teams that go hunting for players all over the world looking for value. Even though there's still not a lot of money in women's leagues and the transfer market compared to the men, WSL and NWSL are clearly among the "haves" instead of the "have nots."
checking the overall ratio of last weekend starters in the seven games played in the NWSL 60% to 40% for Americans(96 players 58 foreign mercs) . This is certainly better than WSL’s only 29% domestic starters(though the ratio would be higher if it was not just England but all of the UK added). on the other hand I don’t think this year’s recruitment of foreigners are as good as last season’s(which brought in Banda & Chawinga) so the quality could be lacking a bit. Based on lineups, the WSL has again surpassed the NWSL(I feel it was reversed last year)—for instance; Man City now boasts an front line of Kerolin, Miedema & Bunny Shaw with Hasegawa at attacking mid yet currently only in fourth place in WSL standings what gets me though was WSL’s high ACL rate(last season’s 19 ACL to 11 in the NWSL) could be do to maybe language barrier/not all the same page? meantime both Spirit & Gotham announced new international signings; Geyse from Brazil/Gift Monday from Nigeria…and willing to bet tons more will be signed when most of the Euro’s season ends in late May.
Are we talking about the ACL injuries? If so, WSL has had a problem with that for more than a couple years. You were seeing a fair number of pieces a couple years back blaming it on body structures, but not much in the way of solutions. It was enough of a topic that UEFA said they were going to do a study and come up with recommendations (due last year but I don't immediately see the results online with a quick search).
Week 3 started with Houston hosting Gotham and Washington hosting Bay FC on Friday night. All times below US East Daylight time SAT 29 Mar 12:00 Orlando hosts San Diego (ESPN/+) 19:30 Kansas City hosts Utah (ION) 22:00 Portland hosts North Carolina (ION) SUN 30 Mar 16:00 Chicago hosts Louisville 20:00 Angel City hosts Seattle The ION doubleheader has potential to have a lot of goals. Orlando vs San Diego should be quite watchable as well. Sorry I've been fairly distracted the last couple of weeks and my routine has been severely impacted.
I thought about this thread's brief discussion on international vs domestic players when I saw that Zambia decided (Athletic article) not to call in its 4 NWSL players for friendlies in China due to recent American travel measures. I'm not trying to derail this thread into politics, but I've been wondering how attractive living in the US is for pulling in more internationals these days.
Week 4 starts tomorrow. All times US East (Daylight) Apr 11 FRI 22:00 Utah hosts Portland (Prime) Apr 12 SAT 17:00 Louisville hosts Washington (NWSL+/P+) 17:00 Houston hosts Angel City (NWSL+/P+/Golazo) 19:30 Seattle hosts Orlando (ION) 22:00 San Diego hosts Kansas City (ION) Apr 13 SUN 16:00 Gotham hosts North Carolina (NWSL+/P+) 19:00 Bay FC hosts Chicago (ESPN2/+) I think Seattle / Orlando is probably the game to watch this week, but Louisville / Washington and San Diego / KC are also interesting.
According to the team website, it's still a go, even though they canceled the Kentucky Derby opening ceremonies. They're promoting a beer and soda happy hour.
going into this weekend, it's still KC & Orlando with the commanding lead Debinha considered the tops in the league on FOTMOB's power ranking FotMob rating - NWSL 2025 stats Alyssa Thompson was NWSL official player of the week
Gotham FC visiting Portland Thorns tonight, game starts 10:30 PM EST. I can watch on CBS Sports Net, may be other options. Reason these teams are playing a mid-week game is 'cause they are both involved in semis of CONCACAF Women's Champions Cup May 24, so this is the "week 10" game that the rest of the League play that weekend. Think I'll try to watch, but if it's a snoozer will cut out early. Have to say that I'm back to enjoying Gotham as they've gotten healthy and look to have made some good additions from all the off-season losses. Esther is back to scoring, good rookies (Reale and Schupansky), couple good Brazilians (Portilho and Geysea) and Midge Purse is back. All they need now is to stay healthy and get Lavelle back and also the return of Ella Stevens. They were a top-four team last season and seems that's what they'll be this year.
Well, fell asleep at halftime only to wake up by final whistle to find that the 1-1 game became a 4-1 Portland take-down. Great entertainment in the early minutes as teams traded goals that were well-executed. Thought the ambience of the game was great for a Tuesday night--good for Portland to show-up, apparently 15,373 and they supported. Felt the flow of the game was non-stop. And there's a new young one to get excited about: Caiya Hanks, she was punishing the make-shift right back Nealy Martin with her speed and aggression, had an assist and the eventual game-winning goal. Looks like the chemistry is building and now Portland is up to 5th and looking competitive. The League is tightening in this early season, KC and Orlando look the best, but the rest down to 9th place are good teams, or at least I'm interested to watch them. The bottom 5 teams are kind of meh at least at this point in time, although I'd still have hope for NC as they have good players and some history of doing well, hope they can turn it around.
Does anybody else miss the NWSL draft? I enjoyed seeing how the teams valued players by their order in the draft -- and I especially enjoyed seeing low-drafted players succeed while some of the higher drafted players failed. No draft; no hierarchy of rookies in the league. More importantly, what's to keep the NWSL from deteriorating into a similarity with the French league which has 2 or 3 rich and successful clubs and a bunch of doormats? I like efforts to create equity -- and thus some drama -- to the sport.
The salary cap helps keep that from happening, but if they dump it after 2030 then you'll definitely see a few teams pull away from the pack unless there's some other competitive balance lever added to the CBA.
I don't normally poke in here, but that was a nice blown tire by Angel City last night. Never count out Marta and Barbra Banda.
Wow, what a goal, great strike. She was picked-up in preseason by Angel City to fill-out the roster on temp basis and now like you say she's likely on the radar for the nats. Thanks for posting!