2022 NWSL Season Previews: Racing Louisville FC, San Diego Wave FC, NJ/NY Gotham FC
/The 2022 NWSL season is nearly upon us! We’ll be publishing three team previews every weekday until the NWSL regular season opens on Friday, April 29, 2022. Previews will be released in reverse order of how each team finished in the 2022 Challenge Cup’s group stage. You can find all of them here!
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Racing Louisville FC: Help! I’ve fallen and can’t giddy up
By Arianna Cascone and Lydia Jackson
2021 recap
Racing Louisville FC struggled throughout their first-ever NWSL season, despite being crowned 2021 Women’s Cup Champions last August. Racing finished at the bottom of the East Division in the 2021 NWSL Challenge Cup with a 0-2-2 record, and near the bottom of the NWSL table in 9th place with 22 points and a 5-7-12 record.
In the 2021 Regular Season, Louisville scored the second-fewest goals (21), only besting last-place Kansas City Current’s goal tally (14), while conceding the most goals (39). They also had the second-worst goal differential (-18), only slightly better than KC’s -19. In addition, Louisville took the fewest shots per match and faced the most shots per match (below, left), while having the lowest xG-for and highest xG-against per match (below, right). In other words, Racing’s attack and defense both struggled last season.
2022 roster turnover
Perhaps not surprising given their limited success, the Louisville roster was significantly shaken up over the offseason. In 2022, Racing are returning only 14 of 24 players from their 2021 roster, which translates into the third-fewest minutes compared with the rest of the league.
Cece Kizer, Ebony Salmon, and Nadia Nadim are notable returners for Louisville on the attacking side of things. These players led the team in expected goals last season while also scoring the most, with seven, six, and three goals, respectively. Nadim will return to Louisville in 2022 after a busy offseason that included recovering from an ACL tear that ended her 2021 season and finishing her medical doctorate. The team expects her to return in June, but with the 2022 UEFA Women’s Championship happening in July, it’s likely that Nadim won’t be a regular in Racing’s lineup until later this season.
Defender Emily Fox will also return to Racing after a successful 2021 campaign. The No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NWSL draft played over 2,000 minutes for Louisville, was named to the 2021 NWSL Best XI Second Team, and finished second in the voting for 2021 NWSL Rookie of the Year. Fox was also nominated as US Soccer’s 2021 Chipotle Young Female Player of the Year.
Among those who will not be returning to the pitch for Louisville in 2022 are starting goalkeeper Michelle Betos and forward Jorian Baucom, as both were waived by the club following the 2021 season. Additionally, defender Kaleigh Riehl was selected by the San Diego Wave in the 2022 NWSL Expansion Draft, midfielder Savannah McCaskill was sent to Angel City FC, and Yuki Nagasato requested a trade back to the Chicago Red Stars.
JMac and the kids
Louisville will have a young roster this season, as they selected six players in the 2021 NWSL Draft. Headlining Racing’s list of draft picks is two-time MAC Hermann trophy winner Jaelin Howell out of Florida State University. Over her four years at Florida State, Howell won two NCAA Division I titles and played over 7,500 minutes in the defensive midfield position. In 2021, she led a defensive unit that allowed only 13 goals and recorded 23 clean sheets. She was also nominated for US Soccer’s Young Player of the Year Award in 2021. Most recently, Howell scored her first international goal with the USWNT. In light of Howell’s impressive resume, we should expect her to play a crucial role in Louisville's success this season. During the Challenge Cup, she seamlessly anchored Racing’s midfield while recording her first goal with the club in their final 2022 Challenge Cup match-up, a loss to the Central Region’s last place Houston Dash.
On the offensive end, Louisville acquired FIFA Women’s World Cup champion Jess McDonald from the North Carolina Courage. McDonald has consistently been a top performer in the NWSL, as she was the first NWSL player to reach 33 regular-season goals and first American player to score 30-regular season goals. She was also part of the Courage squads that won back-to-back NWSL Championships in 2018 and 2019 and three consecutive NWSL Shields from 2017 through 2019. Last season, McDonald scored four goals for the Courage and led the team in goals added and expected goals.
With her performances so far in the 2022 Challenge Cup, McDonald now also leads the NWSL in all-time assists across all competitions (Challenge Cup, Regular Season, Playoffs). It’s safe to say that she’s picking up right where she left off with her new team.
Challenge Cup performance and 2022 Regular Season prognosis
Though the Challenge Cup might not predict the way Louisville’s season pans out, fans might hope that they’ll be more successful in the next phase of the 2022 season. Racing finished the Challenge Cup third in the Central Region with six points and a 1-3-2 record. Their +1 goal differential saved them from claiming the last spot in their region, as they ended up level on points with last-place Houston Dash. With a new coach and several new players, it’s obvious they have yet to iron out all the kinks. In any case, one can anticipate exciting football from very talented young players alongside the prowess of Jess McDonald. Ultimately, we hope that Racing will find success this season and finish higher up the table in 2022. Will they be a playoff team? That will be determined by how quickly they can come together and establish both a culture and style this season.
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San Diego Wave FC: ‘Wave’ hello to a maybe good team
Writing a season preview for a team that didn’t exist prior to the current season is always an interesting task. With limited understanding of front office competency, how the collective performed the year before, or where the changes might need to come from (if any changes need to come at all), we’re stuck looking at a bunch of puzzle pieces and evaluating whether they might fit together. Luckily, with the Challenge Cup, we had the opportunity to watch Casey Stoney and co. try to put the puzzle together a few times before the season starts. And folks, they’ve got some nice pieces!
Through the six matches of the 2022 Challenge Cup, the Wave earned one win, two draws, and three losses. Seems bad! At the underlying level, however, they’ve got the third-best xGD in the league with some caveats to talk about later. In four of their six matches, they’ve won the xG battle by more than half an expected goal (not an exact science, but gives a good sense of whether a team deserved points from a game) and still walked away with only one win. By our xPts metric*, San Diego would, on average, be sitting on something like ten points through six matches, as opposed to the five they have. So, Wave fans, there’s cause for hope. And here are two big reasons why.
*xPts is a metric that simulates the same sample of shots from a match 1000 times to estimate the win/draw probabilities, and gives you number of points accordingly. That is, if you played an even game with a 33% chance at winning, 33% chance at losing, and 33% chance you tie, you would earn 0.33x3 + 0.33x1 = 1.33 xPts
Kailen Sheridan, still the best goalkeeper in the league
Kailen Sheridan is the best goalkeeper in NWSL. Full stop. Period. Exclamation point. Through the three matches she played before departing for her inauguration as the new Canadian Minister of Defense, Sheridan conceded three goals from 6.5 xG. This is an insanely large over-performance, and 99 times out of 100 we would just laugh, call it a bit of random luck, and check back in eight matches. For Sheridan, though, this is just a run of the mill “good” week. The Canadian shot stopper has consistently destroyed her xG and will absolutely be key to San Diego’s success going forward. In the two matches Carly Telford, bless her soul, deputized for Sheridan, the Wave conceded six goals from a little under two xG. Of course, these things happen, and keepers can’t always come out on top if a striker rips one bar down. It’s also worth mentioning that these are the first games Telford has played in quite some time, given her (mostly permanent) backup status at Chelsea. Even so, Sheridan will steady the ship as San Diego’s #1.
Sheridan balls out.
Taylor Kornieck and Alex Morgan shed the Orlando funk
Alex Morgan is… back? After a brief foray into the bottle-shaped half of North London and a conditioning sprint at Tottenham, Morgan is putting up the best NWSL numbers of her career so far in San Diego. With the caveat of limited minutes, Morgan has earned 0.76 xG+xA on six (SIX!!!!) shots and a key pass per 96 minutes. Low-ish quality, but my god the volume. Taylor Kornieck, former third-overall draft pick, is having a similar renaissance since leaving Orlando. Having been moved back centrally (sometimes as the more forward minded in a double pivot, sometimes further forward), Kornieck has doubled her expected stats (xG and xA) compared to her lone Orlando season.
She likes to move it, move it, into the final third. Here are all Taylor Kornieck passes with g+ above 0.02, the real good stuff.
Our g+ metric adores Morgan and Kornieck, putting them at sixth- and seventh-most g+ above average for outfield players. Even if we put aside the very high g+ shooting totals (more or less how well a player can generate rebounds), they are both flying. Morgan is a constant thorn in the oppositions’ sides, making dangerous runs into depth and attacking the back post with reckless abandon. Consequently, Morgan is fourth amongst all players in receiving g+ so far. Kornieck stands out similarly, as she’s sixth in total passing g+ (first among midfielders) and 24th in interrupting g+ (5th among midfielders). Kornieck is winning the ball back and passing it forward, which is really everything we can ask for in a midfielder.
For the optimistic Wave fan
With an Alex Morgan resurgence, Taylor Kornieck blowing up, and some stellar goalkeeping, the San Diego Wave have a lot of room for optimism. We’re yet to see Amirah Ali really take off the way she did in college, and Sofia Jakobsson is taking her time getting to the high voltage attacker she was for Real Madrid. Naomi Girma is also “only” a solid league-average defender so far. All in all, this group has a high ceiling. Thus far, the Wave are solid and there is no reason to expect that shouldn’t be the case moving forward, but…
For the pessimistic Wave fan
Everything I just wrote above is over some teeny tiny sample of less than 500 total minutes. It is the only 500 minutes we have and a small sample is better than no sample, but beware the perils of projecting these 500 minutes out to an entire season. Similarly, Morgan and Kornieck are on heaters that are just completely out of line with the recent performances of their career. Maybe it’s real, considering Stoney had a similar effect to a Manchester United attack, but maybe it’s just 500 minutes. The other concern (I promised we’d get back to the caveats) is that basically all of the xGD earned by the Wave so far this season has come against fellow expansion buddies Angel City, who thus far have been… bad. For San Diego, 5.06 of their 10.37 xG and 2.13 of their 6.84 xGA so far has come in the two California derbies, which is basically all of their xG difference through six matches. Now, an almost-level expected goal difference in three matches against two competitive franchises is nothing to scoff at, but just something to keep in mind.
Whichever way you choose to take it, we’ll certainly be watching to see where the Wave go from here.
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NJ/NY Gotham FC: Yerrrr gonna miss your keepers
By J.J. Post
In last year’s Gotham preview, I began by writing about the team’s wild offseason and the huge changes that had been made in Harrison both on and off the field. This year, while there’s no major rebrand to speak of, the changes in terms of the team’s on-field lineup have arguably been even bigger than last year’s. Last year, Gotham was a team that returned the vast majority of a promising 2020 core and reaped the rewards of that chemistry with their first playoff berth since 2013. There’s no question that the 2022 edition of Gotham has talent, and adding USWNT cog Kristie Mewis might make this the most talented squad NJ/NY has seen in years. But the question now becomes whether head coach Scott Parkinson can build the cohesiveness that defined the past two Gotham outfits with several new faces on the team sheet. Going position by position, here are the players to keep an eye on this season, as well as the biggest storylines that will define the team’s season.
Goalkeeper
For the first time in a half decade, the first name on the Gotham goalkeeper depth chart will not be Kailen Sheridan. Her departure for San Diego over the offseason ranks as one of the biggest losses NJ/NY has had to deal with in years, which says a lot given the amount of turmoil the club has been through over the last decade and change. There was a large segment of Sheridan’s career in Harrison where the central takeaway from many Gotham games was, “imagine how bad it would be if they didn’t have one of the league's best goalies.” Thankfully, Gotham has slowly grown into, at baseline, an average NWSL squad over the last few years. Sheridan’s departure doesn’t mean the loss of the team’s only hope, but it also doesn’t mean the loss should be understated. The Canadian international is called one of the league’s best keepers for a reason: she excels both on paper and by the eye test. In fact, by ASA's numbers, Sheridan has had not one, but two, different years that rank in the top five of the best shot stopping seasons according to g+’s shotstopping metric and post-shot xG since ASA began collecting data. Gotham opted to respond to the problem of losing a great keeper by adding a pair of experienced league veterans. Ashlyn Harris is expected to be the team’s main starter, and has thus far kept pace with Sheridan’s high bar about as well as could be expected by someone who’s, well, not Kailen Sheridan. But, as Scott Parkinson himself will tell you, “backup” Michelle Betos is uniquely overqualified to be a traditional No. 2 on the depth chart and is more than capable of stepping in whenever needed. The veteran pairing of Harris and Betos has league experience galore, but the standard Sheridan has established between the posts in Harrison is second to none. If Harris and Betos can continue to keep up, Gotham should be poised for another solid season. However, with Harris’s and Betos’s performances last season, this may not be the case. As such, Gotham fans should not expect the eye-catching numbers and games that they grew accustomed to with Sheriden between the posts.
Defense
Gotham’s backline was a strange case last year. By conventional metrics, they were one of the league’s top outfits. After all, they only allowed 21 goals in regular season play, which was good for second lowest in the league. Simple enough, right? Unfortunately not. The underlying numbers for Gotham’s defense were far less impressive. By ASA’s expected goals allowed metric, Gotham was actually second highest in the league at 36.24. Whether by extreme luck or a forcefield around the net, Gotham conceded ~58% fewer goals than one would have expected, on average, given the shots they faced. Essentially, Gotham’s defense performance was likely a statistical outlier and is unlikely to be repeated anytime soon. What the 2022 defensive unit in Harrison does have at its advantage, however, is experience and chemistry. The returning talent in Harrison is perhaps deeper than at any other position. Fullback Caprice Dydasco, who marked her return from injury with a stellar campaign that earned her 2021 NWSL Defender of the Year, inked a new two-year deal over the offseason. The team’s core center back trio in Gina Lewandowski, Estelle Johnson, and Mandy Freeman are all back, as is the question of how Parkinson will rotate the platoon in formation with only two center backs. Lewandowski and Johnson have been the preferred pairing in Harrison for years now, but both are reaching what could be the end of their careers. As a result, Freeman’s minutes have steadily increased since she joined the squad. On the opposite side of Dydasco, Imani Dorsey’s transformation from promising forward to one of the most consistent fullbacks in the league is complete, and the Duke alum should be a staple on the left side for Gotham this year. Gotham did add a pair of defenders to the mix over the offseason in the form of Ali Krieger and Ellie Jean, a move that only adds more experience to a tested defensive unit. The former USWNT stalwart in Kreiger offers the senior leadership of a league veteran, as well as a versatile option that can fill in both as a member of the center back pairing or at fullback. Krieger posted a g+ score of 0.79 in 2021, which would have been good for third on Gotham behind the ever-brilliant Dydasco and Johnson by a wide margin. Jean adds more versatility, as well as European acumen, to the mix. And while there’s less data to consider for Jean due to her last few years being in the Netherlands, her early g+ returns so far in 2022 have been promising. The final name to monitor in the Gotham defense is Kelly Ann Livingstone, a local rookie out of Georgetown who will be another option for Parkinson at center back.
Midfield
The biggest addition Gotham made over the offseason period was bringing Kristie Mewis to New Jersey. Mewis will be an injection of USWNT-level talent and creativity into a midfield that seemed static for large stretches of the 2021 season. But through the 2022 Challenge Cup, Mewis’s impact has been a bit muted. Through a little over 300 minutes of play, Mewis posted her lowest yearly rating in g+ since her rookie season. This isn’t much cause for panic, especially since her 2021 and 2020 g+ numbers were her career highest and 300 minutes is a limited sample. If Mewis improves to her usual output since her 2020 breakout season, Gotham is set to receive a big boost in the middle of the park. Elsewhere in the midfield, consistent minutes are a little more scarce. Allie Long was a staple presence last season, but hasn’t taken the field this year (and likely won’t for some time) due to the impending birth of her twins. Jennifer Cudjoe logged over 1,000 minutes last season and the 2020 Challenge Cup breakout is slated to once again be a critical force in Gotham’s midfield as a box-to-box complement to Mewis’s creativity. Captain McCall Zerboni should add another gritty and physical force to the center of the park, as well as a vocal leadership presence. Kumi Yokoyama provides Gotham further creative energy in a more attacking midfield role. Rounding out depth are Domi Richardson and Taryn Torres, both of whom had small or nonexistent roles last season, respectively, as Richardson played just 250 minutes in 2021 and Torres was at Virginia. These players could be called upon, though, to fill the hole left by Long’s absence.
Attack
This is Midge Purce’s attack and we’re all just watching it. Gotham’s team leader in g+ (by a lot) through six games, Purce has showed no signs of slowing down following a torrid 2021 campaign. Despite battling injury last season, Purce provided the spark Gotham’s attack often needed. With a penchant for making something out of nothing, she posted the highest G-xG in the league last year. An electric dribbler (Purce has the second highest g+ dribbling score in the NWSL in the 2022 Challenge Cup group stage behind only Chicago’s Mallory Pugh), the Harvard alumna has an explosively dangerous combination of speed, intelligent ball movement, and finishing ability. Purce is complemented up top by a pair of oft-underrated forwards in Ifeoma Onumonu and Paige Monaghan. Onumonu was instrumental in keeping the Gotham attack ticking last season, helping to link Purce and the midfield with her hold-up play and passing ability. Monaghan has the speed and work rate to add another dynamic to the Gotham attack, and her ability to stretch defenses prevents opponents from simply keying in on Purce. While Gotham’s depth up top is thinner than in other areas of the pitch, expect rookie Cameron Tucker and veteran midfielder/forward Nahomi Kawasumi to pitch in when needed up front (and, in Kawasumi’s case, in the middle of the field).
2022 Outlook
All in all, Gotham occupies a unique position heading into the 2022 campaign. It’s difficult to consider them an assured playoff team after a mostly tepid Challenge Cup showing. But on the other hand, it feels hard to imagine a team returning one of the league’s best players in attack, midfield, and defense not making the playoffs. They’re one of the true “prove it” teams in the NWSL this year. The bar has been set in 2021 with a postseason appearance. Now the team is tasked with making that bar the standard, and not a one-off.