2024 NWSL Season Previews: Angel City and Seattle Reign
/We’re releasing team previews ahead of the NWSL season that kicks off on Saturday, March 16! Day five covers Angel City and Seattle Reign. You can find all of our season previews here!
Angel City Needs to Get Out of Escrow on Their Cabin in Big Bear
Angel City is constantly undone by the burden of their own self-regard.
One need only watch the three-part HBO docuseries about the team’s inaugural 2022 season to understand the disconnect between the Girlbossin’ ownership group and the rest of the women’s soccer community. The joke around town is that they are a PR firm with a soccer team attached to it. They somehow manage to live down that reputation no matter what goes on between the white lines at BMO Stadium.
Granted, 2023 went far better than their début campaign. Poor results in the first half of the year belied better underlying performances: Angel City sat on a 1.9 non-penalty xG differential in those first 11 regular season games, good for fifth in the league. But the poor results—and the galumphing manner in which they occurred—cost head coach Freya Coombe her job. She was replaced by assistant coach Becki Tweed, who took Coombe’s tactical shift from a 4-3-3 to a 4-2-3-1 in her final two games in charge and ran with it. Under Tweed, the team cut their non-penalty goals conceded in half, even though they only improved their non-penalty xG conceded by less than one goal. Regardless, those improved results helped them scrape into the fifth seed of the playoffs, only to be eliminated in the quarterfinals by Seattle.
ROSTER MANAGEMENT: A MONEY PIT IN SANTA MONICA
GM Angela Hucles Mangano had a monumental task facing her in the 2024 offseason, and without much apparent support. Hucles Mangano was thrust into the job when sporting director Eni Aluko was pushed out toward the end of 2022. The team’s primary data analyst, Kim McCauley, left ahead of the 2023 season. Aside from performance analyst Oliver Blitz—who works primarily with players already on the roster—no other recruitment, scouting, or data analysis positions are listed on Angel City’s website. No such individual can be found on LinkedIn. It’s hard to shake the feeling that Hucles Mangano and co-founder/president Julie Uhrman are largely the only ones overseeing any of the team’s roster construction.
That may go some distance toward explaining the single firehose of roster capital they have spit onto a flaming oil tanker. Here’s a table of all the draft picks the team traded away, and the players they got in exchange.
Most of those players are not going to be major components of the roster this year or in years to come. Lussi, McCaskill, and Charley have all moved to greener pastures. Isenhour retired. Press may never set foot on a professional soccer field again. Leroux had a resurgence once she returned from injury last summer, but she will be 34 this year, and is not a guarantee to play a full season. Hammond has emerged as a team leader, but has proven unable to stand out in central midfield without more talented support. Riley is now 36 at a position that requires oceans of endurance, and her backup is a 33-year-old, just-returned-from-a-yearlong-knee-injury Merritt Mathias.
More key contributors have also departed. Julie Ertz retired. Dani Weatherholt signed with North Carolina. Scarlett Camberos was traded to new rivals Bay FC in exchange for expansion draft protection. Jun Endō was lost to an ACL tear.
Loads of allocation money went back and forth in these transactions as well. Leroux’s and Press’s contracts weren’t cheap. Nor were Ertz’s or Amandine Henry’s, who were brought in last year as short-term fixes at No. 6. What do those four players have in common? They’re all big names you can leverage for social media engagements and jersey sales. They are also all over the age of 30 and in various states of decline. The salary cap doubled between 2023 and 2024, and teams’ allocation budgets are kept from the public, but one can’t shake the feeling that Angel City’s coffers have run dry.
With an aging roster, no draft picks to help build the squad internally, and with potentially few funds to make a splash in the free agent and international transfer markets, Angel City pivoted to a new strategy: sign teenagers and develop them for the future. Joining Alyssa Thompson (19) among the teen ranks are Korean-American forward Casey Phair (16), midfielder Kennedy Fuller (17), and Thompson’s own sister, fullback Gisele (18). No other team has more than two teenagers under contract; Angel City has four. It really was the only way for the team to bring in youth. The drawback, of course, is that they may not all be major contributors at the same time for a long while.
Hucles Mangano used what capital that did remain to bring in three players off the trade market. Messiah Bright joined from Orlando for $130,000 in “intra-league transfer funds”. Meggie Dougherty Howard drove up the I-5 from San Diego and sent $40,000 in allocation cash the other way. Angel City’s attempt at a headline-grabbing transaction came in the form of 30-year-old Rocky Rodríguez driving down the I-5 from Portland and tossing a duffel bag full of $275,000 in allocation money onto a northbound train.
Those signings don’t exactly help the team get younger. While the three new teens pull the average age of the whole squad down, the projected starting XI remains one of the oldest in the league, now that Rodríguez has joined up and Claire Emslie recently turned 30. Henry’s return from loan slots her straight back into the side, a year older than when she first showed up in Exposition Park.
There still remains the question of proper use of your capital. Could $450,000 have gotten you different players? What about a single, high-impact player? Maybe so, though one imagines the contract that would come with such a player may have been out of Angel City’s budget range. The club could have used Taylor Flint (née Kornieck), who put herself on the trade block. That knowledge drove the trade price down, and Flint now flicks headers for Racing Louisville. Maybe the reason Uhrman and Hucles Mangano didn’t make a bid (or lost on their bid) was because they wouldn’t have been able to afford Flint’s contract. This is all speculation, but at least it would apply some rational thinking behind a frustratingly obtuse offseason for the organization.
Let’s talk about the squad they do have, and why they could dazzle or fizzle.
ROCKY RODRÍGUEZ: A ONE-BEDROOM IN NORTH HOLLYWOOD
Rodríguez is at a crossroad. She recently turned 30, and has spent more time on the bench and the trainer’s table in the past 12 months than she has in a starting lineup. The Costa Rican wunderkind was a lynchpin in the Thorns’ championship campaign in 2022, but the rise of Olivia Moultrie, the return of Crystal Dunn, and Sam Coffey’s success as a single pivot created a central midfield bottleneck last season. Rodríguez pulled the short straw. Angel City may represent a chance at a comeback.
She’ll need it. Rodríguez will be tasked with the No. 10 job, a position she rarely plays in full. Her gifts as a No. 8 mean that she can do a bit of everything, and so playmaking from more advanced territory is not the craziest decision Tweed could make. It’s not exactly optimal, either. Compare Rodríguez’s performance in key skill areas for the No. 10 and No. 8 last year, respectively.
No team has needed her to be a No. 10 at any point in her career, either. Dunn, Moultrie, and Christine Sinclair saw to those duties last season; the year before that, Janine Beckie joined Dunn and Sinclair in the creativity department. Lindsey Horan ran the show in 2021. Imani Dorsey and Nahomi Kawasumi served that function in 2019. Rodríguez now has to be the quarterback, when she should be the yarn stitching Henry’s passes to the person who can unleash Alyssa Thompson and Emslie, not to mention get stuck in a time or two. Angel City need a natural advanced playmaker; the inconvenient truth is that they had one already. She plays in San Diego now.
STRIKERS: A RENOVATED CONDO IN EAGLE ROCK
You certainly can’t take anything away from Sydney Leroux’s 2023 comeback. She scored an emotional goal in her first game after a year of injury rehab. She backed it up down the stretch with 0.45 npxG/96 in over 600 minutes. A spark had been re-lit. Could she be counted on to deliver in the season ahead?
Her age and injury history hang like a sword of Damocles over her head. A 34-year-old Leroux with two major injuries in the past five years cannot be relied upon to be the primary target forward. Enter Bright. Her profile closely matches Leroux’s, but she’s a decade younger with all the extra quick-twitch fibers and sprint speed Leroux can no longer provide. She can drop deep to link, defend from the front, and make defender-dragging runs that free her in space or open up gaps for Alyssa Thompson and Emslie.
Plus, she’s already iconic.
WINGERS: SNOW WHITE COTTAGES NEXT TO A CASH-FOR-KEYS SCAM IN LOS FELIZ
Ok, that last analogy was a bit harsh on Alyssa Thompson. The 19-year-old is bursting forth with creative talent. Nobody looks as terrifying as her when they get on the ball at full speed in the final third. Her insane goal against Kansas City last May is the stuff of legend in Los Angeles. For all of Thompson’s youthful fireworks, though, it is Emslie who has been able to create chances for others. (She’s also just as good off the dribble, albeit with fewer whiplash-inducing feats of trickery.)
No attacker who played at least 1,000 regular-season minutes generated more expected assists per 96’ than Emslie did last season. That crazy goal Thompson scored after breaking Addisyn Merrick’s ankles and turning the posts into a pinball machine? Emslie put the pass on a dime for her.
Plenty of that xA value came from setpieces and crosses, to be sure; no player was as cross-happy as Emslie last year. She was really good at it, though. When looking solely at passes in open play (including crosses), Emslie’s 0.22 xA/96 was behind only Morgan Weaver. A 0.06 g+ Boost/96 figure also topped all 1,000+-minute attackers, which dovetailed nicely with the xA value. Emslie is making the players receiving her passes better. Thompson may be more memeable, but it’s Emslie who’s actually helping her teammates take shots from high-quality chances.
PREDICTIONS: SUSTAINABLE PUBLIC HOUSING, OR THE RETRENCHMENT OF THE GROVE?
The range of outcomes for Angel City is vast, like many other teams. Because Padmé Amidala is an owner who hangs out and does halftime sideline interviews on TV, the club’s decisions have a hotter spotlight trained on them. Uhrman and Hucles Mangano have built a squad bursting with talent. Henry remains a poet from deep midfield. Sarah Gorden has returned to form as an aggressive center back. MA Vignola earned USWNT caps on the back of her 2023 campaign. Alyssa Thompson is Alyssa Thompson, and her little sister might be better. Emslie’s passing vision won’t abate with age. Rodríguez feels like a more successful version of Crash Davis. Bright’s future is, well, bright.
But it won’t take much to let age and empty pockets hold off the Angel City rebuild until 2025, or ’26, or maybe ’27. 2027 would actually be a great year to contend. The World Cup will most likely be in town. I’m sure there are some brand activations Uhrman and her army of art directors, content creators, and marketing professionals could whip up. Too bad they can’t hire some actual data analysts. Oh wait, they have; they just do revenue and ticket pricing projections, not scout players. Oh well.
The Reign Will Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
By Evan Davis
You know that one friend of a friend who always shows up at the party and then never manages to take the hint that it’s time to leave? That’s the Seattle Reign.
It’s not entirely the club’s fault. Three teams were sold in the 2024 NWSL offseason, and the Reign, despite rolling out brand-new vintage branding, still haven’t closed the sale from OL Groupe to the Seattle Sounders and the Carlyle Group. That means cultural uncertainty; that means budgetary uncertainty, despite what GM Lesle Gallimore might say. One of the league’s Tiffany franchises is stuck in the open sea mere months after an NWSL Championship appearance. This is not how Gallimore or head coach Laura Harvey hoped this would go.
Let’s start with last year. After a barnstorming Shield win in 2022, Harvey claimed ahead of last year’s opening day that the Reign had the deepest squad in the league. They had learned from the mental lapses that caused them to lose the semifinal, and were prepared to make a run at both the Shield and the big trophy.
They sorta got there. For one thing, Harvey may have exaggerated her squad’s strength in depth. She and Gallimore did bring in Elyse Bennett and Emily Sonnett, to be sure. The original, core three—Lauren Barnes, Jess Fishlock, and Megan Rapinoe—were ready to man their stations. Tziarra King, Veronica Latsko, Olivia van der Jagt, Phoebe McClernon, Nikki Stanton, and Sam Hiatt were all ready to serve. Rose Lavelle, Bethany Balcer, Jordyn Huitema, Alana Cook, Sofia Huerta, and Phallon Tullis-Joyce caped up for another campaign. The squad was ready for battle.
That depth was immediately tested when Lavelle, Rapinoe, and Fishlock all missed significant time throughout the year. While Reign produced one of the most stalwart defenses in the league (22.6 non-penalty xG allowed, second behind San Diego), they couldn’t generate any consistent, pulse-quickening creativity (22.6 npxG, 11th in the league). A rotating cast of misfit toys filled the No. 10 role in Lavelle’s absence, including Fishlock, Balcer, and Latsko. It never really worked. Huitema managed a respectable 0.29 npxG/96, tied for 13th among the 49 attackers who logged at least 1,000 regular-season minutes; Balcer was two places behind her. They found very little chance-taking help elsewhere. Without Lavelle, the team had no incision about it. (To underscore this point, three of Lavelle’s seven matches last season were among the Reign’s top five games by npxG generated.*) Rapinoe was still putting crosses and diagonals on a platter for her teammates, but she only started half the club’s regular season games.
A double pivot of Quinn and Sonnett meant that they at least didn’t need to stress about leaking goals. By season’s end, Harvey had realized that that was the only way to win. Balcer got moved to the bench in favor of the more defensively astute Latsko, and the team stumbled into a fourth-place finish and ground out two playoff wins before finally running out of luck in the Championship game.
With question marks hanging over the future of the club, Gallimore and Harvey went to work signing players, and the ones they brought in answered only some of those questions while holding others in abeyance. Rapinoe had retired; Lavelle and Sonnett departed for Gotham in free agency. A winger, a No. 10, and a savvy central midfielder were holes to fill, along with another goalscorer.
The team filled most of those needs. 33-year-old Chelsea legend Ji So-yun came in from her 15-month sojourn in South Korea. Fishlock’s Welsh compatriot Angharad James, 30 in June, hopped over from fullback purgatory at Tottenham. American winger McKenzie Weinert was signed from Melbourne Victory after posting a respectable 0.30 npxG/90* in the A-League. Young fullback Lily Woodham, also from the Welsh tribe, left Reading in the Championship in search of top-flight minutes. Talented midfielder Sam Meza was picked up early in the second round of the draft out of the University of North Carolina.
The job feels about 70% done. Gallimore and Harvey likely couldn’t have done much better under the circumstances. Between age, unknowns surrounding recent performance, and no real goal scoring help, the Reign feel a bit trapped between a rock and a hard place.
AGÈD SIGNINGS: “Merched da, y don olaf gan, yn crio mor llachar Efallai bod eu gweithredoedd bregus wedi dawnsio mewn bae gwyrdd” **
Fishlock was busy this offseason. The Welsh Dragon was almost certainly involved in convincing both James and Woodham to join up in Seattle. I imagine the sales pitch was pretty easy: “the food’s pretty good, the soccer is a real challenge, and hey, Angharad, you don’t have to play right back anymore! Sure, maybe things didn’t go so great for you and your wife in the league the first time around, but this time, we get to hang out every day! Sounds like a good deal.”
Woodham is only 23, and has a chance to develop in a more rigorous environment than the Championship, and should challenge McClernon for the starting left back job.
Then there’s Ji, whose reputation needs no embellishment. Her touch and vision seem largely intact, if her strong performances in a dire South Korean side at the World Cup are to be believed. South Korea had to play Germany and Colombia, and Ji’s passing numbers were comparable to Aitana Bonmatí, Jenni Hermoso, and Lauren James. Nice work if you can get it.
Ji still hasn’t played tough competition on a weekly basis in nearly two years. She’s two years older than when she last did it, too. There are a couple of YouTube clips of Ji playing with Suwon FC, and she looks awfully good. Then you remember that she was the best player on the pitch for both teams by orders of magnitude. How can she handle Sam Coffey, Jaelin Howell, and Amandine Henry every single week?
James has faced a reasonably strong level of opposition at Tottenham, but she too crosses the age-30 threshold this year. Her most recent season as a central midfielder didn’t exactly blow the doors open, either.
What will James’s role be? Will she and Fishlock rotate the No. 8 position to give Fishlock’s 37-year-old legs some rest? Will she fill in for Quinn? Would Harvey play all three together with Ji and drop one of Latsko or Balcer to the bench? The club is crying out for goals, and while Latsko is better as a defensive battering ram than a creator or shooter, she’s all the team’s got for reliable attacking options beyond Huitema and Balcer.
Graphic courtesy of ALPHONSO: The DAVIES Database
We don’t have much recent public data on Woodham, since Reading were relegated for 2023-24. We can take a grain of salt with her 2022-23 numbers when we comp them to McClernon’s 2023 campaign, but they at least indicate Woodham is developing into an attacking fullback that can add width on the overlap if no left wing option is readily available. Huerta’s defensive prowess and positional discipline will ensure both flanks won’t be overexposed when the Reign build through the left side.
Gallimore and Harvey are rolling the dice that an untested young fullback and two 30-something midfielders will be adequate substitutes for Sonnett, Lavelle, and Rapinoe. The day of reckoning fast approacheth.
THE VETERAN CORE: “Dylai henaint losgi a rheibio ar ddiwedd dydd.” ***
I suppose that this is the point where in the interest of full disclosure I must mention that I am part-Welsh by heritage. (Read the byline again: I wasn’t exactly hiding it.) I am therefore unable to render a sober, dispassionate assessment of Jess Fishlock. I did that once before. I could feel my grandfather rolling in his grave as I typed.
Yet we must stare the state of Fishlock dead in the face. She is now 37 years old. Ignoring 2019, when she missed half the season from injury, Fishlock has averaged more than 84 minutes per game, every single game, in club play since 2013 (including playoffs and Challenge Cup knockout games). To be playing soccer at all right now is to defy standard boundaries of human physical capability.
Fishlock is not only playing, but playing well. Her 0.10 Net g+/96 made her a top-5 midfielder among the 38 who played at least 1,000 regular-season minutes last season. Of the 49 1,000+-minute attacking players, she was tied for 12th. g+ above average/96 put her tied for 2nd among midfielders and tied for 11th among attackers. Her build-up passing and progression skills are still élite, despite the mileage.
One could scarcely imagine a Reign midfield without Fishlock in it. She is performing to such a degree that Harvey really does not have much choice. Having James there as load management will certainly extend Fishlock’s shelf life, but there will always be that nagging in the back of Harvey’s head that her friend and colleague needs to be out there at every available opportunity.
I’m not sure we can say the same for Barnes. The defender turns 35 in May. She has averaged almost a full 90 minutes for every single game since the league began 11 years ago. She returned to center back toward the end of 2023, seemingly ending the great fullback experiment that had begun a few years before. Among the 50 1,000+-minute defenders in the league last year, Barnes’s -0.07 g+ above average/96 put her 46th. Her -0.11 Net g+/96 slotted her in 49th. The Reign’s defense was excellent last year, but Barnes did not appear to be contributing on either side of the ball.
The reliability of advanced defensive data is a fraught business, so don’t put all your stock into them. Yet Huerta, McClernon, and Alana Cook all generated excellent defensive numbers. Ditto Quinn and Sonnett. Barnes stuck out like a sore thumb. McClernon, Julia Lester, and Shae Holmes are all available to spell her if needed. Even if off-the-ball defensive skill isn’t being fully captured by Net g+, Barnes would likely still not be up to scratch to play every day. Woodham’s presence becomes useful in this regard, slotting McClernon into Barnes’s central defensive role while maintaining a good player at left back. A McClernon-Woodham combination on the left side would add needed buildup quality to Cook’s and Huerta’s output and avoid the sufferball grind of last season.
One player defies this aging question. Huerta’s conversion from hard-working attacker to spectacular right back two years ago transformed her career. She made the World Cup roster because of it. She’s proven herself wonderful on both sides of the ball. Will her age-31 season reverse this upward trajectory? Quite possibly. Her recent track record (and being much closer to 30 than 40) makes me think that the right side of the pitch remains well taken care of.
GOALS: “Merched gwyllt a ddaliodd ac a ganodd yr haul wrth hedfan, a dysgu, yn rhy hwyr, maent yn galaru ar ei ffordd.” ****
Harvey knew by the autumn that not losing rather than trying to win was the smarter approach to playoff success, given the state of her roster. Lavelle was injured again. Rapinoe was shooting a lot from bad chances. Balcer was her most dynamic attacker, but Huitema and Latsko were more defensively disciplined. She rolled the dice, and in the concluding weeks of the regular season, Balcer was benched.
You can see Harvey’s point, but the thing you would have preferred out of Huitema was less defending and more scoring. In the end, even the return of Lavelle couldn’t win them the title. Rapinoe and Lavelle are gone now. Their replacements are no sure things. And no dedicated goalscorer was brought in.
If Harvey wants a shot at putting the ball in the back of the net, she needs to start trusting Balcer again. Balcer’s second half of the season was much cooler than her first half, but her track record indicates that she can take great chances when put front and center. Huitema’s first full season in the NWSL may have led to more goals, but she took them from worse chances in the aggregate. Harvey never seemed to get the balance right when both were on the field. Balcer’s capabilities on the right wing helped to define the roles between the two, but Balcer’s runs off the ball in central channels were one of her calling cards. Finding the right balance will be key to achieving cogency in the final third and the box.
OUTLOOK: “A thithau, fy mam, yno ar yr uchder trist, felltith, bendithia, fi yn awr â'th ddagrau ffyrnig, atolwg. Peidiwch â mynd yn hamddenol i'r noson dda honno. Cynddaredd, cynddaredd yn erbyn marw y goleuni.”*****
The Reign have one of the oldest starting XIs in the NWSL this year. They soldier on with their faithful servants, and have found more wise veterans to fill the gaps. The goals still feel hidden in the mist, as if Bethany Balcer were traipsing through a field at night, promising to bring sunshine to the Lumen Field faithful. Is this the end of something, or the continuation of the story this club has tried to tell through multiple names, multiple owners, multiple crests, multiple stadiums and towns? Answers from xG are found wanting. The Cardiff horde has invaded the Pacific Northwest; perhaps its poets can point the way.
- All Welsh passages adapted from “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas (1947). English translations below.
*FBRef’s xG model used here.
** “Good women, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay.”
*** “Old age should burn and rage at close of day.”
**** “Wild women who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way”
***** “And you, my mother, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”