Hi. Evan from Expected Own Goals here. The NWSL regular season becomes past tense after this weekend, and with most players’ seasons more or less fully formed, we thought it was the perfect time to lay down our marker for the annual player awards.
Read MoreWe’re releasing team previews ahead of the NWSL season that kicks off on Saturday, March 16! Our second edition includes last season’s bottom dwellers, the Chicago Red Stars and the Kansas City Current.
Read MoreWe’re releasing team previews ahead of the NWSL season that kicks off on Saturday, March 16! Our first edition includes the league’s two newest expansion teams in Bay FC and Utah Royals.
Read MoreA hectic decision day has come and gone and the NWSL playoffs are soon upon us, as such it’s probably a good time to look at the Best XI by g+ in NWSL in 2023.
Read MoreWhile the World Cup is ready to begin off in the Land Down Under, the NWSL plows on with the 2023 Challenge Cup continuing through July and August while the top international players vie for glory. With the best players away, it poses an interesting question for fans and organizations alike, who is going to step up?
Read MoreThe last three World Cup cycles have been marked by something with which the U.S. Women’s National Team has never previously dealt: a stable and robust professional domestic league. No such league existed from 1991 - 2000, the first wave of top-level international women’s soccer tournaments. The WUSA was in the middle of collapsing as the U.S. hosted the 2003 World Cup, and the program would return to its 1990s structure for the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics, along with the 2007 World Cup. The 2011 tournament came in the middle of the chaotic final WPS season. The NWSL finally stuck, and was eventually able to thrive without the direct support of U.S. Soccer. The USWNT now operates like any other international program would: as the supplemental training, developmental, financial, and competitive environment for players relative to their clubs.
Read MoreIt’s not much of a stretch to say that of all the American professional sports drafts, the NWSL draft is the hardest to correctly map out. Upwards of 250 players register every year for 40 available slots. Tape on these players is scattered among a litany of different paywalled streaming services, each lower quality than the next. As such, scouting out each year's crop of prospects can be an arduous, and perhaps on some level impossible, task. Thankfully, we do have some objective ways to view potential draftees: stats. And thanks to an army of different filters and search criteria, I’ve created a list of 16 players across four position groups that stand out statistically for one reason or another.
Read MoreThe preliminary rounds of the Challenge Cup are wrapped up. The seeds are set.
While the first few games saw teams experiment with styles of play and roster rotation (at least for some teams), teams now have to put the pieces together as the knockout rounds begin. We looked at the performances of a couple teams to see where they’re succeeding, and more importantly, what they need to improve upon to be successful in their knockout matches. Here's a look at four of the teams we found most interesting thus far.
Read MoreTwo rounds down, two more to go, and then the real action starts: knockout rounds! Read up on last week’s goalkeeping round up here, if you’re a true goalkeeping nerd.
1.) Alyssa Naeher (Chicago Red Stars) - Naeher wasn’t featured against the Portland Thorns. Return later in the week for a recap on round three or scroll down to see how Emily Boyd and Cassie Miller did in her stead.
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