2025 nwsl week 7: xG race charts & g+ pass networks

Prior to this week a discussion about parity in the NWSL did the rounds. The suggestions was that it might be dead, and we might be entering into a new era of the league with more predictable results and a definitive top of the table. NWSL Parity took that personally.

Orlando, Kansas City, Washington and Gotham have been viewed as an NWSL big four. The first three lost this weekend, and Gotham was held to a 0-0 draw with Chicago, who just fired their coach. Jessica Berman found the parity button and hopped on it with both feet, and it led to a tremendous weekend of NWSL’ing.

washington spirit 3-4 angel city

Extremely peak NWSL chaos. Also, the finishing gods shan’t be mocked. Every time you see a substantive chance missed on Washington’s trendline, Angel City scores soon after.

Respect the finishing gods, or incur their wrath. This is a soccer commandment that must be heeded.

The Spirit were concerned with Angel City’s speed and dominance out wide so attempted to counter that by dominating the middle. Unfortunately for them, this led to a highly transitional game that gave Angel City players a lot of freedom in the wide spaces they want. Seems less than ideal!!

It took a few games but the Spirit are starting to sorely miss some key injured players, and weirdly enough Trinity Rodman might not be at the top of that list (though she would have relished playing in this game). At the moment defensive gaps and backline stability are the primary weaknesses, and Hal Hershfelt and Casey Krueger solve both of those problems.

The Spirit wanted to keep the game narrow while Angel City wanted it stretched sideline to sideline, so that’s what they did. Both Thompson sisters’ bright green rings represent a lot of value added through pass receiving, and both hooped relentlessly. The sister/sister goal was one of the best things of the weekend, and including that assist, Alyssa played a key role in generating 10 of Angel City’s 22 shots. Sheesh.

houston dash 1-2 rahsing louisville

This is yet another example of the perils of tempting the finishing gods’ wrath. That (relatively) massive missed chance from the Dash in the second half is followed swiftly by a Rahsing goal.

Apart from that, both teams having an xG well below 1.0 is stinky.

I’ve been trying to hold it back, because I really wanted to see what Fabrice Gautrat could do on his own. But he came to Houston after departing North Carolina as an assistant, and since starting the season looking interesting, their past handful of games have been real familiar. Folks, say hello to the Houston Courage.

I truly do not understand what Bev is up to. Making the pitch wide makes sense given their attacking players, but not like this.The three-way rondo between Millet, DeMelo and Sears is very funny though. It’s like an exaggerated version of ideal combinations. It’s like they did a training exercise in the middle of a regular season game.

seattle reign 1-0 kansas city current

Kansas City got Harve’d right in the face.

Laura is wild for this one. The three center backs have giant bubbles while every other outfield players’ bubble is significantly smaller. This is related to passes attempted, so it shows where Harvey wanted the ball for safe keeping. For everyone else the instruction seemed to be to hold hands across the pitch and form a mf’n wall. Diabolical, but effective.

Kansas City moved the ball around a lot but remained packed in midfield. One reason is that typical string puller, Vanessa DiBernardo, had the worst pass g+ of the match. Without Temwa Chawinga, the team lost its ability to stretch the pitch and break lines from midfield, causing Vlatko to revert to his old form.

portland thorns 1-0 orlando pride

It’s been a minute but Providence Park is once again becoming an unfun place for opponents. The xG shows a fairly even game with Portland still coming out on top, and even while Orlando was fighting back in the second half, they were finding ways to threaten the Pride’s goal as well.

Only thing stranger than this was Rob Gale’s weird Milk Dud brown suit. I get keeping the center backs deep to handle Banda, but I am somewhat surprised that Marta struggled to take advantage of the space between them and the backline. This probably means Orlando didn’t break quick enough, and also means Sam Coffey was doing Sam Coffey things to stop that.

Also, Deyna Castellanos had her best passing game of the season (and maybe her NWSL tenure), while Reilyn Turner and Olivia Moultrie put in high receiving g+ efforts, which helped the Thorns sustain a threat against the champs.

I’m not sure if this is just a bit of a slump from Orlando and they’ll snap out of it or if the league has caught on to how to defend them. Banda was much closer to Marta this time around, and her pass and receiving g+ was positive—but it didn’t matter. Also, Ally Watt was quite isolated and had negative pass and receiving g+.

When Orlando are cooking at Michelin-star tier, Watt basically has the entire flank to add sauce. In Orlando’s previous three games, teams have found ways to isolate at least one of their key attackers. Summer Yates eventually returning could be a solution, but until then Seb Hines and the Pride might need to find other ways to solve this problem.

utah royals 0-2 north carolina courage

Still waiting to see if North Carolina’s new approach can remain a consistent positive that they can build on, but we’ll need to see it against a team that isn’t the 2025 Utah Royals. Still, it was good to see Ashley Sanchez finally look like Ashley Sanchez, and score a tremendous Sanchez-esque goal.

As for Utah, well, they remain committed to giving us nothing.

Through the first seven games Jimmy Coenraets’ 2025 Royals now have the exact same record as Amy Rodriguez’s ‘24 Royals (1 win, 1 draw, 5 losses). The key difference being that this is a much more talented team. So far this season Utah have only had one game above 1.0 xG. Their 5.7 total xG for the season is lowest in the league, and are conceding the second highest xG total. I’m not sure if it’s time to consider a new coach, but it’s not far away.

North Carolina persisted in their new 3-4-2-1 formation, but with Ashley Sanchez and without Jaedyn Shaw. Commentary spoke about Shaw admitting to feeling a lot of pressure to perform on her new team, so giving her a moment to breathe is not the worst idea. But if a new approach is leading to better performances it’s probably a good thing to make sure one of your star players is a part of it.

I also didn’t really understand not allowing Shaw to take the penalty in the second half. If she’s feeling a burden, seeing the ball hit the back of the net has been a tried and true salve for many a footballer. In the end Riley Jackson took it, and missed. Welp.

gotham fc 0-0 chicago tsars

Chicago did well to frustrate gotham, and the teams traded quality chances in the first half, but in the end it was the same ol’ for the Stars. Of course it’s their first game without Donaldson, and they seemed to be trying new things, but the question is whether the roster has the range their general manager believes it does.

Jaelin Howell’s bright red negative receiving and passing g+ stands out, but I’m going to give her a pass. Primarily because while the game was happening around them, she and Bea Franklin were having a WWE PPV event, and it’s unreasonable to also ask her to play soccer at the same time.

Gotham’s absences hurt them, but I also think the instability of not quite knowing what Chicago were going to do was also a factor. Gotham typically focus on amoeba’ing themselves to disrupt the opposition, but now knowing what Chicago would be up to neutralized that a bit.

Chicago were more expansive in their first match under assistant coach Masaki Hemmi, but other than surprising Gotham a bit, it didn’t really lead to anything. It’s early in his tenure with the top job so we’ll see how the team develops, or even if their GM will bother skipping a conference or two to hire a new permanent coach this season.

san diego wavé 2-1 bay fc

I’m scared y’all. I like this San Diego team. The org and that coach are still sus af, but the players are fun and their performances have been as well. On the flip side, Bay has their issues too, and on the pitch are significantly less fun. If you bench Asisat Oshoala for Caroline Conti you had better generate more than .55 xG.

The thing I’m liking about this team is that, somehow, they feel old school NWSL. There’s a ton of pressing and an immunity to any criticism of their games being wide open, because they also have several absolute on-ball menaces that they work relentlessly to get 1v1 chances for. It’s more ‘get rekt’ than ‘The Beautiful Game’ but it’s speaking directly to my inner chaos demon and I‘m grinning like The Grinch.

Squished.

Seems like it would have been a good game to have Oshoala running in behind. It’s a limited sample size of course, but so far Conti’s receiving g+ is -.10, which is means she isn’t getting into positions to receive passes in dangerous areas. Some of this may be by design, but it isn’t going well. Bay average .85 xG per game (4 games) in Conti’s starts, and 1.26 (3 games) with Oshoala.

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