2026 nwsl season preview: a smorgasbord of vibe checks [gotham fc-washington spirit]

Happy NWSL is Finally Back to All Who Celebrate!

It’s preview time and I am of course choosing to do them a bit differently. I’m essentially going to do a detailed vibe check for each team in which I’ll spotlight a thing to know (key story of their offseason), three notes (three important bits of info), a player who’s gotta hoop for the team to have success, plus a young baller to watch.

But this is still a vibe check, and I needed a way to measure positive and negative vibes. So I’ve some up with a new rating scale. With F1 back, I’m rating teams on either the Existential Leclerc Scale or Smug Toto Scale.

Last season Leclerc was forced out of a race after he was crashed into, and rather than go back to his garage he sat on a hill and got existential, it was very funny. This season, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff showed that 1) he always knows where the cameras are, 2) when he’s on one, and 3) that his team made a championship winning car, and flashed an ultra smug face during the first race weekend.

So if I have more questions than answers about a team they’ll be rated on the Existential Leclerc Scale, which will be a further rating of 1-5 Leclercs, with five Leclercs being the most confounding. If, however, a team cooked a little bit, they’ll be judged on the Smug Toto Scale, from 1-5 as well. Teams and fans on the Smug Toto Scale should be excited about their season.

It’s a very silly system, and I just came up with it, but it feels right. Lights out and away we go.

2025: 8^th | 9W -9D - 8L

Head Coach: Juan Carlos Amorós
previous job: Houston Dash (‘22; lol)

One thing that got lost in the focus of Gotham winning the championship as an 8 seed (again) is that they were championed as a great underdog story, which coincidentally served the purpose of pushing the theory of ‘competitiveness’ as the NWSL‘s best selling point. In reality, Gotham was only an 8 seed because the salary cap forced them to drastically rebuild the team that won the championship two years prior.

Several of those players retired, but Yazmeen Ryan, Delanie Sheehan, Nealy Martin, Jenna Nighswonger, and Lynn Biyendolo (née Williams) are all with new clubs. Gotham’s starting XI in last year’s championship game had just two players who started the same game in ‘23. The overall matchday squads had just four players in common. Injuries plus the on-the-fly rebuild nearly saw Gotham miss the playoffs altogether, narrowly sneaking in due to favorable results on the final matchday of the season.

By the end of the season Gotham was did not have a roster representative of an eight seed, and don’t let the league’s shoddy narrative-telling convince you otherwise.

North Carolina’s multiple coaches could never quite figure out how to get Jaedyn Shaw cookin. I’m not entirely sure why. Shaw has one of the easiest skillsets to work with: quick feet with a penchant for connecting throughballs with runners in behind. Put some runners ahead of her, give her freedom to roam in midfield, and enjoy. Instead, she was floundering with the Courage, was saved by Gotham, and repaid them by being a key figure in their championship run.

North Carolina appeared to opt out of Shaw’s key passing ability, which led to a notable variance in her on ball touches and effective passing metrics. Gotham pre-Shaw and pre-Euros were heavily reliant on then-golden boot contender Esther González. If she wasn’t scoring, they likely weren’t winning. In the first half of the season they went 5-1 when she contributed to a goal, and were 0-3-4 when she didn’t. The goals dried up post-Euros, but Rose Lavelle returning from injury and the addition of Jaedyn Shaw made them a more balanced, and dangerous, team.

In my preview about Denver I mentioned that the USWNTs current short shortage of #9s won’t last long. The 5’11 Jordynn Dudley is one of the players who could change that. She scored 30 goals and delivered 29 assists in 53 appearances (51 starts) for FSU, and picked up a couple national championships along the way. I’ve been waiting to see Dudley at the professional level, and with all the talent around her do not be alarmed if she starts cooking right away.

(The second goal here, sheesh.)

Then Gotham added instinctual goalscorer Andrea Kitahata, who dropped 17 goals and ten assists in her final season at Stanford (25 appearances, 24 starts). Kitahata has a versatile skillset that could be perfect for noted mad scientist Juan Carlos Amorós.

Gotham are a very talented team with an intense style of play. They also have one of the best general managers in the league in Jael Averbuch West, who has a history of helping solve on-pitch problems with shrewd moves at the right time.

2025: 9^th | 9W - 8D - 9L

Head Coach: Mak Lind 🇱🇧
previous job: BK Häcken (‘23-’25)

Mak Lind is an interesting choice as coach, but given my public declaration for all vibes soccer I’m afraid I must support it. He has said in the past that he is ‘obsessed with scoring goals,’ and if that shows in performances it will be a dramatic shift from what previous coaches Sean Nahas and Nathan Thackeray were up to with the Courage.

Lind’s BK Häcken scored 53 goals and conceded 10 in his first season, and after that they dropped 68/17 in 2024, and won the league in 2025 with 86/17. He was able to maintain defensive consistency between his second and third seasons, while tacking on an additional eighteen goals.

The concerns are that this could be an overcorrection, and that the NWSL is not the Damallsvenskan. North Carolina don’t have bad defensive players—I’m hoping Maycee Bell takes The Step this season—but losing Denise O’Sullivan is a problem when it comes to covering the backline. If Lind is all attack, all vibes and no and/or shaky defense he will basically be me in FC26, but without the ability to restart the game if things go horribly wrong. (Calm down gamers, I don’t play online, these dopamine rushes are all mine and I protect them at all cost.)

The keys to the midfield are all Jackson’s now. I’ve been a firm believer for a while now, and the Courage seem to believe in her enough to finally acquiesce to the annual ‘Denise O’Sullivan is leaving’ rumors. Jackson is just 20, but one thing has become extremely abundantly clear about her skillset on the pitch: Riley. Jackson. Be. Passin.

According to American Soccer Analysis’s goals added (g+) passing metric, Jackson topped all defensive midfielders, comfortably ahead of USWNT stalwart Sam Coffey. So it really is all up to figuring out the other stuff, like physicality and increasing her awareness for receiving the ball and turning into space. If she can handle the increase in defensive responsibility and maintain her ability to complete progressive passes into the final third, North Carolina will be hoopin, and Jackson just might secure a trip to Brazil next summer.

The Courage signed Oli Peña in September of last year, one year after she was named 2024 Big 12 Midfielder of the Year. However, she still hasn’t seen her first official minutes with the club. At 5’1 she definitely qualifies as a dynamo type player, and could inject some shiftiness in their midfield.

Bringing in a new coach who’s had impressive success in a respectable league should be enough to land North Carolina on the Smug Toto Scale. Unfortunately the roster still needs some work. There’s no obvious goal threat outside of 21-year-old Manaka Matsukubo, and Denise O’Sullivan’s departure leaves a hole in midfield that’s currently set to be filled by players who don’t quite do spot on Denise O’Sullivan impressions.

Still, it’s just one Existential Leclerc because there is hope. If Lind handles the challenge of the NWSL well, they’ll finally have a heading, and be able to increase their success rate with new signings.

2025: 4^th |11W - 7D - 8L

Head Coach: Seb Hines 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿
previous job: Orlando Pride, asst (‘20-’22)

Head coach Seb Hines took the head coaching role as an interim appointment in 2022. Later that year he signed a contract to become the permanent coach. In 2023 you could see the foundations of something being built that had a lot of potential for growth. Though that season ended with them on the same number of points as two playoff teams, goal difference kept them out. The very next season they went on an unholy revenge tour.

They made sure they didn’t have to worry about no stinkin’ goal difference by simply winning the league (and allowing the fewest goals), then doubled up on their trophy haul by adding the NWSL Championship. Last season Kansas City went on their unholy revenge tour and it seemed like the pair were on course to meet in an NWSL Championship for the first time—but nah. Orlando struggled toward the end of the season and slid to fourth, and both the Pride and Current were yeeted out of the playoffs before the championship.

Losing Barbra Banda to injury had a derailing effect on Orlando’s offensive production. As one of the best forwards in the league, that’s understandable, but Hines struggled to find any consistent offensive output. Even when the club dropped a bag to secure Jacquie Ovalle, they remained stagnant in attack.

Coaches must evolve, especially young coaches. Hines showed he can concoct a dominant defense while relying on a select few highly skilled attackers to carry the bulk of the goalscoring burden. With Banda still on the Pride’s season-ending injury list to start the season, he’ll have to show he has more ideas of how to balance the team.

Given the last note, you probably already knew this would be the answer. While Seb Hines has to adapt his system, Ovalle has to adapt her game as well. She put up extremely impressive expected assist (xA) and progressive passes to shots numbers, but her own shots at goal were chaotic af.

The long range banger is probably my favorite thing to watch in soccer, but of Ovalle’s 26 total shots, fourteen were below average quality. Finding the time and space to generate good shots in the NWSL is difficult due to the speed of literally everyone on the pitch, but it can’t be that. Hines can help by giving defenses more to think about than Marta and Ovalle, but the Mexican superstar must also improve tremendously on her 1 goal scored from 2.95 xG.

First things first, Seven has a name worthy of the pantheon of Priscilla Chinchilla, Atlanta Primus, and Skye Bacon. Secondarily though, Castain is a fun player. She sniffs out space and goalscoring opportunities with almost a sixth sense, and that anticipation coupled with solid acceleration helped her score 17 goals (4 assists) her senior season at TCU.

Also, and extremely crucially, Castain knows how to celebrate her goals.

Granted, this rating is relative. Orlando’s biggest problem will be central creativity from someone who isn’t over 40. No disrespect to the timeless goat, Marta, but she really shouldn’t still have to be doing that shit. Hines figuring out the attack can easily put them on the Smug Toto Scale, or I guess they could also just wait until Barbra Banda returns. (Please do not do that.)

2025: 3^rd | 11W - 7D - 8L

Head Coach: Robert Vilahamn 🇸🇪
previous job: Spurs W (‘23-’25)

Portland are in an odd situation (though much of it of their own doing). Sophia Wilson opting into the final year of her contract and deciding to stay in Portland is lovely, but it also means she’ll be making a milli this season, which is about 27% of this season’s $3.7-million salary cap. Without a restructuring, I’m not sure if they can transition an existing contract under the new High Impact Player rule.

This plus an oddly lengthy delay in hiring a coach meant that Portland weren’t very active in the offseason, but they needed to be. The defense in particular needs work, and Vilahamn’s time with Spurs in the WSL suggests that his preferred method of defense is having a lot of the ball. We’ve seen these coaches in the NWSL before, and if Vilahamn wants to avoid their same fate he’ll have to make lots of changes to his game model.

One thing that worked against him at Spurs was the front office seeing the success he had in ‘23/’24—6th on the table, FA Cup Final appearance—and responding by losing multiple players who were responsible (notably Grace Clinton and Celine Bizet), and not replacing them with talent of a similar quality. Spurs gon’ Spurs.

But Portland without Sam Coffey is another brutal scenario for him to have to cope with. His predecessor wanted tight, close, frequent passing, but never had the tools or coaching ability to pull it off. It’s also one of the hardest thing to pull off consistently in the NWSL. Vilahamn likes his team to have more width, but width leaves gaps to exploit when the ball is turned over, and in this league the ball will be turned over.

Portland found ways to attack other teams, usually through Olivia Moultrie, but they were often exposed in defense. A lot. The bar chart below is not a pleasant one. It represents the bottom 8 teams with the worst expected goals against (xGA), with the team that gave up the most expected goals per 96 being Chicago, who finished at the very bottom of the table.

Portland , #Loovull and Seattle are the only playoff teams on this list. Seattle and #Loovull I’ll get to later, but Portland struggled in transition and made it too easy for opposition attackers to isolate their defenders. Their midseason trade for M.A. Vignola gives them one hell of an athlete who can be a borderline USWNT player when healthy, but she struggles with nagging injuries and isn’t the kind of talent who can improve a backline by herself (very few of these exist).

Whatever Robert Vilahamn’s plans are in attack won’t matter at all if Portland’s defense remains easy to pull apart.

Neither player is new to the team in 2026, but I’m singling them out nonetheless. Hanks, because she was one of the surprises of the season before her ACL injury. A fully healthy season would have likely ended with her having a good shot at the Rookie of the Year award ultimately given to Gotham fullback Lilly Reale. If Hanks can fully recover and get back to her pre-injury form, she could form a diabolical attacking duo alongside Sophia Wilson.

Pietra Tordin and Reilyn Turner are interesting profiles in central attack, the problem is that both underperformed their expected goals. Turner did so by a wide margin, but Tordin was a lot closer. Four goals from 5.18 xG across 39 shots (14 on target) is pretty good, and should earn her more minutes and an expanded role. If Hanks and Wilson are the duo I think they can be, Tordin could have room to feast.

Losing a key midfield piece when you’re bringing in a coach with a style that desperately needs a key midfield piece seems bad, and I expect results to not be much better.

2025: 7^th | 10W - 7D - 9L

Head Coach: Bev Yanez 🇺🇸
previous job: Rahsing Louisville, asst. (‘23)

Last season’s Rahsing #Loovull made the playoffs for the first time in franchise history, and they did so by turning themselves into a retro NWSL team. The graph below charts teams on their average number of passes per possession and average vertical passing distance. You can see the two outliers quite clearly (I’ll get to San Diego later), with Loovull achieving the fewest passes per possession and the highest average vertical distance. Defend, counter, repeat.

It wasn’t your standard low block and counter that we see several smaller teams use against bigger clubs, particularly in Europe. Instead, Loovull paired it with an aggressive press. The bar graph below tracks passes per defensive action (PPDA), which measures how many passes on average a team allows before applying a defensive action. Gotham and their ‘organized chaos’ style allow the fewest, with just 7.36 passes allowed before an action. Loovull finished the season third highest on the list.

Of course, Utah is right near them so despite the top two most aggressive teams (Gotham and the Spirit) meeting in the championship game, this metric in itself isn’t a measurement of how successful that pressure tends to be. It worked for Rahsing primarily because of Taylor Flint, a 6’ midfield octopus who’s hard to get by, and Emma Sears, a real life transformer who is impossible to contend and/or keep up with in open space.

With the NWSL currently having a bit of a tactical revolution it was fun to see a team play like this. Though I’m not sure what its ceiling is. If they leaned into it and filled the team with physical and smart center backs, energetic and pestering wide defenders, and midfielders who can cover a lot of ground, then maybe. But their offseason hasn’t exactly gone that way.

The 2025 NWSL Coach of the Year might need a repeat performance. Emma Sears & Prayer is what got the club to their first ever playoff appearance. Sears scored ten goals and dished two assists on 8.43 expected goals (xG) from twenty-six on target shots out of sixty-five total. That is outrageous, and Yanez & Co. needed every last one of them, only losing one game in which she scored or assisted a goal.

There were rumblings last year that the style Rahsing settled on was not Yanez’s preferred style. If so, the front office didn’t do her many favors when it comes to adding profiles that allow her to shift the identity of the team. A lot of teams had down years last year, and if any team below them gets their shit together there’s a good chance it won’t be enough to make a second consecutive playoff appearance. The press + counter tactic worked as well as it could, it’ll be up to Bev to find another wrinkle.

Women’s college soccer is the secret sauce that keeps the NWSL fully stocked with elite athletes. Last year Georgetown snuck themselves into the top 10 in the country and I was like ‘erm scuse me wut’. It didn’t take a lot of film review or an abacus to realize that what they’d done is assemble a team full of physically imposing and/or dominant players.

Maja Lardner was their leading scorer with 14 goals and 4 assist in 2025. She’s 5’8, has enough acceleration to show at the pro level, and as shown in the clip above, has the confidence to not rush in the box. Loovull likely haven’t found the next Emma Sears in Lardner (Emma Sears wasn’t even predicted to become Emma Sears, so whomst knows), but adding another physical profile in attack could ease the scoring burden.

Maybe simply not being chaotic is an improvement but I was hoping to see Loovull build on the surprise success of last season. Looking at the roster, it doesn’t seem like they’ve done that, and that’s a real bummer. Yanez has shown what she can do, so it’s unfortunate that the front office hasn’t given her more to cook with.

2025: 6^th | 10W - 7D - 9L

Head Coach: Jonas Eidevall 🇸🇪
previous job: Arsenal W (‘21-’24)

San Diego was downright outrageous in the first half of the season. #Well #actually, it was Delphine Cascarino who was downright outrageous. She had two goals and three assists in their first five games, and San Diego went into the summer break with seven wins, three draws and just three losses.

Cascarino finished the season with some absurd numbers, tied for most assists in the season (6), and a place on the MVP shortlist. Here’s her player radar and map of progressive actions.

Naturally San Diego would want to build around their 29-year-old playmaker with a penchant for snatching ankles at every opportunity. What’s that I’m hearing? Transferred??? To London City????? FOR NOTHING????????

Apparently San Diego agreed to a contract that allowed Cascarino to return to Europe without a transfer fee. [insert mega, giant, bellowing and bewildering sigh] Ok.

Delphine Cascarino didn’t cook alone, France international teammate Kenza Dali was in outrageous form as well.

With Cascarino gone, Dali is likely gonna need to do this while taking on a larger slice of the creativity burden. Ludmila is an interesting signing but is more of an ‘I shoot, and you get me the ball so I can shoot’ type of winger, rather than the playmaker she’s replacing. Last season Dali had 47 passes leading directly to a shot, Cascarino had 39, and with Chicago, Ludmila had…sixteen.

Dudinha hit the league last season and literally could not stop scoring. The Brazilian twenty-year-old played in ten games, with seven starts, and scored five goals. What’s Portuguese for ‘What, like it’s hard?’.

Anywhoodles, while the skill was outrageous and she seemed to have a knack for popping up at the right place at the right time and with defenders largely unaware, five goals from 1.43 is the sort of overperformance that’s expected to level out at some point. The sample size is small though. With development and familiarity she could dramatically increase both numbers by the end of the season.

I’ve been fairly negative and of course the elephant in the room I’m ignoring is that I do not trust or believe in Jonas Eidevall as a coach, or San Diego as a staff, label and crew (lawsuits give me several reasons not to).

But, lordt knows how (maybe the beaches???), they’ve assembled a fairly decent roster with some fun proven pieces, and a few players with loads of talent who are eager to prove themselves. This team could be fun on the pitch, so I have no choice but to use the Smug Toto Scale, but I cannot in good conscience add even a single more Toto.

2025: 5^th | 10W - 9D - 7L

Head Coach: Laura Harvey 🇺🇸
previous job: USWNT U20 (‘20-’21)

Looking at last year’s table I’m still startled that Seattle finished fifth—and then I remember Claudia Dickey exists. Without her unreal shot stopping ability, which was a massive .25 in shot stopping according to American Soccer Analysis’s goals added (g+) metric, Seattle doesn’t finish anywhere near that position.

This is primarily because head coach Laura Harvey is obsessed with SufferBall™. It’s a style of soccer that is solely aimed at obstructing the opposition and doing very little of anything else. It’s easier to destroy than create, so it can be effective—especially when you have the best goalkeeper in the league. Personally, I despise it and want it out of the league. Go coach Aston Villa or something.

Sigh.

Anyway, one major bright spot (and because it’s Laura Harvey’s Seattle Reign, it’s a center back, obvs) is Jordyn Bugg. She’s still a teenager but already has the composure to be an every week starter in the NWSL.

She’s also good in the air, extremely comfortable on the ball, and also scored one of the goals of the season last year. I’m a firm believer that it’s only a matter of time before the USWNT’s starting center back pairing is Naomi Girma and Jordyn Bugg.

I do not enjoy the way the team played last year, and not enough happened in the offseason to make me think Laura Harvey or ChatGPT will try something drastically different this season. If it’s successful again, I might cry.

2025: 12^th | 6W - 7D - 13L

Head Coach: Jimmy Coenraets 🇧🇪
previous job: OH Leuven W (‘20-’24)

Utah never seem to have their ambitions aligned. They’re either showing no ambition in the transfer market but focusing on their front office decisions, or recruiting interesting players but failing to uphold a front office or coaching standard that would maximize the talent they brought in.

Since returning to the league in 2024, the closest Utah has ever been to the last playoff spot is within seven points, and that was in 2024. Instead they tend to either have a strong first half of the year, or second half of the year, and the other half is so bad they’re never really a threat to make the playoffs or be interesting toward the end of the season.

One day Utah will want that to change, maybe that day will come in 2026. Let’s find out.

If Utah were more ambitious, I’m not sure Coenraets would have this job. He turns 31 later this March, and this is his second head coaching role. I’m not against young coaches, but coaches can have careers that are several times longer than the career span of the athletes they rely on. While (good) coaches have to grow, develop, learn and evolve just as players do, their timeline to do so is longer, and in the process they can end up wasting important years in a player’s career while they figure things out.

So in order for a young and relatively unproven coach to be worth it, they have to show they can adapt, develop players, and get results. Or at least some combination of the three. Coenraets was hired in 2024, Utah finished 11th that season with a 7W - 4D -15L record, and last year was more of the same (12th, 6W - 7D - 13L).

This season should be make or break for Coenraets as the coach. He’s had another offseason and Utah has added veteran talent and a couple additional international players who we know can perform. If the team isn’t looking any different by the break, Utah should move on.

Dayana is a 22-year-old Haitian midfielder who’s been a part of the senior squad since she was a teenager. She joined RC Lens in ‘22, and helped them earn promotion into the top division after the ‘24/’25 season.

At 5’10 she’s a physical presence with solid vision and good weight on her passes. This feels like a good step up at the right time in her career, and I’m interested to see how she handles adapting to the NWSL.

2025: 2^nd | 12W - 8D - 6L

Head Coach: Adrián González 🇪🇸
previous job: Espanyol W (‘23-’24)

The Spirit have probably been the most consistent team over the past two seasons, making it to back-to-back championship games, but winning neither. In fact, due to juggernaut’esque seasons from Orlando, then Kansas City, Washington hasn’t even seen the NWSL Shield. The only trophy they’ve acquired during this run was last year’s Challenge Cup.

This season they’re in the final rounds of the CONCACAF W Champions Cup, and have their sights set on finally winning one (or both) of the two league trophies on offer. The question for the Spirit is: How? They've shown they have a squad and style of play that can beat anybody, they’ve just twice fallen narrowly short in the final match of the season.

It’s an odd situation, as they are quite literally a couple bounces of a ball away from being back-to-back NWSL Champions. So what do you change? What makes the ball bounce the way you want, when you want? I have no idea, but I’m intrigued in how the Spirit will approach a season where achieving a third successive appearance in a championship match won’t feel like enough. They’re carrying the pressure of a champion without having been crowned a champion. Yowza.

With Croix Bethune gone the full burden of creation from midfield falls on Leicy Santos. While Santos is capable, and cooked with Colombia during the SheBelieves Tournament, she will need some help. Sofia Cantore finding her footing in the NWSL would help a lot.

Cantore hasn’t been with the Spirit long, but given that she essentially played year round after joining the Spirit last summer after her Juventus season ended, then played in the Euros, and then all the way to a championship game in November, the up-and-down performances are understandable.

With some solid NWSL experience under her belt and an offseason to rest, I’m interested to see what Cantore looks like on the pitch in 2026. She has a lot of physical tools, and can be an inventive finisher (scoring near post backheels twice in her short NWSL career). Her shot chart is hilarious, and a bit of a lie though.

Her four goals from 3.95 xG seems spot on, but the aforementioned backheels were paired with a nearly 40-yard strike to give her those three goals. This means other more straightforward chances were regularly missed. She was also off on some timing with her teammates, which, again, is understandable. Still, this will be the first full season from Cantore, and without Croix Bethune, there’s both space to step into, and a need for her to do so.

Well when you drop a reported $950,000 on a budding teenage star this part sorta writes itself. The Spirit are naturally speaking very cautiously about the 18-year-old Paraguayan forward they brought to the team.

It’s a massive fee (that they have yet to confirm, and likely never will), but in international competitions Martínez has already shown tremendous instincts in and around the final third, and a penchant for the right touch and the right time to get the ball beyond the goalkeeper from a variety of scenarios.

I’m not sure how much of Martínez we’ll see this season, it seems like the Spirit are looking to play the long game with her development, which is smart. But at some point she’ll get on the pitch, and my eyes will be peeled.

If Trinity Rodman can play a full season and remain healthy, you may add as many Smug Totos as you’d like, I certainly wouldn’t stop you. ■