Song: ‘Sweet Sacrifice’ -Evanescence

Heavens.

The NWSL season might have just kicked off but it and woso across the globe has decided to pop off. First, because of this summer’s Men’s World Cup [insert infinite grumbles], the NWSL is going on an extended break, which means this weekend’s games will lead us straight into our first full Wednesday slate of scraps.

Additionally, the Women’s Asian Cup Final is tomorrow, with Japan and Australia facing off for the chippy chip. Furthermore, the European leagues are jamming games in this weekend because the first leg of the Women’s Champions League quarterfinal round gets underway midweek, with multiple banger matchups.

Basically there’s nonstop consequential woso from today until Wednesday night’s Cascadia Rivalry finishes sometime around or after midnight eastern time. Buckle up sickos, we were built for this…

I enjoy goals a lot, like a lot a lot. But there’s a lot of other stuff that happens in a full weekend of games, and unless it happens within the span of a goal clip on social media, it can be lost. Not on my watch, dammit. I went through the NWSL’s opening weekend to find five things that I thought were neat and deserved to be reviewed, and re-lived.

I talk a lot of shit about nerds, especially in sports, but the nerds have blessed us with some very useful tools, and for that I thank them. Two such tools are goals added (g+) passing networks, as well as shot charts, which plot the location and quality of shots taken in a match. So after the game’s end I drop both visualizations for every team, along with a dab of commentary. Here’s what week 1 looked like in DataLand.

Ella & I review the Spirit's first regular season match of 2026, which unfortunately looked like a lot of games in 2025. We discuss what went right, what went wrong, Lucia Di Guglielmo, and more!

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It’s Japan vs. Australia in the Asian Cup Final. Japan’s coach was asked who’s the favorite, and for some reason responded like this…