After Round 1 of the NWSL playoffs, the expected semi-final matchups have taken form. The clear cut best four teams in the NWSL in 2024 -- The Orlando Pride, Washington Spirit, Gotham FC, and Kansas City Current-- all progressed from the NWSL's first ever complete quarterfinal round with varying levels of ease. The weekend started with the shield winners demolishing a weakened Red Stars side on Friday night, with Kansas City easing by North Carolina on Saturday. We were much closer to upsets on Sunday, a depleted Spirit falling behind upstart Bay FC before a late equalizer was followed by an even later winner seeing the Spirit through to the semi in the early game, before Portland put a brief scare into Gotham before ultimately capitulating in stoppage time as only the Thorns can. With only the top four remaining, we say goodbye to an additional four teams- Four teams that will be four of the most interesting organizational situations going into the 2025 offseason. All four of these teams have room for optimism, but also share a need for change as well. Let's get into it.
#9 Racing Louisville
Record: 7-7-12, 28 points
Preseason Prediction: 11th
Player of the Season: Taylor Flint
Season in a gif:
But wait! Before we get into the four eliminated playoff teams, we have to discuss the only non-playoff team not included in last week's bottom five exit survey. Let's be clear: The reason for the former Proof FC's omission from what I will call "the loser's column" last week was not my profound and undying respect for Louisville, or a belief they deserved better....it was simply so that each column had a relatively even amount of teams. In fact, I feel confident that, barring a few major additions, at least one (San Diego) and possibly two (Utah) sides featured in last week's bottom five exit survey diaries will be ranked ahead of Louisville come time to write 2025 season previews in March.
Don't hate me, Louisville fans, blame....well, a few different things, but mostly your own front office. There is a tendency to blame the Louisville market for the inability to attract big name players, and to an extent, that may be true. Teams playing in small markets are always going to struggle to attract big name international talent at the rate of teams based in the bigger markets, or even the markets in big cities like Houston or Orlando. With that said, it can be done. We just saw freakin Utah lure two Spanish internationals, a veteran Japanese international, and Canadian international who was living in London to come play for a last place team in Sandy. Again, it can be done....Louisville just hasn't shown any desire to do it.
But let's take a step back. Even if we do shift a large piece of the blame pie off the Louisville ownership and FO and onto the market, Louisville's decision making process since coming into the league as an expansion side has been all over the place. Louisville has, bizarrely, managed to finish in exactly 9th place in EVERY SINGLE ONE of their first four seasons in the NWSL. Across these four seasons, Louisville have averaged between 0.9 and 1.28 points per game. This has been the most perfectly mediocre franchise, possibly in NWSL history: Louisville has never finished in last, and never made the playoffs. It has been a masterclass in how to finish exactly just below the middle, good enough to where there's reasonable expectation that a playoff appearance should eventually come, but never good enough to where anyone looks at Louisville and thinks "Oh, that's a playoff team."
How did we get here? It started with the 2021 expansion draft where Louisville, instead of taking advantage of their status as the league's only 2021 expansion side by building out a solid base roster, instead chose to waste an astounding four of their twelve picks on Tobin Heath, Christen Press, Alanna Kennedy, and Caitlin Foord in a sort of sad "we admit we can't get any stars to play here under their own will, so we'll try to force them to come here via expansion draft" Hail Mary. As anyone with even peripheral knowledge of the league knew at the time, none of the four would play a second in purple argyle. So, that wasn't a great start, but certainly possible to overcome with some astute roster management.
As any small market executive in an American sports league will tell you, drafting well and retaining drafted talent is a pre-requisite to keeping pace with competitors with more money and pull. And the thing is, Louisville have done that! The NWSL draft, which, before it's timely demise at the hands the historic 2024 CBA, was hard to nail down. But Louisville have drafted mostly excellently, acquiring would-be franchise cornerstones Emily Fox 1st overall in 2021, Jaelin Howell 2nd and Savannah Demelo 4th in 2022, and Reilyn Turner 6th and Emma Sears 28th in 2024. Only Demelo and Sears are still playing in Louisville in 2024, mostly due to a series of strange "win-now" moves that have consigned Racing to those four straight ninth place finishes. Fox, who has since signed for Arsenal for a large fee, was inconceivably traded for veteran defenders Abby Erceg and Carson Pickett (now in Orlando) in 2023. In 2024, Louisville gave up on both Howell (trading her to Seattle for veteran striker Bethany Balcer) and Turner (shipping her to Portland after an impressive half season, for veteran winger Janine Beckie).
Racing Louisville GM Ryan Dell's moves reek of ownership desperate for a playoff spot, but it's hard to see how trading controllable, young, high potential assets for mid-tier veterans elevates the team's ceiling. It must be almost impossibly frustrating to be a Racing fan, getting attached to these young homegrowns only for your FO to ship them out in a low-ceiling swing for the 8th spot in an expanded NWSL playoff field. Meanwhile, Racing has consistently whiffed on international signings outside of Brazilian Ary Borges, with even the hit, South African striker Thembi Kgatlana sold to Mexican side Tigres. The 2024 crop --led by another South African striker, Linda Motalho, and young Kiwi Milly Clegg-- played a grand total of 23 minutes over two matches in 2024. WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE DOING HERE?
Anyways. Do better, Louisville.
How they played:
The primary reason for optimism going into the 2024 season was the coaching staff. Former players Bev Yanez and Carmelita Moscato promised a more creative style and, crucially, a player-friendly approach after the disastrous Christy Holly / Kim Bjorkgren era. Despite a lot of media praise for Yanez going into the season, she...well, just didn't do a very good job, at least at the on-field stuff.
Bjorkgren's 2023 Racing Louisville were, as noted in our season preview, comfortably the most transition-based side in the NWSL in 2023. It didn't really change in 2024, Louisville matching Kansas City for the fastest progression speed in the league. The problem was, as you can see, that they weren't actually playing that more directly than other teams: Louisville was slightly below average in passes per sequence (with "sequences" defined as passages of play which belong to one team and are ended by defensive actions, stoppages in play, or a shot). In other words, it was a lot of "pass around the back and then go forward down the wings." Here is the comparison from 2023 (top) and 2024 (bottom).
Formation-wise, Yanez was also married to the 4-2-3-1 throughout the season. I had hoped Yanez might try to jam her four very talented midfielders (Taylor Flint, Howell, Borges, and Demelo) into a diamond with Turner and Uchenna Kanu up top, but Borges' early season injury meant that Yanez never had her four midfielders available at the same time. As soon as Borges returned in July, Howell was shipped out to Seattle, meaning that we never got the opportunity to see the midfield four together. Yanez, for completely unknown reasons, also leaned heavily on midfielder Marissa DiGrande, choosing to shift natural 10 Savannah Demelo out wide to make room for DiGrande in the midfield. Not only did the decision to move Demelo out wide force Racing into a bit of a narrow shape (Demelo, of course, naturally inverted to form a box in midfield), but it kept Emma Sears and her searing (see what I did there) pace on the bench. We got of a lot of this type of pass map late in the season, and RB Lauren Milliet did not have the ability to fill in the wide gaps left by Demelo's inversion.
Across her forward line, Yanez made some extraordinarily confusing choices with her young players, choices which may very well have influenced Dell's roster decisions in the summer window:
Winger Elexa Bahr started the season strongly, but inexplicably didn't play a minute after July, before Racing acquired Beckie from Portland, further locking her to the Racing bench
Striker and 2024 6th overall pick Reilyn Turner also started the season strongly, but was relegated to a substitute role before being dealt to Portland to make room for Balcer.
Emma Sears, who scored on her USWNT debut after being called up by Emma Hayes for the October friendlies, only started 12 of 26 matches played for Louisville....and also ceded time to Beckie.
Ultimately, Louisville are stuck. If the powers to be are unwilling to be patient with their young players --something that will only become more of a problem with the dissolution of the college draft-- and the international recruitment fails to improve, they need to have an elite coach to elevate a distinctly average roster. Yanez is a rookie coach and may get there at some point, but her inability to settle on a preferred lineup or establish an identity is troubling for a team that needs their manager to be a difference maker if something doesn't change. Until we see evidence that this organization has a structural plan, I'd put some more money on another 9th place finish in 2025.
But hey: At least Taylor Flint was awesome! That's what a high-level defensive six looks like, folks!
#8 Chicago Red Stars
Record: 10-2-14, 32 points
Preseason Prediction: 13th
Player of the Season: Mallory Swanson
Season in a gif:
Well, OK. I'll admit that it's hard to call a team that finished 8th a paper tiger, but let's be clear: This team was NOT a playoff caliber side. Not even close. In the last year of Red Stars soccer before a (possibly) red scare-inspired rebrand roboticized one of the best brands in the NWSL, Chicago went from a "wow, what a great coaching job by Lorne Donaldson" team to "OK, this is one of the most insane season-long statistical over-performances of all time and I'm not entirely sure how it's possible."
Don't believe me? Let's take a gander at the numbers:
Graph 1- npxG vs. xGA: Chicago has the second fewest non-penalty xG in the league. Their expected Goals Against isn't any better, ranking third worst....conceding almost four xG more than the fourth worst side, Angel City.
Graph 2: Goals scored vs. npxG: With the exception of the top two seeds in the NWSL, the Washington Spirit and Kansas City Curent, (we'll speak about them next week!) no other side out-performed its cumulative npxG by more than Chicago's 3.5. No other team in the entire NWSL outperformed its cumulative npxG by more than 0.3. Yes, zero-point-three. By percentage, Chicago over-performed it's overall npxG by 16%, the highest rate in the league. The reason season-long npxG is a pretty useful metric is because it tends to normalize over the course of a long season. It never really did for Chicago.
Chicago was also the most "know your place" team in the league. Of their ten wins, nine came against the bottom five, with the tenth coming against Bay FC early in the season. Chicago lost both their matches to Angel City, but beat the rest of the bottom five (Houston, Seattle, Utah and San Diego) twice apiece. So, good on them: They were a team that started the season bereft of talent and lost even more along the backline with major injuries to starting defenders Sam Staab and Maxi Rall, but consistently handled their peers en route to sneaking into the playoffs. As the charts show, there was certainly an element of over-performance to it, but Donaldson willed his team into that last playoff spot despite a whole host of issues. And that's admirable.
How they played:
I'll answer that question with a screenshot from my Week 5 recap:
Yeah brother! That's some good lookin, red-blooded, 4-4-2 action right there! It didn't take a genius to predict how Chicago might line up in 2024, and sure enough, Donaldson rolled out the most pragmatic of 4-4-2s for a majority of the season. Chicago was short on talent all over the field, but most clearly in the midfield: Their major preseason additions consisted of three defenders, the Chicago FO acquiring CB Sam Staab from Washington, FB/CB Natalia Kuikka from Portland via free agency, and FB Maxi Rall from German side Bayern Munich. It was a build that made sense, right up until Staab tore her achilles and Rall missed all but the first nine games of the season. Chicago very clearly does have a direction --they added Canadian eight Julia Grosso and Brazilian attacker Ludmila in the summer transfer window-- but the attacking part of the roster was so thin, it didn't really help things....particularly when winger Penelope Hocking was moved to Bay FC in August upon request.
With the lack of midfield talent, there was only one way Chicago was going to play: Fast, direct, and "kick the ball to wherever Mal Swanson happens to be standing." The data for this chart is only updated through August, but it paints a pretty good picture of Chicago's preferred attacking system throughout the season: They didn't bother playing with the ball; it was Route 1 almost as soon as possession was won.
A better illustration yet may be Chicago's complete failure to utilize the middle of the field Chicago had by far the fewest touches in the middle third of any team in the league: Their 4,899 touches nearly 700 fewer than the 13th placed Houston Dash and over 2000 touches fewer than the league leading Courage. They also completed by far the fewest passes in the league: Their 6,581 completed passes was over 1400 fewer than the 13th placed Dash, and barely half of the league leading Courage's 11,575. It is, frankly, a damn miracle that this team even sniffed the playoffs, let alone finished in the league's top eight.
I know I've spent the majority of this section hammering Chicago and calling them a fake playoff team, but I don't want it to be lost how dire the roster looked going into the season, and how much worse it got due to injury. Until Grosso and Ludmila arrived after the Olympic break, Chicago's roster ended up being virtually the same group that finished bottom of the 2023 NWSL table, albeit with the very notable exception of a newly healthy Mallory Swanson. Chicago shouldn't totally ignore the underlying metrics, but they should take great pride in what they achieved with the resources available. For the first time in years, I have faith both in their coach and that their front office will go out and make additions. They badly need to add both a high level six and a ten to their midfield, even if Donaldson elects to stick with the 4-4-2 going into next season. I'm very high on what a full season of Ludmila --who is a true terror and was one of the best players in the 2024 Olympics-- alongside Swanson will look like, especially if Staab and Rall can return to full health. Chicago is probably the best bet to take an Orlando-like leap next season...providing their front office recognize the importance of augmenting the roster over the course of the next four months.
#7 Bay FC
Record: 11-1-14, 34 points
Preseason Prediction: 6th
Player of the Season: Rachael Kundananji
Season in a gif:
I'll admit: For most of the 2024 season, my prediction that Bay would finish 6th looked to be on shaky ground at best. The expansion side, which received almost unanimous plaudits for how they built their year 1 roster, started of the season about as disastrously as anyone could have predicted. In Week 5, club captain and Bay's first ever signing Alex Loera tore her ACL, leaving an already thin midfield without it's anchor. Bay FC started their build intelligently, building from the back in the mold of how the Wave had conducted their own expansion roster construction two years prior. In CBs Emily Menges, Jen Beattie, and Kayla Sharples; and FBs Savy King, Caprice Dydasco, and Alyssa Malonson, Bay put a premium on building back to front with predominantly domestic talent. This was a smart idea in theory: Invest in NWSL veterans and high potential kids at the back and spend the big money up front.....and spend they did, putting around $1 Million into the most expensive attacking duo in the league in striker Asisat Oshoala and winger Rachael Kundananji.
How they played:
The problem for most of the season was that Bay absolutely could not defend to save their lives. It is certainly fair to attribute some of their defensive struggles to Loera's absence at the base of its midfield, but a lot of it was that coach Albertin Montoya's preferred 4-3-3 was simply far too open regardless of who was sitting in the hole. A typical 4-3-3 plays a single pivot with one six and two eights, and that's certainly how Montoya's functioned. For most of the first half of the season, Montoya relied on a combination of Deyna Castellanos and Joelle Anderson at the two 8s. Castellanos, brought over from Manchester City as one of the Bay's big three international splash signings, had a truly miserable start to her career in San Jose and had mostly fallen out of Montoya's preferred 11 by the end of the season. As I frequently noted when recapping Bay matches, Castellanos is the archetypal ten: A player who wants to sit underneath the striker and create. I was skeptical that she could function as an 8 in a 4-3-3 before the season, and, as it turned out, she couldn't. Castellanos ended up playing just over 1000 minutes on the season, finishing with just two goals and a single assist.
By the end of the season, Montoya had replaced Castellanos and Anderson with Tess Boade and the more defensive minded Dorian Bailey as the two eights ahead of Kiki Pickett. And it worked.....kind of. Bay FC averaged just 1.36 goals against per game after the Olympic break, down from 1.75 prior to the break. If you take out the 5-1 shellacking Gotham issued them on October 5th, that number drops to just 1.1 goals allowed per match. A noticeable difference. It was the kind of know-your-players adaptation you want to see from a first year head coach
But wait, many of you will be saying: Surely the BIGGER reason for Bay's defensive improvement was the addition of Abby Dahlkemper? And, yeah! That was a big part of it too! Dahlkemper's homecoming in August meant that Bay could replace Kayla Sharples --who was then shipped off to Kansas City-- next to Emily Menges in the Bay defense. Dahlkemper added an element of control and vocal. leadership to the Bay defense that had been lacking with Sharples. Over the last nine games of the season, Bay were noticeably more compact and disciplined in their shape with Dahlkemper
While I certainly acknowledge Dahlkemper's impact on Bay's late season resurgence, the reason why I focus on the midfield as the primary reason for Bay's improvement is that I never felt that their propensity for leaking goals was really the fault of the individuals on the backline, but more of a structural issue that started in the midfield. It wasn't just the personnel that Montoya changed either: He kept the single pivot for the most part, but the second midfielder generally dropped deeper next to Pickett in the six as the season progressed.
Here's Week 5:
Week 13:
Week 23:
Week 26:
Bay will be riding the momentum of their late season playoff push into the 2025 offseason. With Loera presumably coming back in 2025 --though we shouldn't pass over the absolute shifts Pickett put in as Bay's lone six throughout the season-- the midfield should look a little more fluid. I still think they need an 8 to put next to Boade, and they'll need to either figure out where exactly Castellanos fits in the 4-3-3, or let her move on to somewhere that better fits her playstyle. Top of the shopping list, however, should be a threatening winger opposite Kundananji, who was often double or triple teamed by opponents who didn't respect Rachel Hill. The midseason acquisition of Penelope Hocking helped things somewhat in this regard, but I anticipate Bay will once again go big game hunting this offseason.
But also- Kundananji: Really good at winger shit
#6 Portland Thorns
Record: 10-4-12, 34 points
Preseason Prediction: 3rd
Player of the Season: Marie Müller
Season in a gif:
Analyzing an autopsy of the 2024 Portland Thorns season is not quite as straightforward as it is for some of the other teams in this middle tier. Where as the Chicagos of the world had clear, identifiable issues and even clearer, more identifiable fixes, Portland's Jekyll and Hyde season makes it hard to drill down on the discrete issues beyond "this team needs a better coach."
Much of the issue with the prevailing national media discussion of the 2024 Thorns was the failure of many of those involved to shift their expectations around Portland as a perennial contender and league power. In reality, the fall of the Thorns as the league's pre-eminent franchise didn't start this season, or even last season. The symptoms showed up in ways that they may not have fully in prior years, but the root cause has been there since September 2021, when journalist Meg Linehan published her bombshell investigative piece that implicated Thorns GM Gavin Wilkinson and owner Merritt Paulson in a cover up of former coach Paul Riley's sexual misconduct. In the aftermath, Wilkinson was let go as GM and Paulson installed popular former Thorns goalkeeper Karina Leblanc in his stead. In every way, Leblanc was nothing more than Paulson's human shield --and importantly, a woman-- intended to take some of the heat off of the owner. In reality, it didn't matter: Paulson was forced to announce his intentions to sell the team anyway, and Leblanc, who lacked any experience on the job anyhow, was left stranded with a lame duck and known-to-be-petulant owner with no stake in the team's success.
So, that was when the club's path downhill really began. Leblanc's only signings in 2022, the year Paulson announced his intention to sell the team, were Canadian winger Janine Beckie from Manchester City, free agent journeywoman winger Michelle Vasconcelos, and backup FB Tegan McGrady. It didn't matter: On the back of a superstar turn from Sophia Smith and the strength of the existing roster, Portland won the 2022 NWSL title. After the championship, head coach Rhian Wilkinson resigned due to entering into a relationship with Thorns CB Emily Menges. Going into 2023, the Thorns made no inbound transfers, though crucially traded young winger Yazmeen Ryan to Gotham in exchange for the rights to the fifth pick in the draft where they selected FB Reyna Reyes. The rumor was that Ryan, who recently received her first national team call-up and has improved tremendously at Gotham, was displeased with her playing time behind Beckie. The only signing Portland made the rest of the season was Canadian winger Adriana Leon on loan, a move that only increased the prevailing notion among increasingly disgruntled Thorns fans that Leblanc's only contacts were players and coaches she new from her work with the Candadian federation. Under new coach Mike Norris, another Leblanc hire, the Thorns cratered spectacularly and blew the shield on the last day for the second straight season, before losing to eventual champion Gotham at home in the semi-final.
2024 brought with it, at last, new ownership and with it higher expectations. As soon as the Bhathal family took over in January, the Thorns made four international signings in Canadian national team captain and central midfielder Jessie Fleming, German FB Marie Müller, young Danish international CB Isabella Obaze, and Nigerian RB Nicole Payne. Despite a horrendous start to the season under Norris's leadership, Smith signed a "prove it" 1+1 deal to take herself out of the 2024 FA pool, a somewhat unexpected early endorsement of Portland's new ownership that temporarily allayed fan worry that their star would jump ship. Norris was fired after just four games and a "worldwide search" for Portland's next coach was promised. Things were, for the first time in years, looking up. Portland went on to win six straight under interim coach and head vibes-man Rob Gale, putting themselves right back in the playoff mix heading into the Olympic break.
Then, the Bhathals made their first big mistake: They let Leblanc do her job. Leblanc, nothing if not loyal to her people, promoted the fired Norris to technical director and hired Gale as Portland's permanent manager in the latest example of NWSL execs getting fooled by new coach bumps. In reality, the Gale bump was a pretty clear mirage. Portland's hot stretch had included victories over Houston (twice), Seattle, Chicago, and a struggling Bay FC. Prior to the Olympics, the shine had already began to come off the Gale bus, Portland picking up just five points from a possible 12 against bottom feeders Seattle, Utah, and San Diego while looking, well, less than cohesive in the process. It didn't matter. Leblanc removed Gale's interim tag on July 19th.
Despite some astute additions on the margins (Leblanc acquired Louisville's Reilyn Turner for Beckie and KC's Alexa Spaanstra for $25K in allocation money), the Thorns absolutely collapsed down the stretch, losing nine of their last thirteen games, clinging onto a playoff spot on the last day of the season on Portland legend Christine Sinclair's last home game. As Gale would point out after every loss, part of the struggles were down to the loss of Smith through an ankle injury sustained during the Olympics that she never fully recovered from, and winger Morgan Weaver struggling to return to form after returning from arthroscopic surgery. It was an ugly, chaotic end to the season, and culminated with Leblanc losing her job....though she did receive a position with the Bhathals' branding wing of Raj Sports.
Deep Breath
How they played:
Gale's big change when he took over from Norris was to change Norris' single pivot 4-3-3 to a double pivot. Norris, bizarrely, had made the decision to leave key midfielder Hina Sugita out of his starting lineup to start the season, and Gale's simple tweaks of inserting Hina into the starting lineup and dropping her in next to Sam Coffey fixed a few of Portland's most observable early season problems, most notably the isolation Coffey. In hindsight, Gale was probably praised slightly too much for making the most straightforward of changes. The truth is, Gale's team didn't play with any sort of distinct style, and that lack of system manifested itself in one of the most dysfunctional Portland sides I have ever watched. Let's break down Portland's on-field issues one by one:
Personnel choices: With the pace of Smith and Weaver missing for most of 2024, Gale struggled to put suitable replacements on the field. Instead of utilizing rookie winger Payton Linnehan or summer addition Alexa Spaanstra, Gale insisted on playing a combination of 40 year old Christine Sinclair, attacking midfielder Olivia Moultrie, and 2nd year striker Izzy D'Aquila on the wings next to Beckie for the first half of the season, and Weaver for the last third. Gale's unwillingness to trust his young attackers completely neutered Portland's attack, allowing teams to press high without fear of the Thorns breaking in behind. The chart below shows per 90 averages for attacking 1/3 touches vs. take-ons completed. You can see Sinclair and D'Aquila alll the way at the bottom of the chart, with Linnehan firmly in the top right. Portland's offense simply wasn't tenable for large portions of the season, in large part because of the personnel Gale elected to put on the field.
The second major personnel blunder was, similar to his attacking choices, Gale's decision to stick with veteran Kelli Hubly over talented Danish youngster Isabella Obaze at CB. I rarely cite on-off splits in soccer because there are so many variables and versions of the starting 11, but I think it is suitable for our analysis of CBs because Portland's 2nd CB was an isolated variable: Becky Sauerbrunn started almost every game she was available, meaning that the only change in CB personnel was which of Obaze or Hubly started next to her, with the exception of the three September games Portland played all three in a back three.
Portland won 10 league games all season. The starting CB pairing was Obaze/Becky in SEVEN of the ten.
Obaze started 11 matches. Her record was 5-1-5. Four of those losses were in games Hubly started with her.
Obaze had a +0.14 xG on/off split, meaning that the Thorns were +0.14 xG better when she was on the field than off. Hubly had a -1.0 split. It's not a perfect metric because they did share the field four times, but that roughly means the Thorns were almost an entire xG better when Obaze partnered Becky. Yet, Hubly played over 700 minutes more than Obaze. That's a fireable offense on its own.
A lot of complaints from Thorns fans came regarding the overplaying of Sinclair, which, yes, absolutely. But THIS, at CB, was the real roster management malpractice. What were the data folks doing?
Offensive Structure: Frankly, Gale didn't really play with a structure. He entered on vibes and when those vibes ran out, he found himself totally unable to elevate his squad tactically. A lot of the reason for this was his inability to match his personnel choices with tactics that suited them. When he played his slower, aging veterans along the front line, he wasn't able to develop a Courage-like possession system to overload the midfield. He didn't change his formation --with the exception of a brief dalliance with the 3-4-3 during the Summer Cup-- and didn't really change Portland's attacking emphases either. Portland was a team that wanted to play vertically, but didn't have the personnel to do so: The Thorns played the 3rd most passes per sequence, but had the 5th fastest speed of ball progression. Portland was 10th in the league in possession, but spent the 2nd most time in the middle of the field. Portland played both the 2nd most progressive passes and passes into the final third of any NWSL side, but had the 3rd lowest long pass completion rate in the league. There was a lot of this, pulled from my recap of a particularly disastrous home loss to Bay FC: Isolated midfielders with no options while the entire attack sprinted forward.
Defensive Structure: Portland allowed the NWSL's 2nd highest completion rate of both long passes and short passes, meaning that they didn't press well enough to constrict the midfield, yet still found themselves vulnerable to balls in behind. Those two metrics really sum up their defensive shape problems: The Thorns didn't close angles well, didn't defend in shape, and often saw individuals chasing while others sat back in a low block. They allowed more line breaking passes -- hence the high rate of opponent pass completion-- than just about any team in the league. The communication was frequently dreadful in midfield, and often resulted in last ditch hero-ball tackles from one of their midfield three. The Thorns placed three players -- Jessie Fleming, Sam Coffey, and Marie Müller-- in the top ten in total tackles, meaning that individual defending was a key component of the Thorns' midfield....not always the best indicator of a solid system, but a good endorsement of Portland's midfield talent as a whole.
It's not all doom and gloom in Portland. They should bring an under-26 core of Smith, Weaver, Hina, Coffey, Moultrie, Reyes, Obaze, and Müller into 2025. A smart GM and a new coach should, in theory have this roster turned around and once again ready to compete with the NWSL's best relatively quickly. But questions remain, and the 2024 offseason is a true inflection point for Portland's ownership: Will the Bhathals get their first big hire correct? Will the new GM be authorized to bring in a new coach? Portland's ceiling is just as high as it ever was, but its ceiling remains low. If the chaos continues, Portland risks losing Smith and Coffey, both of whom will be playing on expiring contracts in 2025. If they hit on the GM, Portland fans should be optimistic. If they don't, things could continue trending downwards.
#5 North Carolina Courage
Record: 12-3-11, 39 points
Preseason Prediction: 5th
Player of the Season: Ryan Williams
Season in a gif:
I'll admit: As someone who writes about this league nearly every week, it's nice to have the Courage around. It is, at times, challenging to identify the reasons for why a team does well, or does poorly. How a team wants to play. What a team needs to do to get better. I felt confident in my preseason projection of the Courage as a just-below-the-elite tier squad, and sure enough, North Carolina were the only team who's final position I predicted to the exact place they finished at the end of the season.
Sean Nahas' Courage came into the season needing to backfill the offensive impact of Brazilian attacker Kerolin, still recovering from a torn ACL the year prior. My major concern was that the Courage would struggle to add a second lever to Nahas' preferred methodical style. The Courage doubled down on its identity going into the season, adding German FB Feli Rauch and former Spirit ten Ashley Sanchez to a midfield already occupied by Japanese technicians Narumi Miura and Manaka Matsakubo and Irish international pivot and Courage captain Denise O'Sullivan. My concern was based around the fact that North Carolina did not even attempt to replace Kerolin, and, in fact, came into the season without a single true number 9 on the entire roster. The Courage were found out a little bit at the backend of 2023, opposing managers recognizing North Carolina's lack of threat in behind, which resulted in a string of poor results at the end of the Courage's 2023 campaign.
How they played:
Well, the same way they have since Nahas took charge. Remember the graph I used to show how little of the ball Chicago had? Let's look at it again:
Yes, that little logo at the top right is the Courage. Let's make a little list:
North Carolina completed more short and mid-range passes than any other team in the league, but were 7th and 8th in the league in crosses attempted and long passes completed respectively.
North Carolina completed 72 more passes per match than the next closest team.
North Carolina averaged 65 more touches per match than the 2nd placed team.
Moral of the story, North Carolina had a lot of the ball. However, as the old adage goes, "possession without purpose don't score you goals," and that was all too often the story for the Courage in 2024, especially on the road. As we covered, North Carolina completed more passes than any other team by a good distance....but they failed to generate enough opportunities with that possession. The Courage finished 8th in the league with a -2.4 xG differential, despite finishing 4th in the league in xGA. In other words, their defense --lead by career performances from CBs Malia Berkely and Kaileigh Kurtz next to FBs Ryan Williams and Feli Rauch-- did their job, but their offense simply didn't generate enough opportunities, ultimately doing just about enough to finish fifth.
North Carolina's finesse zag against the NWSL athleticism meta has paid dividends simply because NWSL teams are not used to coming up against a team so intent on clogging the midfield and controlling the ball. But Nahas has struggled to develop a Plan B, even as his front office brought in some attacking reinforcements in the summer in the form of Aussie international Cortnee Vine and Brazilian youngster Aline Gomes. When Vine was brought in, it seemed she would slot in on the right wing where Nahas Haley Hopkins had been getting a majority of the minutes. But, Vine simply didn't play, appearing in only four matches and starting just two of them. Vine had a series of excused absences throughout September, but it never felt like Nahas quite knew how to use the talented winger, known for being an accomplished goal-scorer for her position. Similarly, Nahas was reluctant to give time to 2nd year winger Olivia Wingate, who he used as a super-sub to decent effect late in the season but to whom he only gave one start and eleven appearances overall. In general, Nahas' inability to trust anyone who did not at one time play in the center of midfield (he played midfielders Briana Pinto and Manaka as false nines throughout the season) is something he'll need to get over. Kerolin, who presumably will return to full fitness in 2025, will help things, but the Courage still need at least one more attacking weapon in their front three to really challenge.
As one of the few teams with a tactical identity, Nahas' Courage team will almost certain hover in and around the mid-tier playoff spots. North Carolina will, however, need to open up a little bit tactically at times if he has ambitions of challenging the top tier. Perhaps Nahas should take tips from Gotham manager Juan Carlos Amoros, who has adapted his own possession based philosophy to have some distinct vertical elements over the course of his two years at Gotham....something we'll discuss more next week.
A bonus graphic: North Carolina's bizarro home/road splits:
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