NWSL Week 4 Recap- Portland and Chicago show signs of life, Angel City stay hot, and Kansas City continue to roll

Utah's misadventures playing out from the back, Part IV
I WANT to like this Utah team so much. I predicted that they would make the playoffs. I enjoy many of their players. They've played some lovely stuff this year despite the ultimately poor results. I understand they're missing both of their marquee attackers.

But when you don't have all your horses, the horses you do have cannot repeatedly trip over their own feet. And Utah, every week, has had at least one absolutely mind numbingly stupid error. Here is the Week 4 edition, CB Kate Del Fava trying to force a pass into the feet of midfielder McKayla Cluff, a pass easily read and intercepted by Hina Sugita who then starts the sequence leading to the Portland game winner.

Where to start:
- The pass from Del Fava is simply far too risky of a ball to begin with: Hina is right on the Cluff's back when the pass is played and there is no buffer for a mis-control. The risk-reward ratio of trying that pass in that situation is....well, lopsided.
- Cluff needs to be aware and make a movement towards the ball, whether or not she hears a shout from a teammate. She's practically backpedalling as she prepares to receive the ball, allowing Hina to nip in uncontested.

I think (and hope) Utah figures this out at some point --we're only four weeks in-- but Conraets has to simplify for the sake of his players or you can bet your life you'll be seeing a "Utah's misadventures playing out of the back, Part V" heading this time on April 20th.
Portland's Profligacy
The Thorns finally got one on Friday night, beating a ragged and Mina Tanaka-less Utah team on the road at (spit) America First Stadium. Portland has had a strange start to the season: Anyone who has read these recaps consistently over the first three weeks knows my distain for Thorns headman Rob Gale, and the Thorns have looked typically disjointed tactically at most points over the course of their first four matches.

With that said, Portland's chance creation --within the admittedly small four week sample size-- has been outright.....pretty good! The Thorns have generated 6.8 xG (6.1 non-penalty) through four games, good for third in the league. No team in the NWSL has more shot creating actions or total shots than Portland.

It has been Portland's decision making and finishing that has really let them down. The Thorns have somehow managed to underperform their non-penalty expected goals by 3.1 (6.1 npxG - 3 goals scored) even with Reilyn Turner's empty net tap-in Friday night, 2nd worst in the league behind Louisville's --who we will discuss more next week-- 3.6. Over the course of a full season, this extrapolates out to a 20 goal underperformance. The thing about xG is that you can't really extrapolate because it tends to normalize over a full season, but still. Not great!

There are two obvious reasons for the underperformance:
- Portland has taken the most shots in the entire league so far this season, but their npxG per shot (roughly equivalent to chance quality) ranks ninth. So, lots of shots, not a lot of GOOD shots.
- The Thorns rank dead last in the league in percentage of shots on target at just 27.4%, down over 12% from their league-leading 2024 rate.

These numbers really shouldn't be all that surprising. The Thorns are the youngest team in the league and poor decision making generally comes along with youth, especially when your manager isn't installing a disciplined system to help the kids along. Anecdotally, a lot of the Thorns' issues are simply shooting too early, not at all, or missing simple passes. They're shooting A LOT, but the quality of those shots are low. They're missing their two best goal scorers over the past half decade in Sophia Wilson and Morgan Weaver, meaning that young players (Reilyn Turner, Olivia Moultrie, Caiya Hanks, Payton Linnehan, and Pietra Tordin) and non-traditional goal scorers are getting a lot of the chances that would typically fall to one of the best strikers in the world.

I don't want to pare the Thorns' issues down to finishing alone because this is a team still a long way from being competitive and who have undeniably benefited from playing struggling North Carolina and Utah sides, but as it often goes with soccer, goals change how we think of teams, and it's worth noting that the underlyings --through four games, at least-- treat Portland fairly well.
Gisele Thompson and Claire Emslie, Best of Friends
Gisele's older sister Alyssa has deservedly been getting most of the plaudits for her start to the season and possible graduation into the 4th espresso tier, but it's the Angel City right back's relationship with Scottish winger Claire Emslie that gets the focus this week.

Gisele and Emslie have developed an excellent chemistry on the Angel City right. Gisele's ability to both invert and play as a more traditional FB has allowed Emslie to float around and find space inside. Angel City's first goal on Saturday against Houston came from Thompson releasing Emslie into space, but here's a clip from minutes after the goal where Gisele scampers about 60 yards up the field (Houston, figure out your LB situation pls) before combining with Emslie who crosses.

The Emslie-Gisele partnership is a uniquely fun one, but more importantly one that gives Angel City attacking threat down both wings, which in turn frees up the elder Thompson sister to exploit spaces on the left she often didn't have last season. It's been a productive combo for Sam Laity's surprisingly potent side. It's early, but things are, for once, looking promising in LA.
Kansas City's Utter Dominance
Through four games in 2024, the Current were rampant, scoring12 goals on 4.4 xG. Through four games in 2025, KC have 10 on *checks notes* an absolutely astonishing 9.2 xG. That's an OBSCENE xG total through four games. Defensively, the 2024 Current conceded 8 goals on 5.4 xGA through four matches, while the 2025 Current have conceded a grand total of 1 on just 3.3 xGA.

This team is comfortably the class of the NWSL right now, and they haven't even REALLY had Bia available!
Summer Yates is (was) BAYACK
The third year pro may have only started because of her manager's desire to give usual starter Angelina a rest on return from international duty, but, in her return to Seattle, the former University of Washington star reminded everyone why she was such a valuable piece of Orlando's double winning campaign in 2024.

Orlando tends to rotate from a 4-4-2 without the ball into a 4-2-3-1 with it. One of the reasons this transition works is because of the balance of their wide players. I've written about how Seb Hines likes having the balance of one inverted winger and one classic winger --it's been primarily Angelina on the left and Ally Watt on the right through three weeks-- and the right-footed jitterbugging Yates has thrived in that role, utilizing her close control and ability to turn and run in tight windows to generate space in behind for her pacy teammates Watt and Barbra Banda.

Here are a few clips showing the value Yates adds. In this first clip, Yates takes the ball down off a long ball, cuts inside, and feeds a lovely through ball into the feet of Banda.

The second shows the value Yates adds on the half turn, again receiving the ball in traffic before turning her mark into space before Seattle commits a foul to stop Yates from finding Banda.

And here's the third, where Yates easily beats her mark with a stepover before finding Banda for the game winner.

Yates unfortunately, appeared to be badly injured on the assist and was taken out of the game for Angelina. Hopefully this is just a minor ankle sprain- Yates has been one of the most fun stories of the last few seasons and adds a different dimension to the already potent Orlando attack.

Seattle gives us a glimpse of the future
The Reign didn't end up getting a reward for their much-improved second half performance at home against the champs on Saturday night, but Reign fans should be overjoyed with what their team showed in the last 45 minutes

With the return to fitness of both Nerilia Mondesir and Lynn Biyendolo, Seattle manager Laura Harvey rolled out an uncharacteristically speedy front line in the second half of their clash against Orlando, playing a front three of the consistently electric rookie Maddie Dahlien, Biyendolo, and Mondesir, with teenage spark plug Emeri Adames also inserted as the Reign chased a late equalizer.

With Biyendolo playing centrally for the first time in years, Seattle began to generate more opportunities in behind. While starting striker Jordyn Huitema has some good qualities, she's never been a player who is going to create for herself or others. Biyendolo's presence between Mondesir and Dahlien --and later Adames-- began to cause Orlando some real problems late in the second half:

Here's Mondesir nipping in to turn Orlando over in midfield before Biyendolo plays Dahlien in on goal where Anna Moorhouse makes an excellent kick-save:

And here's one minutes later where Adames cuts inside, curls a pass into Biyendolo who takes it down off her chest and returns to her teenage teammate who wiggles in the box before getting off a shot on goal.

I'd love to see a whole lot more of Adames in particular- She's still raw and has a tendency to over-dribble, but I'd argue she's already Seattle's most technically dangerous winger and should be treated like the talent she is. She's also 19, which, while hardly old, is very much in the "she's ready for NWSL minutes" category. Give me Dalhlien, Biyendolo, and Adames. Pleeease Laura?
Izzy Rodriguez crosses
Of all NWSL players with at least 1000 minutes under their belt in 2024, Kansas City's LB trailed only Emma Sears, Rachel Hill, Barbara Olivieri, and Jenna Nighswonger in crosses per 90 minutes. Kid LOVES a cross. This isn't always a good thing --crosses are low percentage opportunity generators relatively speaking-- but Rodriguez is such a legitimately awesome crosser of the ball that hers tend to be more value additive than your average hit and hope cross.

Rodriguez used her skillset to great effect in Week 4, sending four excellent crosses into the box within the first 20 minutes against the Wave in San Diego on Saturday night. Of these four crosses, one resulted in KC's first goal via Debinha and a second ended up at the feet of Claire Hutton whose shot hit Kristen McNabb's arm, leading to the penalty Lo Labonta dispatched to give KC a 2-0 advantage. Value added indeed!

Here's the first, a whipped ball onto the top of the six yard box:

Here's the second, a lovely pick-out of Debinha on the back post:

Here's the assist for Debinha's opener:

.....and here is the last one leading to the penalty:
Jonas tosses all the children into the fire
A week after giving Orlando all they could handle, San Diego faced their second terrifying attack in two game weeks, hosting Kansas City at home. Coming off the back of an international break, manager Jonas Eidevall made some curious roster decisions. He kept the same 4-2-3-1 shape employed through the first three weeks of the season, but inserted Nigerian duo Favour Emmanuel and Chiamaka Okwuchukwu in addition to 17 year old CB Trinity Armstrong into the starting lineup in place of Adriana Leon, Gia Corley, and Hanna Lundkvist.

The inclusion of Armstrong and Okwuchuwku didn't really have me too fussed, though I don't know that THIS was the opponent against whom I would have chosen to give my rookies their full debuts (Okwuchukwu in particular really struggled to find any rhythm and was noticeably frustrated throughout), but the inclusion of Emmanuel over Corley was a particularly confusing one. I imagine Eidevall's logic was that adding a more defensive minded player into the midfield would allow the Wave to slow some of the Current's rapid attacking sequences, but all it really did was force Kenza Dali, through whom everything has run for the Wave this season, higher up the field and away from the base of the midfield where she has been such a steady presence for San Diego. Emmanuel and Savannah McKaskill were completely overrun by Debinha, Claire Hutton, and Lo Labonta; and by the time San Diego kinda-sorta got a grip on the game, the damage was done. Both Emmanuel and McKaskill found themselves on yellow cards before the 50th minute with KC holding the 2-0 lead they would never relinquish.

I don't think it ultimately would have mattered. Kansas City is absolutely wrecking everybody in front of them, and it's unlikely that a few personnel changes made the difference on the night. With that said, San Diego did play noticeably more cohesively (game state influenced or not) when Dali dropped deeper, and she unquestionably needs be returned to her spot in the double pivot next week....because that's where she --and SD when she plays there-- is best.
Ludmila tells Chicago to "Get on my back"
This is the Ludmila I thought we'd be getting from the jump. The Brazilian winger was a player so clearly born to play in fast-paced NWSL transition that I was unsurprised to see Chicago pick her as Mal Swanson's running mate after an electric Olympic games. Lumdila tore Bay's defense apart time after time after time in the first half, executing Chicago' manager Lorne Donaldson's 4-4-2 sit and kick tactic to Swanson-esque levels of success.

Chicago has a whole lot of "ifs" to fight through (like if their front office is awake at any given moment, or if their defense can stay healthy, or if we'll ever see a competent central midfielder take the field), but like Portland, this was a big first one to get. And, while the attacking threat was all Ludmila and the excellent Jameese Joseph, this was

9.5: What in the HELL was that performance from Bay? Without a rather dumb flailing arm by Chicago's Maitane that gifted Bay an early second half pen, this would have been an absolute walk in the park for a Chicago side that had put nothing whatsoever together through the season's first three weeks. This wasn't a classic Stars bunker job either: Chicago was straight up the better team throughout, were rarely challenged, and even had a number of half decent attacking sequences up 2-0. Sort it out, Albertin!
Notes on Jordan Angeli
She's really good, that's all. I'm not sure if there's a better color commentator in the American soccer broadcasting sphere than Angeli, who blends her knowledge of the game with an ability to clearly communicate different tactical structures with a Taylor Twellman-esque intensity (and I mean that both as a compliment and an insult!)

Goal of the Week: Another gorgeous FK from Washington's Leicy Santos