How would you imagine the greatest individual season in NWSL history? Our hypothetical player would need to score a lot of goals, obviously. Breaking Sam Kerr's single-season scoring record (18) would certainly get plenty of attention, so let's put that at the top of the list. How about assists? Assists are important, too. Let's say this player has ... five of those. Five sounds good.

Let's go back to the goals for a second. We know that all goals aren't created equal, and that poachers and penalty specialists can often sneak their way to the top of the leaderboard. That just won't do—we're talking about the best season in history, here—so let's make sure our player didn't score any of her goals from the spot, and is out-performing her expected goals tally by two. We need more, though. Let's get crazy and say that this player is an NWSL rookie, and arrived from Chinese Women's Super League at age 25 to blitz the NWSL with the league's first 20-goal season. We'll need a fun, quirky statistic, too, so let's say this player became the first in league history to score a goal against every team. And we need moments. Like, what if the record-breaking goal happened to be a 25-yard strike that makes a convincing case for being the hardest a soccer ball has ever been struck by a woman in a professional match? What if that goal looked something like this:

...

We’re not playing, Rich. Fuck them, we’re not playing. Just tell them that we’re not playing. That’s what I heard on 10 July 2015, on a call from Christie Rampone, the captain of the USWNT. I was the executive director of the Women’s National Team Players Association, the official collective bargaining unit for the USWNT. Rampone called me five days after the USWNT’s World Cup victory. While Rampone talked with me, the team were on their way from the midtown Manhattan set of Good Morning America to the beginning of the ticker tape parade in lower Manhattan’s “Canyon of Heroes” to celebrate their title.

Just a few days earlier, on the morning after the team’s World Cup victory, Sunil Gulati, the longtime president of US Soccer, called captains Abby Wambach and Rampone to tell them that the team’s request for the weekend off was denied, and they were all going to be forced to play their National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) games.

As recounted to me by Rampone, the response from Gulati was immediate. He told Rampone that the players had to play those NWSL games. He noted that all the NWSL teams had developed huge marketing and promotional campaigns around the World Cup champions to sell out their stadiums that weekend, and that he didn’t care how the players were feeling, that no matter what, they were going to play.

...

Lynn Williams cannot be stopped.

The 29-year-old forward added another goal Sunday against the Chicago Red Stars, bringing her total for the regular season to four and tying for the league lead. With Williams leading the way, Gotham FC have won four of their first six regular-season matches, already equaling their win total from 2022.

The club also is tied for second in the league in points with 12.

LYNN WILLIAMS REFUSES TO STOP SCORING 😤 pic.twitter.com/3sXIzN6ei7
— Just Women’s Sports (@justwsports) May 8, 2023

For Williams, Sunday’s tally marked her 103rd goal contribution (goals and assists) across all NWSL competitions. According to OptaJack, that gives her the most in league history, as she surpasses Sam Kerr, who had 102 goal contributions in her seven NWSL seasons.

It was also her 61st regular-season career goal, giving her sole possession of the second-most goals in NWSL history. Kerr holds the record with 77 regular-season goals.

“This is a massive win. It shows the style and the winning mentality that this team has,” head coach Juan Carlos Amorós said. “Credit to all of the players, whether they played today or not, and to the staff. This is a big win for Gotham.”

This YouTube channel does really good film study of games, someone shared it on Mastodon and I've enjoyed it.

If you subscribe to the cliché that women’s soccer is a collective rocket ship, consider the January 2024 transfer window to be the arms race that set the future in motion. Transfer spending increased 165% year over year despite a nearly identical volume of transfers, according to FIFA, and that number did not even appear […]

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The longtime Arsenal defender spoke with Pro Soccer Wire about how Bay FC convinced her to come to the NWSL

Source: https://fxtwitter.com/agale137/status/1752704825937244434

Kerolin tore her ACL, Emily Fox left for Arsenal and several attacking players departed. But the arrivals of Ashley Sanchez and Felicitas Rauch provided immediate answers ahead of the new season

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On March 16, the Kansas City Current will christen $117 million, 11,500-capacity CPKC Stadium — the first complex built by a National Women’s Soccer League team and one of the few in the world constructed for female athletes.

On March 16, the Kansas City Current will christen $117 million, 11,500-capacity CPKC Stadium — the first complex built by a National Women’s Soccer League team and one of the few in the world constructed for female athletes.

The Nigerian forward arrives to the NWSL expansion team on a transfer from Barcelona, the standard of women's club soccer

Lack of communication and player autonomy continues to cause headaches

Fans of the Reign knew they’d be losing a generational player during this offseason. After all, tens of thousands showed up at Lumen Field to say goodbye to said player, Megan Rapinoe. What they didn’t know is that they would lose even more generational players and beloved team members. Combined with the incomplete sale, worry […]

Washington starts 2024 awaiting the arrival of a fourth full-time coach in four years, and following trades that shipped away two cornerstones of a former championship team