NWSL Season Preview- Part 2, The Playoff Edgers

#12 Utah Royals

Key additions: Narumi Miura (CM), Miyabi Moriya (LB), Madison Hammond (DM), Courtney Brown (MF), Dayana Pierre-Louis (AM/FW), Kiana Palacios (FW)

Key departures: Claudia Zornoza (CM), Aisha Solorzano (ST)

I really wanted to put Utah higher than 13th. Readers of my 2025 recaps will know that I spent much of 2025 in a love-hate relationship with the Royals. An emotionally damaging partnership, some would say. A lot of broken trust between us.

Because of that broken trust –I'd like to see Utah play a good game of soccer between the months of March and July in 2026– I'm bumping Utah down a few spots from where I think they probably should be based on how they finished 2025. I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that Utah was one of the best teams in the league over the last third of the season both in terms of results and how they looked on the field, a timespan that matched the brief period when Utah had a fully health Cloe Lacasse at their disposal (more detail on this in a bit).

After a thoroughly unimpressive season from Guatemalan striker Aisha Solorzano, Utah moved on, bringing in Slovenian international Lara Prasnikar in-season before adding striker Kiana Palacios from Club America a few weeks before the 2026 season. Prasnikar was a consistently above-average winger/striker hybrid during her time at Eintract Frankfurt: while her production had dropped a little over 2024 and 2025, Prasnikar was good for 15+ goal contributions per season in the four years prior. We didn't see, well, much of her at all in Utah, the Slovenian only appearing five times and starting just once. Palacios has an impressive goal scoring rate at Club America, scoring once every two matches over her time in Mexico....but as we saw with Solorzano, the NWSL is a bit of a different tier of challenge.

Utah did beef up the midfield, doing well to use Washington's roster crunch to add Narumi Miura for relatively cheap to replace the retired Claudia Zornoza. Narumi should slot in next to Ana Tejada at the base of manager Jimmy Coenraets' midfield three as a 1:1 replacement. Utah did not, however, do much to address their real weakness on the backline, with Miyabi Moriya (another attacking FB) the only semi-significant add to a defensive unit that ranked behind only Chicago in most xGA in 2025. Concerns at striker and in the backline are not a recipe for success: even during their hot streak at the end of the season, Utah still was shipping over 1.5 goals per match.

How they want to play: Coenraets seemed to determined to make his Royals team into a build from the back, ball-control side, but after a tumultuous early season marked by horrific turnovers leading directly to goals conceded, the Belgian appeared to tweak his system somewhat to lend itself to a more vertical attack. Utah's right side led by Paige Cronin (neé Monaghan) and the always-attacking Dane Janni Thomsen were a big parts of Utah's evolution. Thomsen doesn't really care to defend and is also not very good at it, but she's excellent bombing forward and chipped in with a few excellent goals near the end of the season. Cronin was playing so well at the end of the season that she made herself practically undroppable, developing a real chemistry with Thomsen down the right side and coming up with a few nice goals of her own.

Utah's best moments often came in transition in unbalanced builds. Utah's real MVP is, as always, Mina Tanaka, who remains one of the world's best at picking up the ball in tight spaces and getting on the turn. The triangle of Tanaka, Lacasse, and Rabano on the Utah left provides the technicality to suck in the opposition's midfield before one of Utah's frequent long switches of field led to Cronin and Thomsen creating overloads against numbers-deficient defenses on the far side. The best version of 2025 Utah combined some slick work in central midfield with getting four players against the touchline and bombing forward. With roughly the same personnel, I'd expect something similar in 2026.

Player I'll be watching: Lacasse. For the second straight season, Utah's run of form coincided directly with the return to health of Canadian winger Cloe Lacasse. In the nine matches Lacasse played 45 or more minutes in 2025, Utah picked up points at a rate of 1.9/match, which would have be good for second in the NWSL behind only KC if extrapolated over a full season. When Lacasse didn't hit that 45 minute mark? 0.4/match, or comfortably last in the league over a full season. On/off splits don't always tell the full story, but it's hard to overstate how important Lacasse's threat has been for Utah despite her relatively pedestrian counting stats. With a healthy Lacasse in the Week 1 eleven, there's a chance we could see the Royals get off to a half-decent start for the first time in franchise history.

Projected Starting 11:

Mandy McGlynn

Janni Thomsen - Kate Del Fava - Kaleigh Riehl - Nuria Rabano

Narumi Miura - Ana Tejada - Mina Tanaka

Paige Cronin - Lara Prasnikar - Cloe Lacasse

#11 Denver Summit

Key Additions: Everyone

Key Losses: N/A

Denver! You did good! Real good!

I REALLY like the Summit's build. It's one of the better expansion side builds the NWSL has ever seen, purely from a roster construction perspective. Possibly THE best. There's a very good chance that this is a playoff team in Year 1. If I wasn't a total coward, I'd probably have them closer to the playoff line than this.

Denver did the smart thing given the NWSL's cap restrictions, going for relatively known-quantity rookies with high ceilings and supplementing them with experienced vets without breaking the bank. It is important to note that expansion teams have to sign an entire roster of players (duh), but many of them need new contracts, which, in the rapidly growing salary framework in women's soccer, means that a lot of the high end players are going to command higher salaries than other mid-tier players on other NWSL rosters might.

Expansion teams often have a discernible weakness in the build. For Utah two years ago, it was, well, everything. Bay really struggled to build a cohesive midfield. Boston seem to have a similar issue. Denver, on the other hand, have built a really well-balanced squad across all three lines. In veteran French keeper Pauline Peyraud-Magnin, Denver immediately has a known quantity in net. The defense is perhaps immediately one of the better on-paper lines in the NWSL. If young Notre Dame product Eva Gaetino isn't simply a French League Merchant, she should pair nicely with NWSL veteran iron-woman Kaleigh Kurtz, who will be hoping to put some of last season's errors in her rear view mirror. Young USWNT RB Ayo Oke already looks like a steal, and, when paired with veteran LB Carson Pickett, will form one of the league's better attacking FB combinations. Behind those four, Cam Biegalski and Megan Reid provide some nice depth with NWSL experience.

Denver's midfield is perhaps the shallowest part of the build at this stage, though it does await the NWSL return of Lindsey Heaps from Lyon in the summer. In the interim, the Summit will rely on highly touted FSU rookie Yuna McCormack alongside former NSL midfielder of the year Emma Regan at the heart of the midfield. Regan should be a fine, league average holding midfielder who likely Won't Suck, which is exactly what an expansion team needs. When Heaps gets back, Denver's midfield has the potential for a real nice classic 6-8-10 blend. In the meantime? It's an unproven group, with only Jordan Bagget, Devin Lynch, and Lourdes Bosch behind them, though Jasmine Aikey could, and likely will, as she has in preseason, easily slot into the midfield.

The smartest thing Denver did was go young up top while bringing in a few B+ vets alongside them in Janine Sonis and Ally Brazier. The league has years of data showing that we know pretty quickly when high end attackers are going to be, well, high end attackers and Denver grabbed a few of them. Stanford's Aikey is the prize of the bunch, but Denver also went and nabbed North Carolina's Olivia Thomas, who profiles as a long, rangy striker alongside massive German Melissa Kössler, who the Summit picked up from Hoffenheim.

How they want to play: I wasn't an enormous fan of the Summit hiring former NYCFC and Manchester City women manager Nick Cushing just from a "c'mon, can we be a little more interesting" perspective, but there were probably worse options out there. Cushing does, at least, have the experience. Will he be able to thrive outside of the friendly confines of CFG? Let's see.

brother just screams "NWSL manager"

Denver has played mostly a 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 hybrid in preseason so far, with Aikey sitting behind McCormack and Natasha Flint (who is what I'd call a more natural forward) in their second Coachella match against San Diego after we got a sight of Regan and rookie Devin Lynch in match one against Utah. I'd guess we'll see that continue into the regular season, with Aikey's versatility allowing Cushing to use her either in holding midfield or underneath the striker until Heaps arrives from France in the summer. Denver does have some options up front, though the Summit are relatively short on the wings behind Sonis and Brazier; Aikey, Kössler, and Thomas are all players that want to be central in an ideal world. Even playing out of a 4-back, most of Denver's preseason width has come from the FBs with Sonis dropping deep to allow her FB to provide the width and Brazier occasionally shifting wide to allow Oke to do the same on the right.

I wouldn't be shocked –though we haven't seen it yet– if Cushing gives the ole back three a test drive over the first third of the season. Oke and Pickett (and Sonis!) provide good options at FB, and a back three of Kurtz, Gaetino, and Reid would be an adequate-if-imperfect three CB group. Given the lack of depth in central midfield until Heaps arrives in the summer, A 3-5-2 with Aikey and Regan central with McCormack sitting in front of them would be a tad attacking, but could do the trick nicely. Another benefit of the 3-5-2 would be allowing Oke to join what is, outside of Brazier, a pretty pace-deficient attack. Watch out for former Georgetown defender Natalie Means, who has a delightful left foot, and could be pushed higher or win the starting LB/LWB spot outright.

Player I'll be Watching: Gaetino. The Notre Dame product will be a great test of pedigree vs. actual performance. Gaetino hasn't been bad by any means, but I'd wager that a majority of NWSL fans know her from her brief senior nat stay and PSG name recognition more than her actual skillset. That's not a comment ON her actual skillset, but Gaetino will enter NWSL as a relative unknown, having played just 2000 minutes over THREE YEARS at PSG. If she can be a top third NWSL CB right away, it dramatically impacts how I view Denver as a playoff contender in season one. If she struggles? Denver may as well.

Projected Starting 11:

4-3-3

Ayo Oke - Eva Gaetino - Kaleigh Kurtz - Carson Pickett

Emma Regan - Yuna McCormack - Jasmine Aikey

Ally Brazier - Melissa Kössler - Janine Sonis

#10 Bay FC

Key Additions: Claire Hutton (CDM), Anouk Denton (FB), Aldana Cometti (CB), Cristiana Girelli (ST)

Key Losses: Penelope Hocking (FW)

For those that read my recaps consistently in 2025, Bay were one of my bigger disappointments. They lacked, well, anything outside of Rachael Kundananji, who frequently looked about as frustrated as I've ever seen a single NWSL player look at the lack of production around her. To recycle some stats from my Week 22 recap from last season:

• Kundananji has nearly twice as many (65) progressive carries as her next closest teammate with 38.

• Kundananji has nearly twice as many (153) progressive receptions as her next closest teammate (78).

• Kundananji has more than twice as many expected assists + expected goals (11.1) as her next closest teammate (5.5)

• Kundanandji has a 99th percentile rate of successful tackles and interceptions, ahead of every midfielder and central defender.

As I write this, Bay just sold their most effective (though injured for large portions of 2025) non-Kundananji attacker Penelope Hocking to Kansas City. This means that Bay will be relying on young Onyeka Gamero, 2nd year striker Karlie Lema, and veteran Italian on loan from Juventus Cristiana Girelli to solve their goal scoring woes, pending a Hocking replacement in the next few weeks. Girelli should help. She will, at least, be a big veteran presence with some technical ability, so even if she's not exactly Esther Gonazalez, there's a good chance Bay will be better with her in the mix. I'm just not sure I totally see the upside here unless Kundananji's finishing gets exponentially better or Gamero comes in clicking day one.

If not for making the clear cut best signing of the NWSL offseason in Claire Hutton, Bay would be comfortably in last week's spooners tier. By acquiring Hutton, the San Jose side leveled up from having the worst midfield in the league to, at worst, a league average one. Hutton is just that good. The 20 year old solves nearly all of Bay's midfield issues in one fell swoop: she's an elite level reader of the game defensively, ranking in the 95th percentile in interceptions per 90. She's a high level progressive passer from the six, ranking in the 99th percentile in expected assists among defensive midfielders (which is partially a Temwa Chawinga and Michelle Cooper stat, but nonetheless!). Perhaps most importantly, she's a vocal presence on the field in a holding midfield spot where Bay had been relying on a combination of Kiki Pickett (who was mostly quite good!), Caroline Conti, and Maddie Moreau. Nothing worked in the midfield for Bay, and that will almost certainly change with Hutton in the fold.

....and they'll need Hutton to be her typically study self because there remain some substantial defensive concerns. LB Alyssa Malonson tore her ACL just a few days before the season is set to start, and, with Caprice Dydasco, on maternity leave, Bay will likely be relying on young Englishwoman Anouk Denton and one of Dorian Bailey or Moreau at FB. Not great. Sydney Collins was recently named captain and will form an interesting CB partnership with one of newly signed Argentine CB Aldana Cometti, veteran Kelli Hubly, or 2nd year defender Brooklyn Courtnall. Cometti is an un-athletic vet very much on my Sara Doorsoun honorary "you ain't ready for this" watchlist, and I don't necessarily trust anyone else on that backline with Abby Dahlkemper and Emily Menges ALSO on maternity leave. Bay's backline stabilized a tad late in the season with Collins in the fold, but still finished 4th from bottom in xGA. That'll have to get better if they want to sneak into a playoff spot.

How they want to play: Bay hired former England U-23s manager Emma Coates as manager early in the offseason. Coates, like every other manager ever hired ever, was announced as "championing a modern, possession style of play," but the NWSL has a habit of knocking that ambition out of new coaches pretty damn quickly.

If Coates does try to follow in the paths of her predecessor Albertin Montoya and implement a possession-oriented 4-3-3, she does have, in Hutton, the key ingredient that Montoya lacked: a do it all six. Hutton gives Coates the license to experiment with a few different midfield shapes: We could see a very attacking version of a 4-3-3 with Hutton as a loan six behind Taylor Huff and Tess Boade, or we could see a double pivot with Hutton next to Hannah Bebar behind Huff. I'm personally rooting for the second: Bebar ain't Lo Labonta, but she's a solid, well-rounded eight who would fit nicely as a ball-progresser next Hutton in a double pivot.

The front line gets more interesting. I'm hoping Huff gets more time in the ten this season than she did in her rookie year when she played far too much on the wing (I call this the "Olivia Moultrie theorem), and the additions of Gamero and Girelli should help fill out the front line. Kundananji is locked in on the left side, and either Girelli or Gamero should play the point. Girelli's a big, physical poacher, which is, in theory, exactly what Bay have been missing. Even she's not a long term answer up top (her loan literally only runs through August and her stats are pretty mediocre outside of her domestic league) she will give Bay something they simply haven't had: a natural goal scorer. Gamero is a bit of a wildcard and her health is an even bigger unknown, but she should, at the very least, provide a boost off the bench. The right wing is also still a bit of an unknown: we could see Huff play there and Lema might get a few shifts, but it'll be interesting to see how another former KC youngster –Alex Pfeiffer– might slot in to Coates' lineup. I'd like to see a bit of an unbalanced front line with Pfeiffer and Kundananji outside of Girelli, but Coates may have other ideas.

Player I'll be watching: Huff. The Florida State product had a but of a stop-start rookie season through no fault of her own, but still had some truly electric moments. Bay couldn't figure out how to get her the ball for the most part, and the lack of striker production further limited Huff's creative tendencies. With Girelli and Hutton around and a year of experience under her belt, Bay will likely rely on their second year ten as a primary creator.

Projected Starting 11:

Jordan Silkowitz

Anouk Denton - Sydney Collins - Brooklyn Courtnall - Maddie Moreau

Claire Hutton - Hannah Bebar - Taylor Huff

Karlie Lema - Cristiana Girelli - Rachael Kundananji

#9 Portland Thorns

Key Additions: Cassandra Bogere (CM), Shae Harvey (CM)

Key Losses: Sam Coffey (CDM)

To say there's a lot of angst in Thorns world would be quite the understatement. And it's pretttty hard to argue with a fanbase still getting used to its status as very much a mid-tier NWSL franchise after spending nearly a decade at the top of the pile.

It has been two full seasons since creepy nepo baby and erstwhile Thorns owner Merritt Paulson was deposed in favor of a family of Californians with little experience running a pro sports franchise, and from a macro, long term perspective, the Bhathal family has done some good things: Portland's brand new training facility is nearing completion, the Thorns have hung onto Sophia Wilson on a series of short term deals, and (kind of) rid themselves of Karina LeBlanc, Mike Norris, and Rob Gale in favor of 2nd year GM Jeff Agoos and new manager Robert Vilahamn. However, there is little arguing that this does not feel like the Thorns of past. It was never going to in this new era of the NWSL, which is the part many long time Thorns fans seem to struggling to understand, but the state of the roster has become more and more concerning.

The rallying cry of Thorns fans is very much "where's the ambition," and, to an extent, that cry is justified. The Thorns have bled veteran talent since Agoos took over, and I'm not talking about either Christine Sinclair or Meghan Klingenberg, both of whom were entirely over the hill when they retired at the end of 2024. Becky Sauerbrunn's Thorns career ended at the same time as her late 30s colleagues, and the leadership vacuum hasn't really been filled. Every semi-impactful Thorns signing over the last two seasons not named Sam Hiatt or McKenzie Arnold – namely Caiya Hanks, Pietra Tordin, Marie Müller, and Isabella Obaze– were 23 or under when signed. The Thorns went out and signed the constantly-criticized-to-the-point-of-bullying Deyna Castellanos to what is, while probably less than her Bay contract, almost certainly still a pretty hefty deal relative to production, and Canadian Mimi Alidou, who has had virtually no positive on-field impact. Meanwhile, the Thorns traded fan favorite Hina Sugita for MA Vignola and $600K, an objectively good value deal that still left their midfield short and fans furious.

It has been, and continues to be, relatively clear that Agoos views this as a multi-year rebuild, but replacing Sam Coffey and her contract with 20 year old Norwegian Cassandra Bogere and rookie ex-Stanford midfielder Shae Harvey is both downright irresponsible, and does nothing to silence the screams and yells from fans that the Bhathals won't spend big. It's hard to tell whether the Thorns are being fiscally responsible and building out a young core around Wilson, or lack desire to fulfill the self-given moniker of the "epicenter of women's sports". The answer is probably somewhere in the middle, but purely from a roster perspective, Portland's six position is in dire straights. There's simply no way to spin that replacing Coffey –a top five six in the world at worst– with Bogere or Harvey is anything short of giving up on the position in the short term. Either player could be great in the long term, but it's bad process. It just is.

How they want to play: The last piece of a bizarre offseason was taking until two weeks before the season started to hire a manager, who turned out to be former Spurs head man Robert Vilahamn. I truly have no thoughts on Vilahamn's prospects in the NWSL, and firmly believe that anyone who does is just determined to be mad, or watched far too much of Tottenham Hotspur. Vilahamn had some good and bad moments at Tottenham, but the NWSL is a different beast. We'll see how it goes, but the dude hasn't even gotten into the country yet so it will be quite a while until we have a grasp on his ability to navigate the NWSL.

Thorns fans will be pleased if the Swede can bring anything close to structure to Portland after nearly two years of Rob Gale. Whatever you think of Gale's firing despite an undeniable positional overachievement in 2025, Portland was never a cohesive unit, consistently had horrendous shape issues in transition, and struggled to find the best position of many players.

Regardless, Portland's in a tough spot to start the season. While Wilson seems well on track to build towards a heavy minutes load in the second half of the season after debuting against Monterrey in Portland's final preseason match, it's hard to see a world where she starts before May. With wingers Morgan Weaver (still out on an unknown timeline and sadly unlikely to ever be the same after two years of knee injuries) Caiya Hanks (back by summer) and Julie Dufour (back by a little later summer) all out and young Colombian Valerin Loboa still very much in the giraffe-on-skates phase of her career, Portland will likely trot out the combination of Reilyn Turner, Pietra Tordin, Alexa Spaanstra, and Castellanos we saw in 2025. The irony of a team with so much great wing talent when healthy being forced to play a number of attackers out of position is strong, but Portland's real issue is in the midfield, where the Thorns are one Jessie Fleming injury away from abject disaster.

Portland will almost certainly drop Fleming out of the higher role she was best in over the 2nd half of 2025 to support whatever poor child gets the call to take on the Coffey role, meaning that a double pivot with Moultrie sitting in the hole is the most likely shape. I'm actually not as low as most on Portland's defense –the Thorns were middle of the pack in nearly every defensive metric, and are replacing the wholly disastrous Kaitlyn Torpey minutes with a combination of Vignola and the returning Marie Müller– as many, but the lack of Coffey's stability in front of them could cause some compounding issues. Müller's return is an underrated positive storyline. The German isn't as sturdy defensively 1v1 as Reyna Reyes but I'm not sure people outside of the Thorns ecosystem fully realized how important she was to everything Portland did in 2024 in her first NWSL season. Müller is a supremely talented technical FB who often took over second halves of games by inverting and creating. She played nearly 2100 minutes in 2024 and was arguably Portland's best non-Coffey player. Being able to rotate her in with Vignola and Reyes gives Portland one of the league's better FB rooms when fully healthy.

Player I'll be watching: Bogere. I really can't overstate how much pressure the young Norwegian is under. Of course, the task of replacing Coffey could go to Harvey (or even a surprise like Müller getting shifted inside or Portland playing a very attacking 4-3-3 with Fleming at the six), but it seems most likely that Bogere will get the call sooner than later.

Bogere is a long, fluid, and technically gifted athlete. She's one of those languid movers that seems like she's going in slow motion but gets to where she needs to be faster than one would expect. I, of course, watched every minute of SK Brann available on the internet, and it's easy to see why she's a highly rated prospect. She's not necessarily a pure six and frequently played next to veteran Karoline Haugland in Brann's central midfield, but she certainly has the distribution and physical traits to play there in Portland. It's hard to see her walking into the NWSL and being ready for the pace of play, but it will, at the very least, be interesting in a depressingly morbid way to see Portland play without Coffey at the base of their midfield for the first time in four years.

Projected Starting 11:

4-2-3-1

McKenzie Arnold

Reyna Reyes - Sam Hiatt - Isabella Obaze - MA Vignola

Cassandra Bogere - Jessie Fleming - Olivia Moultrie

Alexa Spaanstra - Pietra Tordin - Reilyn Turner