NWSL Week 20 Recap- Gotham fire a warning shot, North Carolina make some changes, and Utah ends Houston's run

1. Gotham's attacking changes paying off

   Gotham's NWSL record-breaking transfer fee paid for Jaedyn Shaw was the big news of the week, but it's been Gotham's on-field performances that have really caught the eye over the past three weeks. Gotham's relatively straightforward victory to kick off Week 20 over a toothless Wave side was their most complete of the season. The NWSL is so tight that just winning three straight matches in whatever way necessary is more than enough to jump six spots in the standings, but this one felt different, especially with the added kick of the addition of Shaw.

   
   

   Shaw came off the bench to score for Juan Carlos Amoros in her Gotham debut, but Amoros planted the seeds for a slightly more offensively assertive version of Gotham with his starting lineup. Gotham's surge up the table has been fueled in large part by the offensive contributions of Jaelin Howell, but Howell's actual position has been close to her more familiar six role than the eight she had played for much of 2025. Since the international break, Amoros has changed his shape from a more conservative double pivot with Howell next to a defensive-minded six (Taryn Torres or the now-departed Nealy Martin) to more of a fluid 4-3-3/4-4-1-1 with Howell sitting behind Rose Lavelle and Sarah Schupansky. I recommend going back through Gotham's match logs and looking at the difference in personnel before and after the break. It hasn't always yielded results, but there's a real difference there.

   
   

   Gotham's shape change ties nicely into the addition of Shaw, who played in the Schupansky spot on debut. Amoros started Esther Gonazalez in the ten with Geyse up top against the Wave, before rotating the Spaniard back into the nine when Shaw entered the match. Amoros is really the only coach I really trust to play an effective 4-3-3 because of how structured his teams tend to be. The first half was marked by Howell dropping deep in between the CBs, FBs Lily Reale and Bruninha pushing high and wide, and the attacking midfielders (Esther and Lavelle) dropping deep to pick up the ball from Howell. Amoros' trust in Howell --having the season of her life-- has become increasingly apparent over time. Here she is moving, as she did the entire first half, between the CBs as Gotham possesses with Lavelle and Esther dropping as eights:

   
   
   
   

   How Amoros uses his newfound versatility is going to be interesting. There are times when he'll be able to get away with Lavelle and Shaw in the dual eights, but there may be times when he'll want something a little more sturdy. I'll also keep an eye on Midge Purce, who started Friday and is slowly returning to at least a passable facsimile of her best self. If Gotham are going to start Lavelle, Shaw, and Esther --all of whom like operating from deep-- they're going to need Purce, Geyse, and Gabi Portilho to stretch the field in wide areas.

   
   

   Bonus Gotham: We love our NWSL Commentary God Mike Watts on these pages, but he may be the first person to ever call Emily Sonnett "quiet." You could almost here the silence while color commentator Jill Loyden tried to figure out a way to kindly push back.

   
   

2. San Diego running out of ideas

   Make that four matches without a goal for the Wave, who are hitting the hardest of hard second half walls. There are some nerds gloating about the xG over-performance chickens coming home to roost, but the Wave's recent dry spell goes beyond not converting chances- It's a sort of baffling general team-wide tentativeness as soon as they get into the 18 yard box that's killing them. There's an element of "they just need a striker" to it, as Watts and Loyden spent much time discussing over the course of the 90, but also....it's just far too often far too tentative from the Wave's entire attack.

   
   

   Jonas Eidevall has tried a few things, namely increasing Kenza Dali's usage rate (seriously, there should be a stat for this in soccer) to -- for the NBA fans among us-- stratospheric, James Harden / Luka Doncic levels. When the Wave were clicking early on the season, they were a fluid, well-oiled machine. Dali still went on the occasional foray forward, but was best orchestrating from a deep lying position. Now, she's virtually playing as a second 10. Here's a comparison of average position maps from Week 20 (left) vs. Gotham and Week 2's 3-2 win vs. Utah (right). I'm not just cherry picking, either. San Diego's best work was with Dali deep.

   
   

On Friday, Eidevall did some more tinkering: He switched Delphine Cascarino to the left at the end of the first half (or, as I like to call it, the Lily Reale effect), Hanna Lundkvist has become very involved in the Wave's attacking sequences, and Perle Morroni came infield underneath Cascarino on the left side a number of times. None of it really helped. San Diego still struggled to generate much of anything, and when they did, passes were overhit, touches were taken too wide, and runs were missed by midfielders. Here are two examples that stood out to me. First, here's Dudinha taking a touch far too wide when through on goal in the 47th minute:

And here's Kyra Carusa, the latest to get the call at the nine, overplaying instead of challenging Ann-Katrin Berger in Gotham's net. You can practically FEEL the indecisiveness coming off of Carusa here:

The Wave, like any other team going through struggles, still find themselves well within reach of a home playoff game. They're going to have to start finding goals from somewhere, however.

3. North Carolina change shape

   After playing a few different variants of the 3-4-2-1 for most of the 2025 season, the Courage returned to a version of the old 4-3-3 North Carolina played for many years under Sean Nahas. With Denise O'Sullivan and Ashley Sanchez unavailable, manager Nathan Thackeray went with a midfield three of Manaka Matsukubo, Riley Jackson, and Shinomi Koyama; with midfielder Dani Weatherholt playing the inverted left back role we saw Feli Rauch play for most of 2024.

   
   

   While the shape mirrored some of the North Carolina teams of old, the Courage kept the increased verticality and build up speed that the 3-4-2-1 had brought. Without Sanchez, Thackeray brought new addition Payton Linnehan in on the right wing with Tyler Lussi moving higher from the wing back role she had been playing into a more pure wing role. The first half looked like what the Courage likely wanted out of the shape change: Manaka floated in out of pockets in Angel City's typically swiss cheese midfield three, looking for direct balls into space for her wingers. Briana Pinto continued to play her false 9 role excellently, acting as a true pivot for the wingers either side of her. Weatherholt, who was mostly excellent in her adjusted role, narrowed the field for the Courage and gave Angel City's midfield fits with the overloads she created all afternoon.

   
   

   The change of shape was interesting just from an "oh, this is different!" perspective, but North Carolina's whole ship continues to be built around their diminutive Japanese playmaker and her talent regardless of shape. Manaka remains the coolest player in the league. It is exceedingly rare for a player with her skillset and size to be as as powerfully explosive as she is, and it showed on her opening goal. Poor Sara Doorsoun, in her first start stateside, got absolutely dunked on by Manaka on North Carolina's first goal. Look at Doorsoun, who clearly thinks she has Manaka sealed before the Japanese burrows underneath her defender, wins the ball easily, and then sits Doorsoun down with a chop before scoring.

   
   
   
   

   We'll be sure to keep an eye on whether North Carolina's shape change sticks going forward- It may or may not be a coincidence that the change came the same week the Courage swapped CBs, with Malia Berkely and $75K sent to Houston in exchange for Natalie Jacobs, a more out-and-out CB, with Berkley being more of a ball-playing, technical CB. On the surface, Berkely and Jacobs don't have a lot between them, and the Courage sending $75K to the dash was confusing to say the least. An odd deal.

   
   

4. A very tepid Angel City

   It isn't necessarily surprising that Angel City lost some attacking verve after the departure of Alyssa Thompson to the wealthy part of London, but in a league full of teams that seem to be struggling for goals at the moment, Thompson's absence has certainly played its part in neutering Angel City's attack. Left back MA Vignola has been forced into a left wing role and Sveindis Jonsdottir (who did claim her first NWSL goal at the end of an absolutely gorgeous team move by Angel City as a consolation), has struggled a bit to adapt to NWSL.

   
   

   I have a few personnel decisions I'll be keeping an eye on the rest of the season:

   
   

   - Whether Alex Straus elects to give new addition Nealy Martin the reins at the base of the midfield. While it may just have been due game state, Angel City did change to more of a single pivot 4-3-3 in the second half, with Martin sitting just under Maiara Niehues and Kennedy Fuller, after Macey Hodge had partnered Madison Hammond in the first half.

   - Whether a healthy Jun Endo gets the LW spot. It seems Christen Press's time as an NWSL starter is probably behind her, but Angel City badly need some creativity on the wing.

   
   

5. The battle of the bad

   After Bay FC and Orlando slogged their way to 1-1 draw Saturday afternoon in Orlando, the two teams have now gone an absolutely astounding combined 17 (Bay 9, Orlando 8) games without a victory. Hilariously, that one game difference in winless streaks exists because the last game the Pride won was against none other than Bay.

   
   

   That is...VERY bad.

   
   

   A lot of the same stuff that has plagued each team continued Saturday. Bay can't do offense right, and the Pride remain disjointed and wasteful.

   
   

   No more words shall be wasted on these two until one of them wins a match.

   
   

6. Utah's game of the season

   To be fair to both the Dash and Utah, Jimmy Coenraet's side has been flying under the radar with some improvements of their own. While Utah's improvements haven't had quite the shock value of Chicago's 5-2 over Orlando or Houstons 3-0 over Angel City, they have, given the talent deficit, been even more impressive in some ways. Utah's victory on Sunday marked their second win in three matches, their third shoutout in five matches, and their 5th consecutive match unbeaten.

   
   

   Utah's semi-hot stretch has come directly in the aftermath of losing their talismanic young star Ally Sentnor to KC the first week in August. Since Sentnor's departure for pastures teal, the Royals have lost just once: An impressive-in-its-own-right 1-0 to the league leaders in which they allowed just 0.89 xG to the high flying Current. As I and many others have pointed out, Utah's marked and relatively shocking defensive improvements have coincided with the return of Kaleigh Riehl, who has restored a modicum of competence to a backline that lacked any sort of stability while she was away.

   
   

   Utah's win against Houston looked quite a bit like the back stretch of 2024 that had elevated my expectations for the 2025 edition: A rock solid double pivot of Spaniards Ana Tejada and Claudia Zornoza, Cloe Lacasse (looking better every week in return from her ACL tear) providing threat down the left, and Mina Tanaka looking like the best player on the field.

   
   

   The key to Utah's success against Houston's in-form group of attackers was the stability Zornoza and Tejada provided. Houston's threat --so often coming from the overloads created by Yaz Ryan, Kiki Van Zanten, and Delanie Sheehan dropping deep-- was nullified by Tejada and Zornoza clogging up the midfield. Supported by the defensive work from Lacasse and Paige Monaghan, Utah's midfield did an excellent job at just playing simple and not getting caught out by Houston's rotations. Tejada didn't have a noticeably effective game in possession, but cut out many of the mistakes that plagued her over the first half of the season and glued herself to the back of Sheehan's jersey for most of the 90.

   
   

   Utah remain a team that won't scare you much going forward, but they're doing just enough to adequately supplement their newfound defensive stability. Lacasse has added a key element of transition to Utah's attack, and it appears as though Coenraets has simplified things- Utah still want the ball, but their midfielders have seemed much more willing to pick their heads up and go forward when pragmatic instead of attempting to tiki-taka their way through the NWSL's many high presses. Coenraets has, at least, probably saved his job in the short term, but it's been an overall very impressive turnaround for a team I wasn't sure would win another game after Sentnor was dealt.

   
   

   (Shoutout Utah captain Paige Monaghan who has scored two of the sweetest goals I've seen all year over the past three weeks and, presumably, has been a crucial element in keeping morale high in what must have been one of the most downtrodden locker rooms in the NWSL's last few years)

   
   

7. Houston! What Happened?

   Coming off their best win of the season, Houston laid an absolute dinosaur egg in Utah. I'm talking world's-biggest-egg levels.

   
   

   Frankly, it could have been worse, too: Cloe Lacasse had a late first half goal rightly ruled out for offside after Mina Tanaka waited an extra beat to thread the through-ball to her Canadian teammate, and Jane Campbell made an excellent kick save on Lacasse early in the second half. Houston struggled to create anything of note against Utah's surprisingly rock solid back six, but the bigger worry was how often they were caught in transition. It felt like Lacasse was in behind a caught-upfield Avery Patterson all night, and Tanaka was afforded far too much space in the attacking midfield pockets. If it wasn't Lacasse, it was Nuria Rabano getting in behind Yaz Ryan: Look how much space there is for Rabano here with Ryan tucked inside.

   
   
   
   

   One-off or not, this was an immensely frustrating performance for a Houston team that had really been clicking of late and doesn't have the room for blips at home against Utah in their pursuit of a playoff spot. I have, of course, considered the distinct possibility that I cursed Houston after praising them in these recaps for three straight weeks, but good teams can overcome blogger curses. Next week's matchup against Chicago --hereby dubbed the "better than we thought they were derby"-- is going to be a fun one, and reveal a lot about whether the Dash should are capable of sliding into that 8th spot.

   
   

8. A Table Topping stalemate

   The marquee game of the weekend was, unfortunately, a bit of a dud --albeit an intense one-- unless you really really like watching two good, physical teams try to suss each other out. For neutrals, the first half was hardly the thrill ride of a lifetime: KC and Washington played like two well-coached groups who didn't want to get embarrassed on national TV.

   
   

   It's very much worth mentioning that the Current were playing without Temwa Chawinga, who was sidelined with a minor knee injury. Without Chawinga, manager Vlako Andonovski elected to hand Ally Sentnor a start over Debinha with Nichelle Prince in place of Chawinga. Sentnor hasn't quite hit the ground running with the Current- After playing as Utah's North Star since entering the league, she is very much still figuring out her place in Kansas City's star studded side. Sentnor hasn't been BAD by any means, but she also hasn't been very visible and has floated in and out of games. Against Washington, she was mostly nullified by the Spirit's midfield duo of Hal Hershfelt and Deborah Abiodun before being pulled late on. Don't mistake this for any kind of Sentnor panic, but it will be interesting to see both how she works herself into her new squad and how Vlatko handles the Debinha/Sentnor start-sit decisions in the short term.

   
   

   Abiodun, on the other hand, has seized the opportunity given to her with both hands. After being recalled from her loan in Dallas three weeks ago, she has slotted right into Washington's double pivot next to Hershfelt. Narumi Miura has almost completely fallen out of favor with Adrian Gonzalez, who has rotated Leicy Santos, Rebecca Bernal, and now Abiodun next to Hershfelt to try to find the right combination. Abiodun was excellent in her first start the week prior against Seattle, and was massive in protecting Washington's back line after Hershfelt was sent off in the second half. Look at this heat map: She was absolutely everywhere.

   
   

   

   
   

   I do have a bit of a nit to pick on Washington's side- I'm not a fan of the double ten lineup with Croix Bethune and Leicy Santos together. The theory in tossing out what played functionally as a box 4-2-2-2 was probably just "let's clog the midfield against KC's creators on the road," which isn't a bad thought and worked pretty well, but it still feels like Santos and Bethune are too often in each other's spaces. Plus, playing the two tens together means no Gift Monday, who offers so much to Washington's attack both in the press and with the ball. Washington's best lineup -in my opinion-- includes a healthy Rose Kouassi opposite Rodman, so it will be interesting to see if we get the Kouassi-Bethune-Cantore-Rodman front four at any point this season.

   
   

9. Olivia Moultrie

   I'll be honest: I don't think the Thorns' teenage ten gets quite enough credit for the player she's turned into this season. It hasn't always been smooth sailing for the league's first 19 year old veteran --sometimes I think the fact that she's been in the league as long as she has causes her to get less credit than she deserves-- but I'd like to lay out a few metrics. On the season, Moultrie is:

   
   

   - First in key passes

   - First in shot creating actions

   - Seventh in goal creating actions

   
   

   .... all while playing as an inverted left winger instead of her more natural ten position. Moultrie's quick adaptation to her new role has been arguably the biggest reason the Thorns have been able to maintain an attack that ranks near the top of the table in nearly every metric despite playing a front line of children and a rash of injuries to key attackers. Moultrie has finally developed a level of consistency that she had struggled with over the course of her first four years in the league. Whether playing on the wing or in central midfield, Moultrie has thrived. She may not be Portland's best player, but she's certainly broken through in a major way.

   
   

   Anyhow, I've been waiting to shoehorn a Moultrie section in one of these recaps and when better than the week the youngster broke the NWSL record for most goals by a teenager with a lovely free kick against Chicago. It's worth stating how impressive it is that not only has she avoided becoming woso's Freddy Adu, but has legitimately become one of the best creative players in the NWSL at 19.

10. Savannah Demelo

    A quick message of support to Louisville midfielder Savannah Demelo, who was stretchered off the field and is in stable condition after falling backwards after sitting down on the field in the first half of Louisville's match against the Reign. For Demelo, who has been open about her Graves' disease and Hyperthyroidism diagnoses, this was her second on-field medical incident of the season after an issue with her medication caused an excessively low heart rate earlier in the season. While her health is obviously the most important thing, it's also worth mentioning how terrifying it must be for her to play with her conditions, while also having to live with having to balance continuing to play the sport she loves with the associated health risks.

Goal of the Week: Honorable mention goes to Monaghan's lefty curler against Houston, but we're awarding this week's to Moultrie: