NWSL Week 3 Recap- KC's week from hell, Angel City take down Houston, and San Diego is rolling
- Kielbj
- Mar 30
- 9 min read
The verdict Kansas City's struggles: Real
If last week's loss against Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan was a warning sign, the Current's double Cascadia roadtrip gameweek was a five alarm fire, with the defending Shield winners falling by a combined combined 5-0 to Seattle and Portland.
Losing in Seattle fresh off a loss to a beleaguered Chicago team was rough, but this wasn't even your typical Laura Harvey sit and kick: Seattle were the better team throughout the first half in which they scored all three of their goals despite going virtually striker-less for a second straight week. It was, to be fair to the Reign, an impressive performance coming off the disaster in Portland the week prior, but for the Current, a 3-0 loss to a Reign team that struggles to score at the best of times was disconcerting to say the least.
While the Seattle loss was bad, KC did rotate heavily: RB Katie Scott and STR Kelsey Branson started in central midfield, and none of Croix Bethune, Debinha, Lo Labonta, Ellie Bravo-Young, or Michelle Cooper started for Chris Armas. That was not the case against Portland on Saturday, where the Current were Temwa Chawinga away from being virtually at full strength and still got comfortably dispatched by the Thorns. Kansas City, who suffocated teams with their structure under Vlatko Andonovski, has turned into pure swiss cheese in midfield, which has summarily turned the best defense in the league into a shell of itself. Last week, it was Julia Grosso finding the pockets in KC's porous central midfield, it was Angharad James-Turner and Jess Fishlock midweek, and it was Olivia Moultrie Jessie Fleming, and Cassandra Bogere on Saturday. Scott is just getting picked on relentlessly by opposing teams, and Labonta is neither fully healthy or mobile enough to make up for the absence of Claire Hutton.
The other and more solvable problem is KC's lack of verticality. In Bethune, Debinha, and Ally Sentnor, Current are paying a LOT of money to three –very talented– players with duplicative skillsets. Bethune was noticeably frustrated for much of the match against Portland, including drawing a yellow for throwing the ball at Jessie Fleming after drawing a relatively run of the mill foul committed on Bethune by the Canadian. Bethune often cuts a pretty isolated figure shunted to Chawinga's left wing position, and spends much of her time dropping deep to receive the ball.....as does Sentnor, who is playing the falsest of false nines and started at the ten against Seattle. These are KC's average position maps, first against Seattle and then against Portland. They managed to get Bethune a little higher against Portland than she had been in the season's first three matches, but the attack remains extremely unbalanced: the plan is essentially "isolate Michelle Cooper on her FB and hope," which allows Kansas City's opponents to step into midfield and put pressure on the midfielders. Just having Chawinga available will alleviate some of those issues, but it doesn't look like Armas has any idea how to solve the problem in the short term.
via @nwslStat 
Gotham sputtering
Gotham has been a really tough team to figure out over the past year or so. They were a middle of the road team in 2025 who struggled to create chances won the title because they have an experienced group who could suffocate teams, and when the playoffs are only three games long....well, that's kinda all it takes. It's only It's been more of the same this year, but the offense has been even worse.
2025 | 2026 | |
xG/90 | 1.18 (10th) | 0.91 (13th) |
xGA/90 | 0.92 (2nd) | 0.87 (3rd) |
Gotham are also playing impossible slowly for a team that features Rose Lavelle. The lack of a true vertical threat –an issue in 2025– means that they're seeing a lot of the ball (3rd in field tilt and passes per possession), but the creation numbers show that they're doing nothing with it. It's been a lot of Katie Lampson. A lot of Savannah McKaskill, looking less than at her best outside of the Wave ecosystem. LB Lilly Reale has been arguably the team's most dangerous non-Lavelle option going forward. Not ideal.
I'm not particularly worried about Gotham both because of how high their floor is because of the defense, and the even worse starts from KC and Washington mean that they're hardly the most concerning of the pre-season favorites, but I hope that the re-integration of Jaedyn Shaw and former Chelsea winger Guro Reiten presumably taking the Lampson spot wide left will start to spruce up the attack a little. If Gotham can get that xG/90 closer to 8th instead of 13th, they instantly morph into a real shield contender again.
Angel City's changes paying dividends early
Angel City were one of the sides to play only one Week 3 match, but it was a big one, toppling previously unbeaten Houston on Friday night with an early second half flurry. This wasn't Angel City's best performance of the three by any means- Houston had the better of the first half, with Maggie Graham's goal giving them the advantage going into the break and were a few missed Makenzy Robbe chances away from having a larger advantage
Even so, Angel City's tactical approach this season has shifted, and much of it has come from the top down. Angel City, from a personnel perspective, are now of the most athletic teams in the league, and have leaned into a transition-heavy identity. They haven't done a lot of high pressing which is a bit surprising given the intensity of their front three (their passes per defensive action is last in the league), but do have very clear pressing triggers when their opponents commit numbers forward that are vaguely reminiscent of how the Current went about things under Vlatko Andonovski. They've decided to pack their central midfield with players that just, well, do a lot of running. Nealy Martin sits at the base, with Maiara Niehues and Ary Borges in front of her in what essentially plays as an attacking 4-1-4-1. Nieuhes in particular has been excellent after being in and out of the lineup after joining in 2025. She kinda just buzzes around, and has a tendency to pop up with late runs into the box, and is sixth among all midfielders in G+ despite playing one fewer game than 2/3 of the top 6. Borges is in her element, and Martin is mostly just sitting in the hole cleaning things up.
It's up top and at FB where Angel City's athleticism really shows. Sveindis Jonsdottir looks like the player we thought Angel City would be getting when she joined from Wolfsburg after being moved centrally, Riley Tiernan is coping admirably with being pushed wide left, and Kennedy Fuller is thriving in her all-action inverted RW role. Angel City's front three are playing extremely narrow, which is unsurprising given its constituent pieces. Manager Alex Straus' decision to use Fuller as almost a wide ten has completely freed up RB Gisele Thompson, who is quickly becoming one of the most terrifying wide threats in the league from right back. Angel City often play a de-facto back three in their builds just because of how high Thompson is.
The first clip below is a very 2026 Angel City build: the midfield pulls left with Thompson isolated wide right. They swing the ball to get Thompson on the ball before playing a few nice combos inside with her midfielders and attempting a ball over the top to Tiernan. Thompson loves a cut inside- She's so shifty that it's hard for defenders to take the ball off her, and it often creates gaps when opposing midfielders have to step high to put pressure on the ball.
Here's another one just a few minutes later, coming from a recycled attack. Thompson just stays up the field, meaning that Angel City are essentially just playing Emily Sams, Savy King, and Evelyn Shores on the back line. Watch the movement off of Thompson in this one. Jonsdottir pulls wide, and even Nealy Martin makes a dashing run into a gap to receive the ball. Angel City has looked a lot more fluid in these spaces than they did in 2025, and it's contributed to their hot start.
San Diego is the best team in the league
While the LA side might sit perfect top of the NWSL table through three weeks, it's their SoCal counterparts that have been the best team in the league.
In Week 1, I wrote about how the Wave's inability to cash in on numerous opportunities against Houston was either a sign of returning issues from 2025, or that the xG created was a sign that the goals would flow. I won't say I wasn't worried! I was!
....but it appears to have been the latter.
The 2026 Wave lead the league in both xG and xGA. Ludmila has slotted right in. Dudinha might have a case for being the scariest on-ball attacker in the league right now. Kenza Dali's usage rate remains at peak James Harden levels. They keep the ball so much that the defensive losses (Hanna Lundkvist to the WSL and Trinity Armstrong to injury) have hardly mattered.
There are some stylistic tweaks that I'll get into in a different recap (Dudinha's break out is allowing for more 1v1 creation on the left, they're using Ludmila as a lone striker, which offers much more threat in behind, Lia Godfrey is awesome, etc etc) and the main Eideball keep-style is pretty similar, but the Wave are playing with MUCH more pace. In 2025, San Diego was comfortably last in the league in possession speed. They still lead the league in passes per possession, but the Wave's average direct possession speed from 2025 is around 30% faster than it was in 2025. If I had to identify a key difference, that would be it: The Wave have that vertical threat with Ludmila, and despite maintaining their 2025 identity, have developed more versatility in the build.
It will be veryyy interesting to what role Catarina Macario is given in this Wave side- Will she shunt Ludmila wide and play as a false nine, or rotate with Gia Corley at the ten?
Bay's odd couple, thriving
It's been a lot of fun watching Bay's attacking duo of veteran Italian Cristiana Girelli (35 years old) and the spritely young winger Alex Pfeiffer (18 years old!) combine early on in 2026. Girelli is doing a lot of what I thought we'd see from her: Dropping deep to link the play together, holding up the ball and allowing Pfeiffer and Bay's other wingers to run off of her, and fighting to win long balls up front. Here's Girelli dropping deep to pick up the ball and distribute:
Here she is on the goal, combining with Pfeiffer to play provider for Keira Barry on Bay's second:
Pfeiffer showed flashes before her knee injury in Kansas City, but she's quickly looking like she might be on the path to potential stardom. Most things going well for Bay come through Pfeiffer cutting in on her left foot. She's already buried two chances cutting in on her left, and was involved in all three of Bay's three first half goals that won them the match in North Carolina, scoring one, assisting another, and providing a hockey assist on the third. Her herky-jerky all-action winger style is exactly what Bay needed- With Girelli dropping deep so often, Pfeiffer is often the highest player on the field for Bay. Here's the third goal, Girelli flicking on into the path of Pfeiffer to provide the cross for Bay's third:
North Carolina playing a little faster
North Carolina is still finding itself under Mak Lind, and it's hard to take a whole lot from an opening part of the season which has, until the Saturday night, not featured their MVP candidate Manaka Matsukubo in the lineup. They've looked pretty good, generally speaking- They got blitzed by Bay after a few bad defensive errors and are leaving a little too much space behind the wing backs for my liking, but they're looking generally cohesive in the midfield and attacking areas under their new manager.
We've seen a few different formations from Lind to start the season, from the 4-2-3-1 that the Courage rolled out in Week 1 to a few iterations of a 3-back the two weeks after. One thing is relatively clear, and that's that Lind wants to play more quickly, and more directly when possible: the broadcast mentioned that the Swede had been open about the need for the Courage to be able to move the ball up field with a single pass, and the stats reflect that....kind of. The Courage still don't play a lot of long balls, but they are playing faster. Where the Courage were behind only San Diego and Utah in slowness of pace of play in 2025, they are very much middle of the pack in 2026. Whether Lind sticks with the 3-back or moves to the 4-2-3-1 we saw for the portion of the match after Bay scored their third now that Manaka is back healthy will be a fun tactical subplot moving forward. With Evelyn Ijeh struggling early (she was just not very good at all against Bay), it's possible we might see Manaka retake the false nine spot she held for large stretches of 2025.
Pietra Tordin, good GOD
The young Thorns forward has two goals and two assists over Portland's first four matches, but the highlight of the season so far was this piece of absolute filth to cushion the ball out of the air before spinning away from Katie Scott and Izzy Rodriguez:
Louisville: Unlucky or in trouble?
After losing to Seattle on Saturday, Louisville find themselves second from bottom, though with a game in hand over a number of teams above them. The small sample size makes it hard to tell whether Louisville will continue to struggle (their expected points indicate a little bit of bad fortune), but the lack of depth means that Louisville have a much smaller room for error than other NWSL sides. Manager Bev Yanez just doesn't have the options of other NWSL teams. Without Savannah Demelo, we've seen MACEY HODGE of all people playing the ten. They're utterly hapless going forward without Emma Sears, and with rookie LB Miriann Gacioch at LB, Courtney Peterson (a natural LB who has been playing CB) was moved to LB and Taylor Flint was forced into CB.
Not what you want!
Goal of the Week: Sveindis Jonsdottir vs. Houston
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