NWSL Week 1 Recap- Portland shock the Spirit, a Boston debut, and a new look Angel City
- Kielbj
- Mar 16
- 11 min read
We're back! To start 2026, I'm going to do a little experimenting with the format of these recaps to make sure I'm getting the detail in while avoiding the dilution of the product by writing all weekend......which, with an additional NWSL game to watch this year, is just not going to be doable. To achieve that balance we're going to do a 5+5 format test run:
A more in-depth look five teams every week, which will be rotated throughout the season as much as possible.
Five stats/points/highlights/observations etc etc. Fun stuff, cool stories, things to watch, that kind of thing.
Anyhow, feedback on format welcomed! Let's get into it.
Portland goes pragmatic in DC
The shock of the season's opening weekend came in its first game, which finished in a 1-0 victory for Portland over a tepid Spirit side in a sold out Audi Field.
For the third straight season, the Thorns were the league's opening day sacrifice to the broadcaster gods, getting sent to DC to face Washington after two consecutive years of getting shredded in Kansas City. It's safe to say that most around the league –and certainly most Thorns fans– had chalked the 2025 semi-final rematch up as a loss before the game had even started, but the Thorns looked sturdy if mostly unthreatening over the course of the 90 minutes. No one would call this a beautiful performance by the Thorns, but it did, crucially, look like the antithesis of a Rob Gale performance in almost every way: an openly conservative approach that acknowledged the talent deficit and tried to mitigate for it.
Portland's lineup on paper was the double pivot 4-2-3-1 that most expected to see, but it played like a straight old-fashioned 4-4-2. Olivia Moultrie was the highest player on the field for Portland most of the match, spending time rotating in and out of the ten with de-facto striker Pietra Tordin. The heat maps below the lineup graphic show how similar Moultrie and Tordin's positions were, with Tordin actually frequently dropping deeper than Moultrie to play back to goal. Tordin's size and technical ability lends itself to that interchangeable false nine style, and, with Portland spending much of the game looking long, her presence was a valuable outlet both from deep and into the channels....including on the lone goal of the game.
via @nwslStat 
Moultrie at right, Tordin at left The game plan, presumably designed by interim Sarah Lowdon despite new manager Robert Vilahamn figure-heading his way up and down the sidelines after just about managing to procure his visa in time for Portland's season opener was really well done and well executed. All too often we've seen Portland overrun in midfield because of how high Gale loved to to push his fullbacks and wingers, but we saw the opposite on Friday night. Left winger Mimi Alidou barely had an attacking moment, spending most of her time supporting the excellent MA Vignola against an increasingly-frustrated Trinity Rodman. Alidou also dropped into the central midfield when Portland sank into their defensive block, helping support the midfield duo of the tireless Jessie Fleming and debutant Cassandra Bogere. Bogere had a fine debut, if a bit of a sloppy one at times: I've described her upright, languid style to people who haven't watched her before as "someone who watched a little too much 2012 Yaya Toure footage," but I prefer excessive calmness to excessive panic in a debut, and she has the tools to develop over the course of the season. Rookies Shae Harvey and Maddie Padelski (who was, interestingly, the first winger of the Thorns bench over Alexa Spaanstra and Valerin Loboa) both had solid cameos in closing out the win, the (Lacroix kit) cherries on top of a surprising victory.
The Croix-less Spirit struggle to create
It's hard to not overreact to how toothless Washington looked without the league's first true salary cap casualty, especially after watching Bethune score in her Current debut.
Washington certainly had the better of the play overall against Portland, but this was not a dominant-but-unlucky performance by any stretch. The Spirit, depending on your data provider of choice (RIP fbref), accumulated just 0.97 xG on the night against a Thorns side playing their first match in about 100 years without Sam Coffey at the base of the midfield, and registered just one shot on goal, failing to challenge Thorns keeper Morgan Messner playing her first career NWSL match. Bethune's absence was particularly conspicuous given how she terrorized Coffey and the Thorns in the attacking pockets in both the semi-final and the August 3rd clash at Audi. Portland's defensive shape was unquestionably better than it was in the August 3rd match, but Washington's lack of a ball-carrier in midfield was stark.
Here's a clip from that 2025 match where you can see the Bethune effect. There isn't a better player in the league at finding the hole in between a double pivot (though this really poor from Coffey and the Thorns) and getting on the turn up field.
This isn't a knock on Leicy Santos, mostly because it seemed more of a tactical decision on Washington's end. Santos played mostly wide left, meaning that the (rather defensive) holding midfield duo of Rebecca Bernal and Hal Hershfelt had to fill the gaps. Here's a similar clip to the one above. Notice where Santos is (high and left) relative to where Bethune was in the clip above. There's no middle of the field threat to Portland here, meaning that they can drop into shape and focus on Rodman when she receives the ball, ultimately leading to Washington recycling back to Bernal.
Washington was chasing those high side overloads all match, likely to focus the defense on the left side and get Rodman isolated in space. Here's another clip just minutes later, but this time on the opposite side of the field. This time, Santos does make the run off the back of Bogere to open up the split ball, and it leads to a drawn free kick by Gift Monday.
Washington will be just fine, but Week 1 is for overreactions, and what should have been a relatively straightforward home task for the Spirit against a very young and undermanned Thorns side turned out to be quite the slog. It'll be interesting to see what lineup they role out next week against Louisville.
Patao Ball
Boston's debut ended in a loss against the defending Champions, but I saw enough out of Filipa Patao's NWSL coaching debut to be very encouraged.
Patao set up her team pretty much exactly how I thought she would based on how her Benfica teams played: a 3-4-2-1/5-4-1 with two holding midfielders, two floating wide tens, and a striker. The were a few surprising personnel decisions: Bianca St. Georges, who cashed the obvious bet of who would pick up the season's first dumb red card, started at left center-back with Nicki Hernandez at left wing back. Marquee signing Amanda Gutierres didn't start at all, and neither did Barbara Olivieri or Josefine Hasbo, with Aissata Traore (who had quite an impressive debut and gave Emily Sonnett all kinds of trouble), Aleigh Gambone, and Annie Karich starting instead.
Tactically, there were flashes. The 3-4-2-1 typically operates as a quick-quick-long set up, and we saw a ton of those wingback-ten-eight midfield triangles that define how Patao wants to go about building forward. Most of them just didn't quite come off. Here's one example, a nice little sequence with Stevens, Karich, and Gambone. If Stevens gets that flick back into Karich right, Traore is iso'd 1v1 against Sonnett upfield over the top.... and I'd bet a lot of money that's where the next ball was going.
I didn't particularly like the lack of involvement from Stevens, who played far too wide and struggled to get going. I'd like to see her heat map look a little more like her counterpart Gambone's with more movement centrally. It's possible that Patao wanted a little more width and defensive support out of the Gambone/Stevens duo, but Stevens is a player that needs to get on the ball to be effective, and she was too often heavily isolated wide right with the ball on the opposite side of the field. Get her under the nine a little more (or just start Olivieri) and we could see the system start to click.
Stevens left, Gambone right The good news for Boston is that there was a clear, recognizable structure, and that the biggest concern for me (the central midfield) looked just mostly fine. I thought Karich in particular did a really nice job up against a pretty scary Gotham midfield trio, playing all over the field and covering a ton of ground. It was also interesting to see the vertical threat of Traore preferred over the more hold-up style of Gutierres. While I still have concerns abut where the goals are going to come from and whether the midfield can hold up long term (and no more BsG at centerback pls and thanks Filipa!), Boston certainly didn't look like a team that will finish the season at the bottom of the table. And that's really all you can ask for in Week 1.
Angel City goes box
The tactical surprise of the weekend was Angel City manager Alex Straus rolling out a box 4-2-2-2 against Chicago in the weekend's last matchup. Even without Hina Sugita, Angel City started four pure central midfielders in Nealy Martin, Ary Borges, Maira Niehues, and Kennedy Fuller. To compensate for the lack of width, FBs Evelyn Shores and Gisele Thompson pushed high and the striker pairing of Riley Tiernan and Sveindis Jonsdottir pulled wide themselves.
Now, it's both possible that this was a one-off meant to match numbers against Chicago's own box, and that it's easy to be that aggressive when you're playing whatever this Chicago side are supposed to be, but Angel City were rampant. The advantage of playing a box on the offensive side is that you should always have late runners into the box when you DO manage to get the ball in wide positions, and that was certainly the case for Angel City on Sunday.
It happened all night, mostly through the fullbacks, but here it is on goal 4:
The coolest thing about the box is how nicely it suits Gisele Thompson. There's so much clutter (and central midfield options) inside that it allows Thompson to do what she does best, which is combine down the touchline.
Angel City are very central midfield heavy personnel-wise after adding Borges in the summer, so it's possible this will be more than a one-off, and we'll get to see soon enough.
Bonus ACFC: Devastated to see my boy go in for an unreciprocated first bump after the Shores goal:
On the bright side, Laity reaction clips are SO FREAKIN BACK:
New year, (mostly) same Wave
San Diego, despite rocking a largely changed starting 11 from the end of 2025 after an offseason filled with attacking player movement, looked, well, pretty much exactly the same as they did in 2025, both in the complimentary and derogatory senses. The Wave had:
- 71% of the ball on nearly triple the amount of passes as Houston
- 14 corner kicks
- 19 shots
- Nearly 3x the xG (1.59-0.58) as the Dash
......and still managed to leave their opener with a 1-0 loss against a Dash team starting four rookies and no Yaz Ryan.
The Wave started two of their three new additions across the front line against Houston, with Gabi Portilho on the right and Ludmila up top. While Ludmila did get a number of good chances over the course of the 90, it was far from her best performance. I really don't see her as a lone central striker- She's plenty physical and can hold the ball up well, but she's not someone you're going to play combinations off of, and she's certainly better in wide areas. For Chicago, she often played in a either a front two or on the wing, and thrived in spaces in behind. This was my main concern about the Ludmila-Wave fit stylistically in the first place: Jonas Eidevall's Wave build slower than any other team and see more of the ball than any other team, which means that the spaces Ludmila loves to exploit in behind and in 1v1s are going to be far less open, particularly if the Wave are going to ask her to play as a pivot centrally. It just ain't her game. She's comfortably talented enough that this shouldn't really be an issue as she beds in, but I'd still like to see the Wave maximize her skillset by getting her a little wider.
San Diego have a lot of new pieces to integrate and those pieces seemed to fit right into Eidevall's control-ball style, but it didn't really look like they had developed any new pitches over the offseason. It's still a LOT of Kenza Dali just Doing Stuff and a lot of pretty patterns that lead to not-goals. I mean, this is GORGEOUS and it's a good save by Jane Campbell at the end, but ya gotta turn these chances into goals at some point.
The good news? The big difference from most of 2025 when the Wave struggled to turn all that possession into high quality opportunities, is that SD really did seem to be creating real chances out of those pretty patterns in this one, particularly when chasing the game in the second half. Campbell was forced into a number of saves, including a few truly exceptional ones on Ludmila, the best of the bunch coming on high palm on a curler from the Brazilian.
I am probably reacting to the result and our history with the 2025 Wave a little too strongly, and it's very much worth noting that SD do have Catarina Macario coming in shortly. Macario is, on paper, the perfect Eidevall false nine: excellent in the hold up and combine game, can certainly finish, and has a cerebral element to her play as well. Get Ludmila back out wide, have the excellent Gia Corley make her little darting runs off the back of Macario, and I foresee a world where I'm going to be pretty high on the Wave going forward.
Alyssa Naeher, it might be time
If I'm ranking "reasons Chicago sucks," Alyssa Naeher is wayyyy down the list. But this was.....not her best day at the office despite a few nice saves to keep the score from looking even worse. Angel City's first goal came on Naeher getting beat far too easily near post by Kennedy Fuller, but good god, what is THIS?
Not sure if this is worse from the broadcaster, who missed the goal entirely live, or Naeher, who stares down a three woman press before playing a ball straight into its teeth.
Problem is, this isn't anything new. Naeher ranked dead last by a LOT in ASA's G+ metric, in 2025. If you don't trust composite metrics, she also finished dead last in goals prevented, which isolates keeper performance independent of shots faced. And if you don't like GK metrics period, just watch some 2019 Alyssa Naeher game tape and then come back to 2026. It's not particularly pretty.
Alex Pfeiffer!
Oh man. If the teen is going to play like this all season, Bay might have stolen a FEW gems from the Current.
Savy King, doing stuff
It's cool enough that the young CB is back and playing, but this is a HIGH level recovery run and tackle, even if Jordyn Huitema ain't exactly Barbra Banda:
KC's fluid front four
KC went with an extremely fluid front four of Ally Sentnor, Debinha, Croix Bethune, and Michelle Cooper against Utah, and the results were...choppy. Utah, as is their wont, wasted a few golden opportunities in a first half they mostly had the better of, and it wasn't until after halftime that KC really found their foothold.
The Current appear to dealing with their absurd amount of high level tens by playing them all at once all over the field while Sentnor slotting into the nine full time. This means that one of Bethune and Debinha are going to be playing as a hybrid winger/wide ten. It was mostly Bethune on Saturday, and she's certainly capable of doing it, but it will be interesting to see how KC deal with their glut of attackers when Temwa Chawinga returns to her spot on the left wing.
Goal of the week: Not a ton of great options this week, so I'll give it to Olivia Moultrie for this sweet (intentional?) touch off a great ball in behind from Isabella Obaze:
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