Call it irony. Call it predictable. Call it justice. Either way, the top four seeds in the 2024 NWSL playoffs — the largest postseason field in league history — all won in the quarterfinals this weekend.
The NWSL’s defining characteristic has long been its parity from top to bottom, but this year, 16 points separated fourth from fifth place; 40 points was the gulf between top and bottom in the table. The four best teams — Shield winners Orlando Pride, the Washington Spirit, NJ/NY Gotham FC, and the Kansas City Current — were in a league of their own.
So, the expansion of the playoffs to eight teams (in a 14-team league) meant several below-.500 teams made the postseason. All of them are now watching the rest of the playoffs from home.
Did they have successful seasons? Where does each team go from here heading into 2025? We’re putting a bow on all the NWSL’s eliminated teams and will update this after two more teams bow out in the semifinals.
Chicago Red Stars (10W-14L-2D, eighth in regular season)
Playoffs: Eliminated by No. 1 seed Orlando Pride, 4-1 in quarterfinals
It isn’t surprising that the lowest-ranked seed in the playoffs put in the worst performance of the quarterfinals. It really isn’t surprising considering the opponent was the top-ranked Orlando Pride team that nearly finished the season unbeaten. But if there were ever a way to underscore the danger of overexpanding the playoffs, it was right there for everyone to see on Friday’s curtain raiser to the postseason.
Chicago got throttled by Orlando and looked doomed from the opening minutes. The Pride opened up a 4-0 lead before a self-induced error by Orlando goalkeeper Anna Moorhouse gifted Chicago a consolation goal. The Red Stars would have needed to play a perfect game to even have a shot at what would have been the biggest upset in NWSL history, and they didn’t come close. Orlando owned the midfield, and Chicago left massive gaps for forward Barbra Banda to run into. Banda scored twice, including a third Orlando goal on effectively the final play of the first half.
“We had some plays in the back that were just way out of character,” Chicago head coach Lorne Donaldson said after the loss. “As coach, maybe I should have fixed something back there. It’s not the players, I just got it wrong.”
Still, this season is one of marked improvement for Chicago. In 2023, the Red Stars finished in last place during an unnecessarily long ownership transition that left the team in limbo for much of the season. Backed by new majority owner Laura Ricketts and Donaldson as coach, the Red Stars jumped out to a bright start in 2024, defining themselves as a gritty defensive team that was happy to concede possession, frustrate teams, and take their chances on counterattacks. It’s a formula that can work in the NWSL — but it has its limits.
A season-ending injury to defender Sam Staab in July left Chicago thin at the back. Cari Roccaro, usually a holding midfielder, filled in admirably at center back, but the team’s lack of depth and experience, combined with an in-progress transformation, meant it was nowhere near competing with the league’s best. Chicago failed to secure a single regular-season victory over any team in the top five.
This offseason will be about building depth around star forward Mallory Swanson, who is entering Year 2 of a five-year contract.
“Obviously, we’ll look to get some better players — a few veterans and a few young players,” Donaldson said on Friday. “You build a team by getting better players. As I told the team, the unfortunate thing about sports [is] not everybody’s going to be around. There will be changes in our team, just like any other team.”
Bay FC (11W-14L-1D, seventh in regular season)
Playoffs: Eliminated by No. 2 seed Washington Spirit, 2-1 (AET) in quarterfinals
No lower seed entered the playoffs hotter than Bay FC, and the visitors nearly pulled off the upset in Washington, D.C., on Sunday. Forward Asisat Oshoala put Bay FC ahead in the 82nd minute to give the No. 7 seed hope, but Washington defender Tara McKeown called back memories of her forward days with an emphatic equalizer four minutes later in front of a raucous home crowd at Audi Field.
An own goal by Bay FC defender Caprice Dydasco decided the match six minutes into extra time. It was a cruel ending for a team that put in a gritty, defensive performance that was emblematic of the midseason transformation that got them to the playoffs in the first place.
“Who would have thought that six months ago, seven months ago, that we would have been playing the Spirit in the playoffs and we’re taking them into overtime?” Bay FC coach Albertin Montoya said after Sunday’s loss.
Few people is the likely answer.
Bay FC was just the second NWSL expansion team to make the playoffs in its first season (San Diego Wave FC, 2022), making this campaign a successful launch. The team spent over $1 million on transfers, including a world-record €735,000 transfer fee (about $788,000 at the time, plus the possibility of $75,000 in add-ons) for forward Racheal Kundananji, and it loaded up their attack. They were poor and organized defensively to start the season, however, and they needed recalibrating.
Kiki Pickett took ownership of a holding midfield role after an early-season injury to Alex Loera, and the August arrival of center back Abby Dahlkemper marked a tangible turning point for this team. The 2019 World Cup winner with the United States scored in her first game for Bay FC, and Bay went 5W-3L-1D after she arrived.
Dahlkemper looks like her old self (a USWNT starter and top center back at her best), and Bay looks to have the spine of its team in shape. Kundananji and Oshoala looked well adapted to the league in the second half of the season, too. The foundation is there — if they can keep the group together and build on it.
Portland Thorns FC (10W-12L-4D, sixth in regular season)
Playoffs: Eliminated by NJ/NY Gotham FC, 2-1 in quarterfinals
There were more disappointing NWSL teams this season (San Diego went from Shield winners last year to 10th and could have finished last heading into the final weekend), but Portland’s erratic season was the most concerning among the playoff teams.
The Thorns made a coaching change only four matches into the season after the identity problems of 2023 carried into the new season. Then they won six straight matches, a run that led them to remove the “interim” tag from head coach Rob Gale. A seven-game winless streak after the Olympic break followed that decision.
Portland is a team stacked with individual talent, including star striker Sophia Smith. But too often this season and last, the Thorns relied on the USWNT star to be their lone outlet and source of relief from pressure when their midfield struggled, and their backline (and rotation of goalkeepers) bent and sometimes broke.
Smith could be seen in conversation with her teammates on multiple occasions on Sunday at Red Bull Arena as the Thorns struggled to break Gotham’s waves of early pressure. Worryingly, she limped off the field with assistance in stoppage-time after having her right ankle evaluated. The ankle has bothered her since the Olympics, and Gale said postgame that Smith has “barely been able to train.”
Overall, another offseason of soul-searching awaits in Portland. Forward Christine Sinclair officially played the final match of her two decade-plus career. She spent all 11 years of the NWSL’s existence in Portland, and her retirement leaves a potential leadership gap for the Thorns. Defender Becky Sauerbrunn, another veteran leader, is out of contract.
Defensively, the Thorns need to figure out their preferred unit, including in net. (Bella Bixby, who had been the No. 1, missed the season on maternity leave.) But beyond that, they really need to own an identity beyond counterattacking through Smith. There’s too much talent there — including in midfield — to not dictate games more often. And expectations remain high for the three-time league champions.
This year was one of transition for the Thorns. That comes with its own challenges, but the expectations will be higher come 2025.
“We’re a club that’s building and growing under our new ownership, and there’s lots to look forward to with the new facilities,” Gale said on Sunday, alluding to the training center new ownership has promised to build. “It’s a young, young squad but to a person they never turned on each other. You saw how much effort they put in as a group.”
Playoffs: Eliminated by the Kansas City Current, 1-0 in quarterfinals
Arguably no team owned and projected a sense of identity more than the North Carolina Courage this season.
Like last year, the Courage kept possession more than any other team in the league, offering a counterpoint to the notion that the NWSL is only about transition. The problem is that the NWSL still is so often about transition, and North Carolina often dominated on-ball stats, losing matches due to momentary errors. It happened in the regular season, and it happened again to a degree in Saturday’s quarterfinal loss to Kansas City.
For all the beautiful soccer the Courage played this year, they lacked a go-to scorer and too often tried to walk the ball into the net. Their 34 goals scored this season was the least among the top six teams. After Saturday’s loss, Courage head coach Sean Nahas called the team’s struggles to get around goal “the story of our season.”
Nahas also rightfully pointed out that his team has dealt with injuries throughout the year, none more difficult than the absence of 2023 league MVP Kerolin, whose 10 goals last season ranked second best in the NWSL. She tore her ACL on the final weekend of the regular season in 2023.
Insert a healthy Kerolin into this Courage team for the entire season, and perhaps North Carolina is contending for a home playoff game. She played in only four regular-season games this year, and though she started in Saturday’s quarterfinal loss, she wasn’t 100% and couldn’t go the full 90.
Nahas called the 16-point gap from fourth to fifth “writer talk, not football talk” ahead of the playoffs. Indeed, the difference between North Carolina and Kansas City on the day was marginal, and the Courage will feel unlucky to have lost.
But a common theme among the top four teams is an MVP-level forward. Another way to look at the difference between the two teams on Saturday is that Kansas City has Temwa Chawinga, who scored the game’s lone goal and buried 20 in the regular season to set a new league record.
That’s the missing piece from an otherwise strong North Carolina team. The answer could be as simple as getting a healthy Kerolin back, but nothing is ever simple: Kerolin is a free agent, and there was wide speculation last winter that she would move abroad. Her stock has risen exponentially since she arrived in North Carolina nearly three years ago and keeping her in Courage country could be difficult.
“I haven’t even thought about it,” Nahas said about next year. “I just know that we have to sort of lock up our players now and figure out what’s their plan, and we go from there. I’m just tired of getting knocked out in the first round, so we have to figure out ways that we can see beyond it, but these are the moments that you relish and you learn from.”
