It’s o-Fishel — after a week of rumors, the anticipated Mia Fishel Tigres signing was announced Friday afternoon. The U.S. youth national teamer and former UCLA Bruin chose to join the Liga MX Femenil club instead of the Orlando Pride, who drafted her with the fifth overall pick in the 2022 NWSL Draft less than a month ago.
Trinity Rodman, the dynamic 19-year-old forward who was named 2021 NWSL Rookie of the Year, will finally get her first senior U.S. women’s national team experience this month. Two months after she rejected a previous invite, Rodman accepted Vlatko Andonovski’s call-up for the USWNT’s January camp.
Crystal Dunn is arguably the most versatile footballer on the planet. Capable of being one of the NWSL’s best forwards and then becoming one of the world’s best fullbacks with the USWNT, there isn’t much she can’t do. Her next position? Mom. So just who is this Crystal Dunn husband who will help the star footballer raise a baby along with a few cats and chickens?
For reasons good and (mostly) bad, the National Women’s Soccer League has had a lot of turnover in management positions over the last 15 months, from ownership to coaches. But there’s reason to be excited about the newest addition to the NWSL, made Thursday by the KC Current heading into their second season as a club.
Carlos Cordeiro, the former U.S. Soccer Federation president who resigned in disgrace after overseeing some of the most deplorable arguments the USSF has ever put forward in a lawsuit, wants his old job back. Megan Rapinoe, for one, has made her opinion known on the matter.
It’s not easy being a single mother. It’s even harder when you’re a professional athlete. But Sydney Leroux sure makes it look easy, or at least fun.
Preseason NWSL camps are less than a month away. With that in mind, Sydney Leroux was in the backyard getting in some training this week with her 5-year-old son, Cassius, who was sporting a full Tottenham kit. Leroux, a 31-year-old Orlando Pride forward and prime Mom of the Year candidate, did what any self-respecting parent would do upon seeing their offspring wearing Spurs colors: kick a ball straight at the kid’s head.
While not quite as bad as 2020, 2021 was not exactly a great year. The Covid-19 pandemic still rages, providing daily disruptions to our lives, politics remained fucked as ever, preventing any real progress on issues of climate change or equity, and my favorite soccer teams all still suck. But an Instagram post featuring Christen Press and Tobin Heath may have just made the entire year worth it.
After a 2020 that was, in many ways, a lost year for international soccer, the U.S. women’s national team went into 2021 with high hopes. The year ended with feelings of missed opportunities and the need for a rethink moving forward less than 20 months away from the next Women’s World Cup.
If you would like to learn how to alienate a club’s fanbase, perhaps irrevocably, you would struggle to find a better case study than the NWSL’s N.C. Courage this week. On Sunday, the club announced the signing of a player, Jaelene Daniels, antithetical to the vast majority of the team’s and league’s fans. After two full days of silence, the club put out a shockingly meek “apology” late Wednesday night, only further upsetting the once devoted fanbase.
Of all the years in the 2020s, 2021 was probably the least bad one. Maybe. But worry not; 2022 can’t possibly be as bad as the first two years of the decade, right? According to our 2022 soccer predictions, it’s going to be the best year ever, or at least the best of the last three.