The international transfer window officially closed on Monday. Teams can continue to do intra-league business until October when the roster freeze deadline hits, but any moves into the NWSL are on hold for now.

I’ve summarized the roster movement since the start of the international break below. These are the players that have joined the active roster and the year of their contract expiration, and the players that have been removed from the active roster and the circumstances surrounding their departure.

This puts Angel City within roster compliance at 23 players. Twenty-four when Elizabeth Eddy comes off of the D-45 injury list. To see the status of all players check out the ACFC Spotrac.

On the availability report for Angel City’s match against the Orlando Pride, Julie Dufour, Katie Zelem, and Alanna Kennedy were all listed as unavailable due to excused absences. Two days later, it was announced that Dufour had been traded to the Portland Thorns. Fans and internet sleuths started to worry that Zelem and Kennedy would also be departing. On August 27th the rumors that the two veterans would join Michelle Kang’s London City Lionesses in their first WSL campaign were confirmed.

Angel City’s midfield is now even thinner. Despite that, I’m honestly happy with all three of these moves. Sporting Director Mark Parsons was able to offload two longer contracts (Zelem through 2026, Dufour through 2027) for players that, for better or worse, did not fit the long-term vision for the team. Kennedy’s contract was only through this season, and Parsons was able to get something back for her instead of letting her walk for free at the end of 2025.

Negotiations to acquire Zelem, Dufour, and Kennedy began prior to hiring either Parsons or Head Coach Alex Straus. In many ways, that makes sense. Then-Head Coach Becki Tweed wanted to implement a slower, possession-oriented style of play throughout 2024. All three came from leagues where players are used to a bit more time on the ball and building out of the back. Although Straus wants to control games, he does not seem to want to shy away from using players’ speed and strength to their advantage in the build up or in the press. Compared to the other players in the typical starting XI, Kennedy was still on the slower side, but found ways to manage well enough to maintain her spot. Zelem and Dufour, however, never seemed to quite get up to the same speed as the rest of the squad. Not consistently anyway. It is a little scary that Kennedy won’t be seeing out her contract when she had been an integral part of the team on multiple lines. However, I’m not really in the camp of fans who wanted her to be re-signed after this season.

The midfield has been a mess for the entirety of the time I’ve been a fan of the team, and is probably the area of the roster that needs the most overhaul in the offseason. In 2023, Tweed eventually found that Amandine Henry and Madison Hammond were the strongest defensive midfield pairing. Up until then it had been a revolving door testing out whether Hammond, Lily Nabet, or Dani Weatherholt stood best next to Henry or Julie Ertz. No such luck came about in solidifying this area of the park when Julie Ertz swiftly retired after the 2023 World Cup and Henry was traded to the Utah Royals in early 2024. Newly acquired players like Rocky Rodriguez and Meggie Dougherty-Howard never seemed to quite find their footing in Los Angeles, and both were let go at the end of the season.

The era of Angela Hucles-Mangano as General Manager was a tough one. Perhaps because President and Co-Founder Julie Uhrman had more say in sporting decisions at that time as well. It was the time of signing aging players with name recognition and stock piling way too many players that all played the same position. It was a Front Office doing business based on vibes which is not enough to win you football matches.

To me, this season’s roster has felt constrained by decisions made during the Hucles era. I think that can be demonstrated by the fact that looking down the bench when there’s an injury or absence or two, the options aren’t exactly inspiring. However, many of those contracts expire at the end of this season. The ones that the team would have had to hold on to, Parsons just released with the recent moves.

During a panel at the Angel City Season Ticket Member event, Parsons talked a lot, as per usual. He eluded that Zelem and Kennedy’s absences for the Orlando game were related to outgoing international transfers. He also said that the club had players that they are bringing in for the 2026 season, but are trying to negotiate with clubs to get them in earlier. It was implied that these are intra-NWSL players so that visa issues would not be a factor in the timeline. If these players cannot come in during 2025, Parsons said they would look to short-term loan options for the rest of the season. This was an interesting tidbit during the panel because it shows that Parsons and Straus are not interested in compromising their vision. Clear direction is something that the Angel City Front Office has been missing, and it is something I welcome even if it’s sad or worrying for the short term.

Whether it happens by October or during the offseason, I anticipate that Parsons and Straus are looking for peak-age defensive and holding midfielders, backline depth, and perhaps a different profile of striker to Riley Tiernan. The two players I can see most likely re-signing out of our current crop of free agents are Miyabi Moriya and Madison Hammond. Moriya has done well to step up while Gisele Thompson has been injured, and has grown in her ability to progress the ball and contribute to the attack. There is also value in having multiple Japanese internationals all on the roster together.

I have had many ups and downs with Madison Hammond over the years. However, Straus seems to like her and believe in her. To his credit, I do think that she has shown improvement from 2024 over the course of this season both as a starter and substitute. From what I can tell, she is also a positive force in the locker room. While I think that having Hammond, Zelem, Nabet, and Eddy all sitting on the bench for “locker room vibes” was overkill, I’m okay with Hammond sticking around to keep contributing to that aspect of things while filling a more flexible on-field role. The biggest question marks for me surround hometown heroes Ali Riley and Christen Press. Are they hoping to be re-signed? Are they retiring? It all remains to be seen.

The playoff push might have just gotten a little bit harder for 2025, but I think the direction Angel City wants to go in the Straus era is solid and the signings under Parsons demonstrates that. Hopefully at least some short-term reinforcements are on the way, but either way I think the future is taking on a promising shape.

**Images courtesy of Angel City