We’ve hit the midway point of the 2025 NWSL season! Now our 14 teams have a 42 day stretch of no games to rest, recover, and regroup. Of course some players will be away getting time with their national teams, but either way it’ll be a crucial period for NWSL teams to make adjustments before heading into the next 13 games. Now that the dust has settled and these teams have shown us a good amount of what they’re about I wanted to do a tiered power ranking. This is how I feel about the teams so far, but not necessarily where I think they’ll finish hence putting them into tiers. Do I think teams can edge one another out of an above tier or fall out to a lower tier? Sure. Do I think teams could shuffle around with each other within a tier. Of course. I do not follow all teams equally so a fair amount of this will admittedly be vibes-based. Here we go!

A League of Their Own

Kansas City Current - It is not controversial to say that the Kansas City Current are the top team in the NWSL this year. This team is firing on all cylinders and unlike last season, any injuries that may pop up here and there, don’t seem to be slowing them down. Temwa Chawinga continues to show why she was last season’s MVP, and Michelle Cooper seems to be reaching another level right now. Bia is back as if she had never gotten a stress fracture, and teenager Claire Hutton is playing beyond her years. This team took it personally that they weren’t in the NWSL Championship Final that took place at their home stadium last year and they’ve been tearing through everyone on their revenge tour. In my opinion, it’s not “Top Four” this year, the Current seem to be in a league of their own.

They’re Good!

Orlando Pride - It would have been pretty crazy for the Orlando Pride to have fully carried their 2024 form into 2025. Instead, the Pride seem to have come back down to earth a little bit, which for them, is still a good team. They have shown that they are fallible this season. Not only have they lost a couple of games in the front half of the season, but they’ve also had multiple close calls and bend, but don’t break performances. It seems like this season they aren’t having as much consistent scoring success from players besides Barbra Banda, and sometimes they aren’t able to get her on the ball quite as much. However, there’s a whole back half of the season for them to remind everyone that they’re NWSL Champions. As the season continues and tournament time comes along, teams like the Pride with a deep bench and championship experience have a leg up on a lot of the other competition.

Washington Spirit - The Spirit are my east coast team of choice. They’ve just got a vibe and personality about them that I enjoy. Despite the extensive injury list that the Spirit have been carrying since the end of last season, they have held onto a place near the top of the table. It certainly speaks to their depth and flexibility, and it makes the prospect of a fully healthy roster even scarier. They haven’t gotten everything right, of course. Their defense has been almost as chaotic to watch as Angel City. However, key pieces are starting to return like Croix Bethune and Hal Hershfelt. Trinity Rodman is making progress on a return from her back injury. If they can get healthy, put the weight of their midseason coaching change behind them, and shore up their defense I think they won’t just make playoffs but be a scary team to go up against.

Would Be Surprised If They Didn’t Make Playoffs

San Diego Wave - As an Angel City fan, I don’t like the Wave. As a Chelsea fan, I didn’t really want Jonas Eidevall to succeed in the NWSL. Unfortunately for me, the Wave are pretty enjoyable to watch and have been performing well so far this season. Some of it is over performance, for sure, but it’s hard to deny what Eidevall has been able to do with this group. Expectations for the Wave in 2025 were low when they lost Alex Morgan to retirement, Abby Dahlkemper to Bay FC, Sofia Jakobsson to the London City Lionesses, Naomi Girma to Chelsea, and Jaedyn Shaw to the North Carolina Courage. They brought in a lot of young, new players and a coach from across the pond so it was hard to know what they would look like. However, Eidevall’s system has players like Delphine Cascarino, Kenza Dali, Adriana Leon, Kimmi Ascanio, and Trinity Armstrong thriving. I expect their performance in the second half of the season to come back down to earth somewhat, but I think if they remain healthy, they’ll continue to be a competitive side. If they add a piece or two they’ll be even more dangerous. If nothing else, they’ve already scored 25 goals and it feels like it would take a catastrophic decline to push them out of playoffs.

Portland Thorns - I’m originally from the Portland area so I have a soft spot in my heart for the Thorns. I do not, however, have a soft spot in my heart for Head Coach Rob Gale. Sorry to say. He seems like a nice guy, but I don’t really feel like he’s proven himself to be a consistently capable manager of the talent he has at his disposal. This may sound like a silly comment when the Thorns sit in 5th place having scored 19 goals, allowed only 12 goals, and posted an xG of 22.3 (second highest in the league). They’re doing well. They have a lot of exciting young players (Moultrie, Hanks, Turner, Perry, Tordin) that have stepped up in the absence of Sophia Wilson and Morgan Weaver. I think the key word with Gale is consistency. They’ve clearly put together some good performances where things coalesce beautifully, but he’s also made some confusing personnel and tactical decisions where they escape by the skin of their teeth or end up dropping points when they don’t have to. Maybe I’m just holding Gale’s feet to the fire for his many sins throughout 2024 and I need to get over it. I guess the bottom line is that I think the talent he gets to work with flatters him, at least somewhat.

NY/NY Gotham - Despite winning the inaugural CONCACAF W Champions Cup in May, Gotham has struggled a bit with their NWSL form in 2025. Right now they occupy the final playoff slot while last year they were far and away a Top Four side. They’ve had some injuries that have perhaps slowed them down a bit (Portilho, Stevens, Purce). As of late, it feels like if Esther González isn’t scoring goals then there’s a fair possibility that no one will. Despite all this, I think it would be speaking too soon to count Gotham out in any way. Hopefully after they break they’ll get some of these players back and Rose Lavelle will be fit for more minutes. If fully healthy, I think this team could forcefully take things more into their own hands.

Battle To The Death For 7th and 8th

Racing Louisville - NWSL talking heads have called Racing Louisville something along the lines of “the most exciting work in progress” for about as long as I’ve been following the league. Will this be the first season where Racing finishes above ninth place? It seems like yes. Head Coach Bev Yanez has been able to really make the most out of her squad despite being run by ownership that seems allergic to spending money. They’ve created an identity that the players have bought into and they’re finding a lot of success. I imagine that handily beating last year’s NWSL Champions is exactly the type of momentum you want to be riding going into the back half of the season.

North Carolina Courage - It felt like there were big expectations for the Courage this season having signed Jaedyn Shaw in the offseason. The prospect of seeing her and Ashley Sanchez playing on the pitch at the same time was very exciting. However, North Carolina got off to a slow start and struggled to score. Somewhere along the way, though, Nahas and Co. made some tweaks allowing Manaka Matsukubo to really flourish and the attacking unit to consistently get into more dangerous positions. It seems like they’re still trying to figure out how to optimize players like Shaw and Sanchez, but they’ve figured out a way to start winning some games while they work that out. If they can, it feels like they could probably climb the table.

Seattle Reign - I grew up in the Portland area, but I’m actually from Washington. Maybe people familiar with the area could guess my hometown with that information. I don’t have the same soft spot for the Reign as I do the Thorns, but I’ve always sort of got my eye on them. They are not the most fun team to watch, but Laura Harvey knows how to play for a result, and if they don’t get one, minimize the damage. Excluding draws, all of their matches have had a goal differential of 1 except for one. When the season started I wondered where their goals would come from despite signing Lynn Biyendolo. The answer seems to be youngster Maddie Dahlien and the occasional banger from someone else. Just enough bangers to get the results they need to remain well within the playoff conversation. Going into the break they whalloped the Utah Royals 4-1. It would be cool if they could do a little more of that. Even if they don’t, they say “defense wins championships.” At the very least, I think their defense and low variance play style have a decent shot of getting the Reign into the playoffs but the competition is tight.

Angel City - My team. My girls. The franchise that got me into soccer. I’m hopeful for the second half of this season now that new Head Coach Alexander Straus has some uninterrupted time with the team before games start up again. However, I can’t realistically put the team in a tier above this one and there’s an argument that they could be bumped down as well. It’s hard to say exactly how the team will do in the second half of the season. I do think that Angel City showed flashes of promise toward the beginning of the season but have been negatively impacted in the past few weeks by the prolonged absences of Savy King and Claire Emslie. Straus now has a long break to work some things out. The question is even if they improve, have they already dropped too many points and conceded too many goals in the first half of the season to sneak into the playoffs?

I’ll be writing a more extensive midseason review on Angel City, so stay tuned for that.

Maybe If They Get It Together?

Bay FC - Something seems to be going on at Bay FC, we just don’t know explicitly what yet. Maybe it’s not true, but it just feels that way right now at least. Throughout the 2024 season players and staff trickled out of the expansion program and by the offseason it felt more like a flood. Just before the start of the season, the NWSL ordered an independent investigation into Head Coach Albertin Montoya after formal complaints submitted by former players alleged that Montoya created a toxic work environment. An article by the San Francisco Chronicle reported that multiple players and staff chose to leave Bay FC because of Montoya. This investigation is still underway and the vibes do seem a little off. Players will seemingly inexplicably drop in and out of the starting XI. They have positive moments but they’re inconsistent. Montoya seemingly tinkering with lineups and tactics somewhat frequently doesn’t exactly help with that. They seem like a group of players that should be better than they are right now and it feels hard to say for sure if they’ll fully get it together in the back half of the season.

Houston Dash - The Houston Dash seem to be in a franchise that is very clearly in the beginning stages of building something. This season they have a new Head Coach and General Manager. In the offseason they brought in some good talent in Yazmeen Ryan, Delanie Sheehan, and Maggie Graham. Second year player, outside back Avery Patterson has become a key player for them. It seems like flashes of their vision appear here and there, but they just aren’t there yet. It’ll be interesting to see what transfer window and offseason moves they make to keep working on their “Three Year Plan.”

Mm…

Chicago Stars - The Stars appear to be a franchise lost at sea. Earlier this season the team parted ways with then Head Coach Lorne Donaldson. General Manager Richard Feuz defended the firing saying that he felt that Donaldson should have been getting results with the players he had at his disposal and playing a possession-based, attacking style of football. When questioned on whether Feuz felt like the Stars significant lack of offseason moves compared to almost all other franchises was perhaps a contributing factor to the team’s performances he said “Did we progress in terms of control, of possession? Maybe not enough… But is the team worse than last season? No. [And] in the numbers from Opta, from SoccerDonna, the team value is better this season.” For those unfamiliar, “SoccerDonna” is an Instagram account that posts both supported and unsupported personnel, team, and coach movement and valuation rumors within the women’s game. So… That hasn’t given fans much hope regarding what’s going on behind the scenes. Since then Masaki Hemmi has taken over in an Interim Head Coach capacity and things have improved slightly. Maybe? On a positive note, Ludmila and Jameese Joseph remain bright spots, and Sam Staab and Natalia Kuikka have returned from injury which has helped on the defensive end. However, this team is seriously underwater right now and I don’t think there’s hope for them this season to break the surface.

Utah Royals - There isn’t much to say about this team at this point other than that they are truly struggling. They are working with what they have considering a long injury list to key players, but it’s not going well. Unfortunately, Ally Sentnor and Mina Tanaka have not been able to muscle Utah to enough results this season. Neither of them seem to really have been able to make much of an impact at all. Granted I think that if some players come back from injury or they’re able to bring in some players during the break, they could leapfrog Chicago, but if things keep on like this for the rest of the season then things are looking pretty grim.

This season feels like a little bit of a “return to form” with regard to the level of chaos and unpredictability within the league compared to 2024. Only three points separate 2nd and 5th place and 6th and 9th place. Granted I’ve only been following the league in earnest since 2023, which was a season that saw multiple playoff positions as well as the Shield still undecided until the last regular season game finished. However, a big storyline last season was whether the NWSL was becoming “boring” due to the emergence of a clear Top Four. I think that 2025 came to the rescue to say a definitive “no.” Regardless of the standings, I still think there are some teams that are clearly ahead of the rest in terms of quality. The depth of a Kansas City, Orlando, Gotham, or Spirit is an undeniable advantage. However, in contrast to 2024, this season I think teams across the board have a lot more potential to move up or down the table, or at the very least, ruin someone’s day. That all being said, I’m already missing the NWSL chaos and I’m very happy that Decision Day is back for 2025. Looking forward to a fun second half of NWSL beginning in August!