ACFC Strikers
We’ve finally reached the conclusion of the positional groups, and just in time before the start of the new season. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
Sydney Leroux
Leroux has had a number of injuries since joining Angel City, but in 2024 she was fairly healthy and leads our strikers in minutes with 1,738 from 25 matches and 19 starts. Of those 19 starts, Leroux had 11 complete games, averaging 82 minutes per start. When she did come off the bench, she averaged 29 minutes per substitute appearance.
Shooting
Leroux’s season in general, and especially in front of goal, is like the opening of A Tale of Two Cities: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. And I know that I have talked to fans that reflect this, who either think that Leroux shouldn’t be starting at all, or that she’s one of our best players. So who’s right? Well, both camps, I think.
For the basics, Leroux was the joint top scorer on Angel City with Emslie on 7 Goals, but 3 of Emslie’s came from the penalty spot, so Leroux does have a claim to being the best goalscorer on the team. She has the top npxG on the team with 6.9, and she is one of only three ACFC players to overperform their xG. But, if we remove that looping volley against Utah, which was only a .04 xG shot, Leroux would have 6 Goals from 6.86 npxG. That -0.86 underperformance would have given Leroux the third worst mark on the team. What a difference one goal can make.
Leroux also had the highest npxG per Shot (.22) on the team, as well as Goals per Shot (.22). In fact, 7 Goals was enough to make the NWSL Top 10 goalscorers list, in an 8 way tie for 9th place. All of this qualifies for best of times.
Things don’t look quite as good compared to other NWSL Forwards, and I want to point out that FBRef is making that classification of Forward, not Striker, which I think is fair, because many teams don’t play with an out-and-out No 9. So these comparisons are including players like Temwa Chawinga and Sophia Wilson, and are also on a per 90 basis. So looking at this, Leroux is actually only in the 60th percentile for Goals and 56th percentile for npxG. Her npxG per Shot is still very good: 97th percentile. Her Shot on Target Percentage of 46.9% also looks good: 79th percentile. Part of that high xG per Shot is that Leroux’s average distance to goal was only 10.8 yards, almost the lowest number in the league. Or another way to think of it is that her average shot was even closer to goal than the penalty spot.
But these xG numbers kind of bother me, and don’t seem to align with my own observations.
The scatterplot above shows all of Leroux’s Shots with their respective xG (starting with her first shot against Bay in the home opener on the left and moving chronologically to the right.). The goals are marked in pink. The line shows her median xG of .15.
There are a few details that stand out to me. The first is that there are a lot of high xG chances that Leroux misses. She had 14 shots over .2 xG and out of that, 5 of them were Goals. The misses on the .79 xG and .59 xG Shots really stand out. The total of the shots that she missed from chances of at least .2 xG (which I would characterize as a really good scoring chance) is 3.2 xG. At the same time, there are 11 Shots that are .1 xG or lower, and only one of those was a Goal, the aforementioned volley against Utah.
This chart is more curiosity than actual data right now, because I would need to do these charts for every top scorer in the league to make meaningful comparisons. At some point, I would really like to accomplish this, but right now, I’m not in the position to make all of those calculations. Anecdotally, however, I think that Leroux is missing more high quality chances than other top forwards. Just about all of her goals came from situations that you would expect her to score. And outside of those clear chances, she’s not converting a lot.
Another factor that bothers me about this is that out of Leroux’s 15 Shots on Target, 4 of them had a Post Shot xG lower than the initial xG. Again, this is just anecdotal, but I think that I almost always see the psXG higher than the xG. Intuitively, this makes sense. Because xG is just measuring where the shot is taken from, it includes all of the blocks and misses, plus actual Shots on Target. psxG is only measuring Shots on Target, so more of these should result in goals. And in Leroux’s case, two of these shots with lower psxG actually were goals. In both cases they were headers that went right down the middle of goal, but were hard enough that the keeper couldn’t respond in time to make the save. Still, I think that we’d all agree that aiming the ball to either side of the keeper is better, although some people will say that if you score it doesn’t matter. Still, I think that this does give some cause for concern regarding Leroux’s ability to replicate her scoring in 2025. Again, the number of instances that psxG is less than xG for a player is not something that’s readily available, it’s something I’d have to calculate by hand. And I would have to do that for all the top scorers for it to be meaningful. So I don’t present this as conclusive, but I do think that it’s problematic regarding her scoring ability. To have at least one point of comparison, though, I did look at the shooting of Ella Stevens, as a somewhat similar player to Leroux. At least, they both scored 7 Goals, and they’re in the same neighborhood of Shots (27 for Stevens and 32 for Leroux) and Shots on Target (12 for Stevens and 15 for Leroux). Stevens had 2 Shots over .2 xG that were not Goals (compared to the 9 of Leroux’s) and no Shots with a psxG lower than the xG (compared to 4 of Leroux’s. So this does appear to support my thoughts that Leroux isn’t actually converting that well, but I’d really have to do more work on this. And actually, I think that these particular numbers could be very interesting for all forwards.
Playmaking
Shooting is actually the part of Leroux’s game that I thought was the best, and I’m afraid that it does go downhill from here. Leroux finished with 1 Assist, which I think hardly even counts. It was to Alyssa in the 3-2 loss to Seattle, and Leroux passes the ball to Alyssa right around midfield. When Alyssa receives the ball, there are still 3 defenders, plus the goalie, between her and the goal, but Alyssa does Alyssa things and scores. Leroux’s xA on that pass was 0, though. That goal was entirely due to an amazing run from Alyssa. On the season, Leroux has an xA of .5 and an xAG of .7. That puts her in 14th and 10th respectively on Angel City, and in the 2nd percentile for both stats compared to other NWSL forwards. She is also in the 2nd percentile in Key Passes, in which she recorded .47 per 90 and 9 on the season (8th on ACFC).
In terms of Shot Creating Actions, Leroux had 26 or 1.35 per 90. On that per 90 basis, Leroux was 19th on the team. She’s in the 8th percentile of forwards in SCAs. She has 1 Goal Creating Action, but that is the Assist I mentioned earlier that I don’t really count. 7 of her 26 SCAs were Shots.
In terms of other types of passing, Leroux’s 64% Pass Completion was in the 31st percentile, with Short Passing Completion Percentage a little higher (74.9%, 44th percentile). Passes into the Attacking Third were in the 24th percentile (.73 per 90), and Passes into the Penalty Area were 2nd percentile (.06 per 90). And finally, she was in the 8th percentile of Progressive Passes, with 1.04 per match. In some circles, there was talk about how Leroux would drop deeper for the ball (and we’ll look into that a little bit more in the Possession section), but I think that this Progressive Passing stat is important in this regard. The reason is that it shows that Leroux was not dropping deeper to receive the ball and then turning the corner to release Alyssa or Emslie. If it was, we’d see a much higher number here. For example, Bia Zaneretto has 5.4 Progressive Passes per 90 for Kansas City.
Possession
Unsurprisingly given her Passing numbers, Leroux’s Possession numbers also don’t look that great. Her 31.85 overall Touches per 90 is in the 31st percentile, but Touches in the Attacking Third (11.03 per 90, 11th percentile), and Attacking Penalty Area (3.42 per 90, 27th percentile) are both lower. The one area that Leroux really stands out is Touches in the Defensive Penalty Area, where she is in the 98th percentile (correspondingly, she is also in the 98th percentile in Clearances). Again, Angel City asking everyone to defend. She was in the 18th percentile for Passes Received and Progressive Passes Received.
For Carries, Leroux is in the 2nd percentile in Total Carrying Distance, Progressive Carrying Distance, Progressive Carries, and Carries into the Final Third. She is in the 5th percentile for Total Carries and Carries into the Penalty Area. Less than 12 yards of Progressive Carrying Distance especially surprises me.
Leroux does do well maintaining possession. She’s in the 82nd percentile for Miscontrols and 85th percentile for Times Dispossessed (a higher percentile here means that she’s not doing these things). She is in the 89th percentile of Fouls Committed (same case that this means she’s not committing fouls), but she is in the 11th percentile for being Offside. Also, for the other side of Fouls, she is in the 31st percentile for Fouls Drawn.
xG +/-
Turning to the team performance, Leroux played 74.3% of the available minutes, so he have a good idea of how the team looks with and without her. The Team Goal Differential when Leroux was playing, versus when she was not was -.47 per 90, which was 17th on the team. She was on the field for 22 Goals For and 34 Goals against, and that -12 Differential was tied for the worst mark on the team.
In terms of xG, Leroux was on the field for 25.8 xG For and 32.3 xG Against, or -6.5, which is an improvement on the actual goals and is only the 5th worst mark. Comparing the Team’s xG Differential when Leroux is On vs Off per 90 is -.28, which is 18th on the team.
Thoughts on the Evolution of the Striker Position
Before I do my concluding thoughts on Leroux, I want to take a step back and speak more generally about the striker position, and how it has evolved, in my opinion. For a long time, many, if not most, of the top women’s players started as forwards, which makes sense to me. For a youth coach, your best all-around footballer is going to be able to impact the game the most as a forward. So if you’re athletic, and have good control and handling, you’re going to be a forward. As players rise in the ranks, they may get pushed to other positions, however. The 99ers always hold a prominent spot in my memory, and so I always remember Michelle Akers as a central midfielder. But of course, in 1991, she won won the Gold Boot at the World Cup with 10 goals, including 5 in one game. Similarly, I remember Brandi Chastain as a fullback, but she was a forward in college. Hope Solo, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Kelly O’Hara are other, more recent, examples.
This means a couple things to me. The first is that defenders in general were usually not as good of a footballer as the forwards at lower levels. The second is that if the defender was as good, there’s a decent chance that she hasn’t been playing in that position her whole career. I’m not saying for a moment that Becky Sauerbrunn wasn’t an outstanding defender, or an oustanding footballer. But across the board, I think that there was either a talent discrepency or an experience discrepancy between forwards and defenders. Over time, though this has changed, with defenders closing that gap all the way to the point of the largest transfer fee ever being paid for a centerback.
So why am I including this in a section about Leroux? Leroux’s game, and also for many forwards of her generation, is based upon winning duels. It’s about going head-to-head with your opposing defender and beating them. And I think that this is true because of that gap I perceive between defenders and forwards. During this era, forwards would take the duels because they were winning those duels often enough. And of course, in soccer, you only have to win a couple times to have success. Someone who scores a goal every other game is a superstar.
I have heard Leroux say in an interview that when she is in the box, she stays within the width of the goal posts. She’s certainly not alone in that way of thinking, and that means that when she does get the ball, she’s in a very good position to score, as reflected by the number of high xG chances she had. But that also means that it is very easy to mark her. I don’t think that this bothers Leroux, because she’s comfortable with the duel and she backs herself to win it. And for most of her career that’s worked. But increasingly, when she is just static in the box, it makes it harder to get the ball to her, as evidenced by her low number of touches in the box.
Looking at what I consider to be the top attackers in the NWSL, players like Sophia Wilson, Barbra Banda, Temwa Chawinga, Mallory Swanson, and Trinity Rodman, the common trait I see is movement. Even someone like Rodman that engages in a large number of duels is not a static player, but rather I’d say that she keeps defenders off balance because they don’t know if she’s going to slow down and beat them head-on, or play a quick one-two to get in behind. And she still tries to receive the ball in space. Her duels are after she has possession, not to receive the ball. To me, the focus now is on creating space, not winning the ball in congested space, and that’s something that I don’t see from most of the strikers of Leroux’s generation.
Concluding Thoughts on Leroux
I wanted to go through all of that because I think that we need that context to understand Leroux’s season. Too often in sports discourse I see fans claiming that a player is either terrible or they’re the GOAT. I think that we need more nuance. To me, Leroux is a one-dimensional player at this stage in her career, but she is pretty good at that dimension. She had 7 non-penalty Goals last year, and only five players in the NWSL can say that they had more than that. Leroux can still win duels, and she did. At the same time, I think that she should have scored more based on the quality of the chances that she got, and I think that she got a little lucky on three of her goals (you could also say she was unlucky on at least a few misses).
My main criticism of Leroux’s 2024 season, though, is that I don’t think she did enough for her wingers. She doesn’t make runs to draw defenders away, and she’s not making passes to her teammates in dangerous positions. As you can see from my Winger article, I think that Alyssa and Emslie both showed that they did a good job with shooting and playmaking. They created chances for Leroux, but I don’t think that she created the same chances for them. And I think that Angel City would have scored more goals if Leroux was less focused on being in a scoring position and more on creating. But I would wager that at some point in her career, Leroux had a coach tell her, “Your job is to score goals.” Maybe even Tweed told her that. And for most of her career, doing what she did in 2024 has worked. And probably lots of people think that it worked in 2024 too. However, I disagree and feel like that style is no longer the best solution for team success.
I expanded a little bit on the predictive model I used in my Christen Press article last year and turned it into a proper linear regression. It’s still not a great tool, because it’s only based on Goal Contributions, but it says that Leroux is only expected to have 3.36 Goal Contributions in 2025. Again, far from accurate, but it’s something. I think that whether or not she exceeds this will largely depend on how minutes she plays. If she is healthy and starting games, I think that she will. If there are injury concerns, or if someone else claims that starting job, 2 or 3 Goal Contributions sounds about right. Leroux signed a new 3 year contract, keeping her with Angel City through 2027.
Messiah Bright
Bright contrasts with Leroux in so many ways, and I had such high hopes for her with Angel City. That was mostly before the plan to play a possession style was revealed, which makes her signing so confusing, because I saw no indication that she was a possession-style player before or after the move. Angel City acquired her from Orlando for $130,000 prior to the 2024 season. So at least we can say that we played a crucial role in helping Orlando get Banda and win the double last year. Bright played 687 minutes from 7 Starts and 14 Substitute appearances. She averaged 61 minutes per Start with no complete games, and 18 minutes per Substitute appearance, with 4 instances of being an unused sub.
Shooting
Bright finished the season with 1 Goal from 18 Shots with 7 on Target. Her On Target Percentage of 38.9% was 7th on the team and 44th percentile overall. Her .06 Goals per Shot was only the 15th percentile. Bright still had the most xG outside of the starting front 3 of Emslie, Alyssa, and Leroux, with 2.8. She had the 2nd most npxG per Shot with .16, behind only Leroux. Compared to other NWSL forwards, this puts Bright in the 60th and 63rd percentile respectively. However, underperforming her xG by -1.8 was the worst mark on the team, and put her in the 8th percentile of the league.
I don’t think that this is a fluke. Last year she also underperformed her xG, albeit slightly, with 6 Goals from 6.2 xG. And she also missed a number of clear cut chances, like the .5 xG shot from 8 yards out against Orlando that Emslie put on a platter for her, or that flurry at the end of the game away to Houston when she had two opportunities at the very end. Even on her goal, we see the same phenomenon of underperformance, as with Leroux, that her psxG of .45 was .24 points lower than the xG of .69. This was also a shot from only 7 yards out, and I think that Alyssa gets a lot of credit for making that goal happen.
Half of her xG also comes from just two games. 16 of her 21 games finished with an xG of .1 or lower. Of course, only 3 of those were starts, but I would want to see a little bit more of an impact. When she joined Angel City, I actually viewed her slight underperformance as a good thing. If she had massively overperformed, I would consider that a red flag also, and be concerned about whether she could replicate that. She still has only completed two NWSL seasons, so she could turn things around. But I think that there does need to be some concern regarding her finishing ability.
One thing that really jumps out to me is that Bright is in the 89th percentile for Average Shot Distance, with 12.1 yards (in this case, closer to goal is ranked higher). She’s not quite as close as Leroux was, but closer than most Strikers get, on average. She was also in the 89th percentile of Aerials Won, and 79th percentile of Percentage of Aerials Won. With this combination, I think that it actually detracts from her other stats. Shots closer to goal have a higher xG, and it should be easier to put them On Target. I’ll have to calculate these correlations at some point, but with that proximity to goal, I would want to see higher xG and On Target Percentage.
Possession
I want to talk about Bright’s Possession numbers next, because I think it’s important to understand her positioning. Whereas Leroux always wanted to stay right in front of goal, Bright would roam all over the attacking half. To my knowledge, nobody records Touches by channels, only which third, but from the NWSL’s touch maps after each game, we can see a much greater spread all over the pitch, really from one wing to the other. In terms of the stats that are recorded, Bright is very similar to Leroux in terms of Touches per 90 in the Defensive Third (4.21 to 4.77) and the Middle Third (16.6 to 16.3). But there is a much bigger difference in the Attacking Third (18.8 to 11.0) and specificallly the Attacking Penalty Area (5.92 to 3.42). My opinion is that this is because Leroux would let herself get marked so closely, while Bright was willing to move into space. In terms of Total Touches, Bright’s 38.9 is 7 more than Leroux’s 31.9. Still, for context, Bright’s Touches in the Attacking Penalty Area is still only 82nd percentile, and almost half of Banda’s 10.9 per 90, which led the league.
Bright is also slightly better than Leroux in Progressive Passes Received (5.66 to 4.66), which I think goes along with with the other numbers. But there is actually a much bigger difference in just Passes Received, 26.3 to 20.8. This would add some weight to my belief that Bright was often playing wider, since she was receiving more lateral passes.
Bright would also carry the ball more often than Leroux, with 21.2 per 90 compared to 14.0. There is an even more sizeable difference between them in Distance Carried (107.9 yards to 43.9) and Progressive Distance (34.3 to 11.8). However, even though this is true, these numbers pale in comparison to Bright last season with Orlando. Last year she averaged 153 yards per 90 and 61.3 Progressive yards. From the video of Bright’s goals with Orlando, especially, you can see her getting the ball in space and charging at the defense. Total Carries were actually down slightly with Orlando (20.3 ro 21.2), but she did have more Carries into the Attacking Third (1.38 to .53 with ACFC), and Carries into the Attacking Penalty Area (1.38 to 1.05).
I think that Bright is much better in a counterattacking setup, and especially at those long runs with the ball where she can build up some speed. So I don’t understand why Angel City traded for her when they were planning to play in the exact opposite style.
Bright wasn’t afraid of a Take-On; her 3.52 per 90 is in the 85th percentile. But they really didn’t go well. Her 25.9% Success rate only puts her in the 8th percentile. This is actually a big drop from last season, when she had a 47.5% Success rate, but I think that this is because she often wasn’t have those long runs where she could build up speed and get the defender moving before the Take-On. Control also looks really bad for Bright. She was in the 8th percentile for Miscontrols (4.85 per 90), and Times Dispossessed (3.01). I can remember several times where a pass into Bright would take her three touches, and usually moving back 10 yards, to bring the ball under control.
Playmaking
While I woudn’t say that Bright excelled at playmaking, she was an improvement on Leroux. Bright actually equalled Leroux’s season total in xA in her first appearance, getting .5 xA from 8 minutes off the bench in the home opener against Bay FC. That level was not sustained (nor could it be). Bright finished with 1.2 xA and .5 xAG, but did not register an assist. That puts her in the 82nd percentile of NWSL forwards for xA, but the 24th percentile for xAG. Bright had 9 Key Passes, which was the same as Leroux, but of course, in about a third of the minutes. The discrepency between her xA and xAG stands out, but that might just be due to her smaller sample size of minutes. There was not a shot taken off that .5 xA pass in the Bay game, for example, and those missed chances are going to stand out even more when she only makes 9 Key Passes. My feeling is that if she had played more, these statistics would have averaged out a little more, putting her more around the 50th percentile in both. For Key Passes, she was in the 56th percentile, which just feels a little more right to me.
For Shot Creating Actions, Bright had 21, or 2.75 per 90, which was 6th on the team for players with at least 400 minutes played. Of those 21, though, 15 were Passes. More than a quarter came from other avenues. I don’t think that anyone who watched Bright play was going to say that she was in the mold of a distributing striker, but it is nice to see the data confirm those observations. None of her SCAs became a Goal Contributing Action.
In terms of general Passing, Bright had 20.83 Total Pass Attempts (37th percentile) and 64.2% Completion Percentage (34th percentile). Short Passes, which I think are most important for a striker, were 37th percentile for Attempts and 56th percentile for Completion Percentage (76.3%). Passes into the Attacking Third was .92 (44th percentile), while Passes into the Penalty Area was 1.31 per 90 (92nd percentile). This last stat looks good, but does raise questions. By it’s nature, it almost guarantees that someone is beyond Bright, which is fine, but if the plan was to feed it to Bright under pressure, and have her find a winger or midfielder coming into the box, I’d expect to see much higher xA and xAG numbers. For example, Bia Zanaretto was the leader in Passes into the Attacking Penalty Area, but she clearly is that type of playmaking striker, and consequently was also the leader in Assists and xAG per 90.
xG +/-
Bright was on the field for 9 Goals Scored and 9 Goals Conceded, which actually gives her the best Team Goal Differential when she was on the field with 0. It says a lot about the 2024 season when not a single player had a positive number here. Her On-Field vs. Off-Field Goal Differential was +0.71, which was 4th best on the team. For xG, Bright had a -0.3 Team xG Differential, 5th best, and her On-Field vs. Off-Field was +0.32, which was 9th best on the team. I’m not sure that I want to read a lot into this, as she mostly had substitute appearances.
Concluding Thoughts on Bright
I would say that this was a lost season, and I think that a lot of that is on Angel City management. Bright wanted to leave Orlando for reasons that I don’t think were ever made clear. When it was announced that she was joining Angel City, I was optimistic, but a little uncertain. Now in hindsight, realizing that Angel City wanted to completely change their tactics, I’m not sure how they really envisioned Bright fitting into this squad. The emphasis on bringing the ball up the wings, and in a measured, build-from-the-back apprach, meant that Bright was never going to be in a position to make the maurading runs that she had as a rookie. And I don’t think that she ever really found another role to play. My impression is that she tried to do everything, and there were moments when some things worked, but it was too scattered.
I always felt like the front three played like three seperate players, rather than one cohesive unit, and I think that’s due to the strikers. Leroux would stay in the box, often just getting nullified and not creating anything, leaving her wingers on an island. But Bright was never consistent enough in any aspect to build around. You didn’t know where she was going to be, if she was looking to pass, or shoot herself, or just whether she might lose the ball in a dangerous spot. Consequently, the rest of the attack couldn’t anticipate the next move, and instead would always wait to see what would happen. And being reactive is one of the most surefire ways to slow down an attack.
Bright moved to Houston during the offseason for an initial $100,000 plus another possible $50,000 if she hits some performance marks. I think this is great business all around. Recouping almost all of the $130,000 we paid Orlando, and possibly more, is very good after such a lackluster season. And another season as bad wouldn’t have generated any interest. I think that Bright will fit in better at Houston, too. I think that Ordoñez plays best with someone alongside her, and Yazmeen Ryan will provide great service from the wing. I wish Bright the best, and hope she lands on her feet.
Katie Johnson
Johnson played 89 minutes from 5 substitute appearances. Her longest outing was 31 minutes in the 1-1 draw at Orlando. She had no shots and .1 xG. Clearly, less than 90 minutes played is too small of a sample to judge anything. I know there were some injuries, but this is definitely a case where I would love to know what the full story was. In the final group stage game of the Summer Cup, Johnson came on in the 74’ for Rocky Rodriguez, but then was taken off only 15 minutes later for Christen Press’ first appearance. Johnson never played another minute after that. The fact that Tweed took Johnson off in that game, while leaving on players who had played the entire game, said everything to me about where Johnson was on Tweed’s depth chart. And unsurprisingly, with Press and either Leroux or Bright on the bench, they were the ones that were going to be put into the game when we needed an attacking substitution.
When the season was over, Johson announced her retirement at age 30. Maybe she just felt like it was time. None of the injuries sounded extremely serious, and I certainly don’t know if she was constantly playing in pain. But it does make me sad that she decided to hang up the boots when I think that she still had many options. As she had 23 caps for Mexico, Liga MX Feminil would have made some sense. The Canadian teams in the Northern Super League were putting together their rosters, and I think that she could have been a fit there too. Even in the WSL, I had read that Crystal Palace was needing attacking reinforcements, and ultimately they brought in Katie Stengel, a player that I think has many similarities to Johnson. I sincerely hope that it was Johnson’s choice to retire, and not that she felt like there wasn’t a team for her, or she wasn’t going to get minutes. And I hope that she felt like this back in the summer too, and it was a choice just to finish her contract and then retire. Because when it was clear that she wasn’t going to get playing time, I thought that she should have been sent out on loan somewhere. Even the USLSL would work for that, as she’d be making the same salary as a loan player, but would get the chance for more minutes. And Angel City would save something against the salary cap and have another roster spot. So again, I hope this was her choice, because a lot of clubs around the world would have been thrilled to have her in their squad.
Casey Phair
Amazingly enough, Johnson’s 89 minutes were not the least amount played by a striker. That goes to Phair who played 0 regular season minutes. So there is definitely nothing to analyze in her performances. She did make 1 appearance in the Summer Cup. Yes, she is still young (she was only 16 last year). And I absolutely believe that the team should take things slowly, and not throw her into the deep end. But I cannot understand how she didn’t get to play at all. Bringing her on for even a few minutes in the final home game would have been a crowd pleaser. Or the final game in Portland could have worked too, letting her share the field, and briefly overlap, with the greatest goalscorer in history. There was nothing at stake in either game. Giving her her debut would have meant something, but it also would have taken off some of the pressure going into this year. In addition, players have to play to get better. She has already played in a World Cup, but I think that it does still take some time to get used to playing in front of big crowds, and even 5 minutes at BMO or Providence Park would have helped with that.
Phair did play 6 games for South Korea last year. And it’s part of what makes it hard to believe that she couldn’t play against an NWSL team, when we got to see her play against the USWNT. My overall impressions from that were good, though the games against the US were the only times that I saw her play. What I liked the most was that I saw her trying different things. She would run the channels and try to get in behind, but she would also drop into the half-space to receive the ball. She seemed comfortable playing with her back to goal, but she would also look to attack defenders. And it’s worth remembering that this was against some of the best defenders in the world, and against a team that was a tier above her own. She still seems like she has a long ways to go, but I think that she has a tremendous amount of potential. At 17 this year, I still don’t see her playing a major role, but I hope that she can get some regular minutes and start to achieve some of that potential.
Final Thoughts
Of the four players I discussed here, two of them are no longer with the team. Of the remaining two, one of them has not played any real professional minutes yet. Angel City did sign some attacking players. Julie Dufour has historically been a winger, and listed at 5’4”, she doesn’t seem to have the size to be a prototypical No 9. Riley Tiernan was signed after a trial and having completed her collegiate career at Rutgers. At 5’8”, she fits that mold a little better. Her best year at Rutgers was 8 Goals in 25 games as a freshman in 2021, although she did finish as the career Assist leader for the program.
Striker does still feel like a major question mark for me. There is still a lot to figure out, especially who is going to coach Angel City, and what formation and style we’ll be playing. I’ve given up on trying to guess Angel City’s salary cap situation, so I don’t know if we should expect another signing. Maybe in the summer? Maybe we’ll be surprised with Phair or Tiernan taking the role. Maybe we’ll see something different and new from Leroux. But right now, I think that this is still a position that needs to be addressed.
And that gets us through every position and every player from 2024. Looking forward to getting started on on new season. Angel City kicks off the season against San Diego, Sunday 3/16 at 3:50p on ESPN2 and ESPN+, at home at BMO.