Washington Spirit forward Trinity Rodman (2) dribbles against Kansas City Current midfielder Lo'eau LaBonta (10) in an NWSL game at CPKC Stadium on Sept. 13, 2025.

The NWSL week that was, outside of an alarming scene concerning Savannah DeMelo, can be characterized by tactical, cagey play.

These columns are generally introduced with a through-line or theme, and the fact is that there’s no connecting DeMelo’s health to tactical developments. It’s an awkward thing to grant in-depth focus to people playing a game after a moment like that, but this column would be diminished by turning away from what happened in Seattle. We’ll talk about it, but looking at that game through a soccer lens feels ridiculous.

In the other six NWSL matches, the play was a rebuttal to the enduring, dubious idea that the league is low on tactics and high on running fast. To its credit, this league combines tactical approaches with a willingness to take risks and open games up. One of NWSL’s great strengths is that the tactical ideas in place are tested against ingenuity, skill, and an almost unfathomable determination. The teams at the bottom of the table aren’t grimly parking the bus, and the teams at the top are generally not looking to play low-risk soccer en route to a 1-0 win.

This week, the tactics happened to favor goal prevention more than creation. Maybe it’s a symptom of the growing pressure in a table where five points separate third-place NJ/NY Gotham FC from missing the playoffs. Angel City FC sits in 11th place, but could vault above the playoff line with the right results this weekend.

It wasn’t a normal NWSL weekend, but it’s still a pretty normal set of standings for this league. Let’s talk about it.

All stats cited from FBref unless otherwise noted.

San Diego Wave 0:2 NJ/NY Gotham FC

Let's start with what might be the most prescient call of the 2025 NWSL season:

This was posted back before summer even began. Read American Soccer Analysis, they're a gift for this entire space.

Since this accurate summation of the Wave hit the internet, San Diego has gone 2W-4D-4L, most recently stumbling to a 2-0 home loss to NJ/NY Gotham FC. Jaedyn Shaw scored on her Bats debut, and Gotham held an expected goals (xG) edge on the night of plus-1.4 despite being out-shot 15-12.

The problem is that one-third of those San Diego shot attempts came from over 25 yards out. Only three shots were above 0.1 xG opportunities, and none were more likely to end in a goal than Trinity Armstrong's 0.18 effort 10 minutes into second-half stoppage time. As the graphic points out, the Wave were struggling to create high-value chances (a trend that has very much continued), and eventually Delphine Cascarino bangers stop flying into the top corner.

It's hard to score bangers! The Wave are the only team in NWSL averaging over 60% possession, they have only dipped below 60% in the category twice since June, and yet almost none of those passes find a teammate within 10 yards of goal, or in open space behind the defense. Their slow, patient play lets defenses set up, and a desire for structure means they don't have enough runs being made with urgency.

Outside of attacking on the dribble — the Wave have attempted more dribbles than any other team (360), though the Spirit (358) and Gotham (354) are right behind them — San Diego doesn't force defenses to scramble. Delphine Cascarino is NWSL's most prolific dribbler of 2025 thus far, but her form has become significantly less reliable following Euro 2025.

Since returning from Switzerland, Cascarino has had games where she tormented Racing Louisville and Angel City FC with the ball at her feet, but Friday's lack of impact was telling. With the France winger going 0-for-3 on attempted dribbles, offering a mere 17 carries (one off her season low), and creating 0.1 xA, the Wave attack settled for long-range shots and other contested, low-quality chances.

With Cascarino bottled up and the rest of the front four unable to offer dangerous runs, Gotham was well-positioned to pounce if San Diego made a mistake.

That's a mistake that Kennedy Wesley isn't going to make with any regularity, but look at how this clip starts: Kenza Dali, arguably the single most dependable midfielder in the entire NWSL this season in terms of giving her teammates passes they can use, is passing a time bomb back to the center back. This pass is neither far enough back to guide Wesley into more space (where she could look upfield and see her options), nor is it to feet, where Wesley would have an easier time taking her first touch.

Instead, she's stuck with a situation where she has to shuffle and reach for the ball, looking away from the pressure, and you can see Dali offering guidance to pass all the way across to either Kailen Sheridan or Trinity Armstrong. It's just that you aren't ever supposed to offer a horizontal pass across the top of your box, and especially not over the distance it'd take to pick out Armstrong.

We're not picking on Dali here (if the Take-Off had to submit a Best 11 ballot today, she'd be on it), but rather underlining what Gotham's pressing structure can do to even the smartest players. Dali has been hounded out of the middle in an attempt to change the angles, but since this is an ad hoc, in-game shift, not enough San Diego players are doing much to help. You can use referee Brandon Stevis as a line of demarcation to see the 4-on-5 Gotham has created; those are adequate odds on scripted short goal kicks, but it's extremely high-risk to attempt on the fly.

Wesley's pass is poorly hit, but even if she goes to Sheridan, Geyse is there to potentially create serious danger. If the choice is to go across to Armstrong, Esther is clearly going to arrive to intercept the pass. Gotham loves to create traps and wait for their opponent to try something complicated, and this was a great example.

Unfortunately for the Wave, this was a summary of where they're at right now. It's too complicated and too slow going forward, because teams now understand the structure of how San Diego wants to play. The game-breaking players who covered for that before aren't creating as much magic, and when the structure isn't working, there's no coherent, widely-understood idea for Plan B (or even a small tweak to Plan A).

In their final six games, the Wave have road trips to Portland, D.C., and Kansas City. They also face Orlando, who have the talent to break out of their own funk. If SoCal fans aren't stressed yet, they should be.

Kansas City Current 0:0 Washington Spirit

While the Kansas City Current are going to win the NWSL Shield in the near future, a (mostly) healthy-again Washington Spirit figured to be the best possible test of their title credentials. One trophy is virtually mathematically settled, but Saturday seemed to offer a potential preview of Nov. 22's championship game.

However, after multiple appearances under the "questionable" section of the availability report, KC opted to give Temwa Chawinga a week off. The Current are incredibly deep, but Chawinga is obviously a sui generis player, and if she's not in the mix, you're not looking at the real Kansas City Current.

Meanwhile, the Spirit played the final 24-plus minutes of this game without Hal Hershfelt, who picked up two yellow cards and was sent off in the 66th minute. To get this out of the way: by the letter of the law, Hershfelt's first yellow — the one Spirit fans were livid about — had to be given because of her raised knee.

It's not that Hershfelt went in trying to do anything but get a touch to score a goal. Innocent intentions aren't in the Laws of the Game though, and challenges like that have (sometimes) gotten a booking for around 30 years now.

The other aspect to consider is context: Washington had committed two or three fouls that were around the borderline of a booking, and Hershfelt paid a bit of a price as referee Thomas Snyder saw a chance to draw a line in the sand on physical play. It was a calculated risk for the Spirit, and this outcome was always part of that equation. It's a tough call that doesn't always happen in the NWSL, but it's also a fair decision.

Back to the main point: We talk so often about these two teams and what advantages they have, or that they're able to create. This game, instead, posed questions about how they deal with a marked disadvantage.

Let's begin with KC, who played without Chawinga and restricted Debinha to a role on the bench at the start. Ally Sentnor and Nichelle Prince stepped in, with Prince in Chawinga's place. While Sentnor and Debinha aren't the same kind of player, they're closer in thought process and skill set than Chawinga and Prince.

Prince is one of the Take-Off's favorite players to watch, because she's so often misunderstood and approaches her role like few other players in the NWSL. Despite playing as a forward or winger for almost all of her career in the league, the Canada attacker approaches her duties through the lens of an old-school No. 10. She'll score if that's what's needed, but what she really seems to enjoy is creating chances for others.

However, for KC there's an instinctual aspect to play into space down the left wing, because Chawinga makes it work so often. The Current were looking to Prince to finish moves rather than start them, which isn't ideal when you have one of the league's most "shooters shoot" players in Sentnor playing an attacking midfield role. It's understandable to stick with established patterns, but they would have been better off tailoring their attempts to penetrate around Prince as a creator rather than the player chasing in behind.

Still, it's fair to say that KC controlled the terms, even as Washington held a substantial possession advantage 11-on-11 (and more or less kept it even after Hershfelt's red card). The Current's ability to threaten in transition influenced Washington's unfamiliar formation, and their ability to get their pressing angles right made them tough to play through even without actually sending numbers to the ball.

Washington started in a 5-1-3-1 structure, hit pause on it for a few early minutes (going to a more familiar 4-2-3-1) then came back to using it once they settled down. Seeing that the plan could work and trusting your players to gain some composure is good coaching, and this was nothing if not a battle between two really savvy benches.

That brings us to Washington's disadvantage, which was playing without Hershfelt for the final 24-plus minutes. Adrián González would have been expected to go in a conventional direction, with Narumi Miura and Heather Stainbrook both natural options to come on and plug the gap in defensive midfield.

Instead, González went the other way, bringing Gift Monday and Rosemonde Kouassi into the fray for Croix Bethune and Sofia Cantore. Washington went from playing with a false No. 9 (Bethune) to having an out-and-out striker up top, and deployed arguably their most vertical threat in Kouassi on the right, with Trinity Rodman switching to the left.

This asked a lot of Deb Abiodun and Leicy Santos as a central midfield duo, but they were up to the job, and the Spirit maintained enough of a threat going forward that KC couldn't simply swamp them with pressure. Monday worked hard to prevent easy passes into the midfield, while Kouassi gave Izzy Rodriguez a reason to play cautiously.

This seemingly aggressive choice resulted in the league's most potent attack — at home and with a numerical advantage — forcing Aubrey Kingsbury into just one perfunctory save after the red card.

It was counterintuitive, and brave, but it paid dividends. The Spirit proved that you can go to CPKC Stadium and get a result without scandalous conditions, while the Current showed that they can control a game against the best without their star attraction.

It would be a gift if we saw these teams meet one more time in 2025.

Seattle Reign 1:0 Racing Louisville

Savannah DeMelo's health is obviously the overriding story from this game, played in part on Sunday before being completed in an empty Lumen Field Tuesday afternoon.

DeMelo — who was diagnosed with Graves disease and hyperthyroidism in 2024 — experienced what Racing Louisville called a "medical emergency" late in the first half, seconds after completing a pass. The scenes that followed, including obvious worry and emotion from Racing's side, are going to be hard to forget.

It was an immense relief when, later on Sunday, Racing was able to report that DeMelo was "stable and responsive" at a Seattle-area hospital. DeMelo had already been stretchered off once this season, later linking that incident to low blood pressure related to her medication. At this point it's unclear what will be next for her, but more than anything the hope is that doctors are able to find a solution that protects her health.

This was the first test of the league's new protocols over a medical emergency in what has been a highly unusual season even by NWSL standards. Savy King said Angel City FC trainers and BMO Stadium first responders saved her life back in May when she collapsed due to what was eventually diagnosed as a heart abnormality, and the league — to immense and deserved criticism — opted to complete that match.

Mercifully, that mistake was not repeated, even as staging a game in an empty stadium over 24 hours after its initial kickoff time makes for difficulties on myriad fronts. What happened to King and DeMelo — or, if you go back far enough, to Rachel Daly in 2017 — was traumatic enough, and at long last it feels like the NWSL has accepted that humanity has to come first in moments like this. It was one thing to talk about it, and another thing to see action taken to limit the damage.

“Our priority is Sav and her health and her well-being,” Louisville's Janine Sonis said after play was completed on Tuesday. “It’s a very difficult circumstance to think that soccer is at all important or carries any weight when someone that’s a part of the family is in a position like that. It’s been an emotional couple of days for sure.”

There's not much more to say beyond that. This was an important game in the context of this NWSL season, but when compared to the long-term health of any player, abandoning the match and finding a way to complete it some other time was the right move. If that means an inconvenienced broadcast partner or intense effort to secure a venue — the Reign and Lumen Field deserve credit for what had to be an immense task to complete the match — so be it.

Player health and safety has to come first. This has to be the minimum standard going forward.

Other NWSL scores

  • North Carolina Courage 2:1 Angel City FC
  • Orlando Pride 1:1 Bay FC
  • Chicago Stars 1:1 Portland Thorns
  • Utah Royals 2:0 Houston Dash

One more thing

If Manaka Matsukubo, at 21, has added this kind of strength and acceleration to her creativity and technique, the North Carolina Courage have a future MVP on their hands.

In fact, if you're an MVP literalist — the Take-Off has for years held that NWSL should have a Player of the Year award and an MVP award, since the names mean different things — you might have an argument that they already do.

This article originally appeared on Pro Soccer Wire: NWSL Weekend Take-Off: Current-Spirit tactical battle, San Diego slump in focus

Reporting by Jason Anderson, Pro Soccer Wire / Pro Soccer Wire

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