The NWSL offseason is generally busy, but news usually breaks in bursts. Lynn Biyendolo’s December trade from NJ/NY Gotham FC to the Seattle Reign, for example, came just eight days before Yazmeen Ryan left the same club for the Houston Dash, which happened just three days before Olympic silver medalist Gabi Portillo joined Gotham from Corinthians. There was a different flurry of news that captured as much attention, if not more, a month later – the choice of three U.S. women’s national team players to leave the NWSL altogether. In a span of four days, Naomi Girma, Jenna Nighswonger and Crystal Dunn swapped clubs in the U.S. for counterparts in Europe, completing moves just as the transfer deadline closed across the Atlantic Ocean. That set of moves unintentionally set the tone for the rest of the NWSL offseason, transforming the usual preseason conversations about intraleague dynamics to discussions about where the American falls in the global landscape as women’s soccer continues its rapid growth.
That narrative continues to follow the NWSL like a shadow ahead of the 2025 regular season, which begins on Friday. A quote from the Washington Spirit’s Trinity Rodman, arguably the league’s biggest star, in which she admitted that it’s “just a matter of when” she opts to play overseas. The somewhat steady stream of headlines has almost positioned the NWSL and Europe, as a broad concept rather than a series of countries with different leagues, as two sides in the midst of a tug-of-war for the sport’s top talents. That characterization is not necessarily false, but it does lack some necessary context.
The strange truth of the offseason transfers is that it is not an indictment of the NWSL at all – or any one organization in particular, for that matter. The international moves are an example of the new realities of women’s soccer, ones that signal the increased investment and further professionalization of the sport and reflect the almost breakneck speed at which nuanced dynamics change. A lot of it also comes down to a simple thing that has been true to women’s soccer for decades – the timing of the first year in a new four-year cycle.
The pull of Europe
Girma’s transfer from the San Diego Wave to Chelsea kicked off the apparent rush of USWNT players moving to Europe, though that was newsworthy in its own right. Chelsea paid a transfer fee of $1.1 million for the defender’s services, setting a new record fee in the women’s game and making Girma the sport’s first million-dollar player. It’s a worthy designation for Girma, who USWNT head coach Emma Hayes once described as “the best defender I’ve ever seen,” and is in itself emblematic of NWSL clubs’ competition with their counterparts in Europe – Chelsea broke a record set a year earlier by Bay FC, who reportedly spent nearly $800,000 to land Zambian forward Rachael Kundananji.
The Olympic gold medalist now joins a host of USWNT players in Europe, though the group is mostly confined to the small number of clubs across the Atlantic that have consistently shown their ambitions in the women’s game. Girma counts Catarina Macario and Mia Fishel as teammates for club and country, while Nighswonger and Emily Fox are also colleagues at Arsenal and Dunn joined Korbin Albert at PSG. Captain Lindsey Heaps, meanwhile, plays at Lyon, Europe’s most successful club now run by the deep-pocketed owner of the Spirit, American businesswoman Michele Kang.
Those clubs have been happy to splash cash on players for several years now, though at a rate that dwarfs just about every other team in Europe. For some, it does not compare to the NWSL, where a majority of the league’s 14 teams spend at similar rates and the level of competition remains incomparably high most weeks of the year.
“I say this all the time to people,” Kansas City Current midfielder Lo’eau LaBonta said. “I have friends in so many different leagues, I would say this league is the best one because everybody can compete to win whereas in other leagues, you have four good teams, six good teams, tops. Here, I think every team can compete and that’s why I like the international tournaments we do because it does show right there, prove who’s the better one. The [NWSL x Liga MX] Summer Cup was fun. We did [The] Woman’s Cup as well, so just to see those different teams but yeah, overall, I think just because everyone, every team can compete to win here.”
The ambitious European clubs, though, have one thing that benefits them currently – the calendar. This year marks the start of a new four-year cycle in women’s soccer, which will conclude with the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil and the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. USWNT players will not have major international competition for two years and several have used the opportunity to try something new, much like Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd did in 2017 with their respective moves to Lyon and Manchester City. The break in international competition means USWNT players have the chance to try something new, both for professional and personal reasons.
“I think change is always going to come with a challenge. It’s not always going to feel good,” Dunn said about her PSG move, which marks her second spell in Europe after a period playing for Chelsea from 2017 to 2018. “I’m really proud of being able to make this decision at this stage in my career. I think you find that, [mostly], younger players are doing this and I always encourage them to do it. I’m like, ‘You guys have to go overseas at least once in your career.’ I think it’s so great to, culturally, add something new to your life.”
USWNT players have a history of coming back to the NWSL at some point – Morgan and Lloyd were in Europe for less than a year, and the same goes for Sam Mewis and Rose Lavelle when they joined Manchester City in 2020. The new professional standards of the women’s game in the U.S., though, mean players have more freedom of choice than they once did. The U.S. Soccer Federation paid USWNT’s club salaries through the 2021 NWSL season, a decision that came in the midst of the women’s national team’s successful fight for equal pay. Their contracts now resemble their counterparts in Europe and in the men’s game, making it easier for players like Hepas and Fox to extend their European stays for several years.
The calendar arguably dictates moves from the NWSL to Europe just as much as the money does, but it also explains more than just the transfers across the Atlantic – it feels foundational to the intraleague movement that took place this summer.
Another offseason defined by big trades
The NWSL is an increasingly international league but USWNT players remain the foundation to the product and in the first of the national team’s two “off” years, stars have used the opportunity to give themselves new challenges.
Chief among those players are Ryan and Jaedyn Shaw, who requested a trade from the Wave and joined the North Carolina Courage in January. Shaw broke into the USWNT in 2023 during the team’s post-World Cup rebuild and won gold in Paris last year, but is using the first year of the new cycle to build a foundation to grow in time for the 2027 World Cup.
“I wanted to take my game to the next level, therefore I wanted a new change of scenery, new eyes on me,” she said. “I just wanted to work on the things that Emma and I have talked about, just like the fitness, the physicality, the defending, the tactics and everything. I just really wanted to dive into that so that I can succeed more in both environments and make those two mesh into one.”
Ryan, meanwhile, entered the national team picture last fall as Hayes kicked off a months-long plan to expand the player pool. She was in the midst of a standout season at Gotham, notching nine goals and 10 assists in 2024, and used the offseason to further her own growth and also get closer to her home state of Oklahoma. The Dash sent a league record of $400,000 in allocation money to Gotham to land Ryan, who has the opportunity of becoming the standout player for a new-look team.
“Just being closer to home and the fact that they are in a rebuilding stage and kind of just looking for pieces to continue their success so I’m just looking forward to doing that,” Ryan said. “I think there’s freedom and so much room to grow and so many things to do so I think it just gives the room to keep failing knowing there’s no expectation at all and that we will eventually succeed and put it all together but, I mean, I think it’s definitely doable and with the new coach [Fabrice Guatrat] and everybody that we have on the team, I’m excited to see where it goes.”
The Dash’s new feel includes first-time head coach Gautrat and Angela Hucles Mangano, the new president of women’s soccer at the club. Ryan is not the only buzzy NWSL veteran who could have a standout season if things go right for the Dash. Midfielder Danielle Colaprico joined the club this winter from the Wave, making the perennial bottom-dwellers the latest team to transform overnight into one of the league’s top sides in the mold of 2023 champions Gotham and 2024 victors Orlando Pride. Others have taken note.
“This league, I’ve continued to say, is the best league and I never want other teams to not do as well as us,” LaBonta said. “I want them to be the best they can be because when you’re out there, it’s only going to improve the game, grow the game so how far this league has come and how good some teams are getting like Houston, for example. Bottom of the table last year and now they look like a force this year so I love that. I love that for the players, for the organization and then that just helps the league grow the game so I’m excited for that.”
Destination league label stays intact
The Dash’s attempt at a rebuild offers the latest example of the NWSL’s trademark competitiveness, which is also a reason why a healthy number of players remained exactly where they were this offseason. That includes the USWNT’s Tierna Davidson and Emily Sonnett, who were in and out of Gotham’s team during their first season with the club because of national team commitments like the Concacaf W Gold Cup during preseason and the Olympics. The limited interruption will only benefit Gotham, who still enjoyed an impressive season with runs to the Summer Cup final and semifinals of the playoffs.
“I think that’s something that’s really helpful for continuity purposes,” Davidson said. “I think last year, there were a lot of things where we felt like we got into a really good groove and then it was like, ‘Oh, we have to go again,’ so I think to be able to get into that good groove and to be able to sit there and stay there for a little bit is something that I think we’re all excited to feel.”
Sonnett believes it will benefit the league as a whole.
“Maybe there was a whole ‘nother level that we could have gotten to,” she said. “I think any team who makes the semifinal wants to see if they can get to the final. I think the new additions to the team has allowed, without a camp, the whole group to be together with the time for the amount of time that we’ll have is really important — and I’m just saying that for Gotham, [it’s] for anyone — to really layer in what the coach wants and really integrate players.”
The league has welcomed a healthy number of international talents in recent years, most notably Bay’s Kundananji, the Pride’s Barbra Banda and the Current’s Temwa Chawinga. The trio have extended the NWSL’s reach to Africa in a major way, both in terms of audiences and offering an increased spotlight to talented players from overlooked countries.
“I always get motivated when I see my friends from the same continent, from the same country or just let me just say the continent because all Africans, we are just one,” Kundananji said. “If you have seen the history of Africa and soccer, we were lacking a lot of exposure, sponsorship, even though right now we don’t have the sponsorship we need but I think things are changing in Africa and we are getting more recognized by everyone. The support, they are giving us despite not having the sponsorship is motivating us and how our friends are doing out here is motivating us to even do better. We are enjoying the game and whenever we come here, I would say we have everything that we’ve never had where we come from so it’s more like motivating us to stay on the top and make sure that you still have what you need.”
Banda, Chawinga and Kundananji all joined the NWSL in 2024 after the league allocated two more international roster spots to each team, bringing the total to seven. It was one of several rule changes that came as part of an open dialogue between team general managers and the NWSL’s front office staff, including a transfer fee mechanism that simplifies intraleague and international moves. Each of those changes, combined with the salary cap that’s up to $3.3 million in 2025, has helped NWSL teams stay competitive with European clubs but stay true to the league’s ultimate goal – maintaining competitive balance.
“The [transfer] threshold and salary cap are also there so that we can generate competitive balance, which is a philosophy of the league,” Carlin Hudson, the NWSL’s senior head of strategy, said. “I would say that our policies are created with our overall philosophies in mind and with input from the clubs on what they’re seeing in their day-to-day ecosystems.”
The league is particularly bullish on the salary cap, which is uncommon in global soccer but a fixture of American sports.
“I think our salary cap is what allows us to be the most competitive league in the world,” Hudson said. “It’s what allows us to have franchises that can go from last to first over the course of the year it’s what allows us to build fandom in all areas of the country and not just in a few markets … I think the salary cap has gotten a lot of heat for being a limiting factor but when you set limits around something, it means that people start to innovate and come up with creative solutions and I think that by encouraging that innovation, it’s very much at the ethos of what the NWSL does on a broader scale.”
The NWSL is not just a destination league for players at this point. Foreign coaches have worked in the league for its entire history, with ex-Barcelona boss Jonatan Giraldez becoming the most high-profile newcomer to the NWSL when he joined the Spirit last summer. As a result, playing styles around the league have become increasingly diverse, something that was not necessarily by design but one that is alignment with the global growth of women’s soccer. It is also ultimately the reason why the NWSL is not sweating over this year’s departure of USWNT players.
“The globalization of the club game will naturally lend itself to more varieties of play within our league,” Hudson said. “The international exposure, I think, will naturally lend itself to more variety of style of play as well as international coaches coming into the NWSL, so it’s not something that we are actively trying to produce but through the increased globalization of club soccer, is coming to life in its own time.”
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