Three Words for Week 3 of the NWSL Season

Defend: The North Carolina Courage began their defense of the NWSL Challenge Cup Wednesday night in Orlando. Both teams are looking to get back on track after wobbly starts to the regular season.

For those not familiar with the format, the Challenge Cup is a tournament that will be played throughout the 2023 season, though results will not count toward regular season point accumulation. Since its inception in 2020—as a way to get players on the pitch during the COVID-19 outbreak’s early days—the Challenge Cup was a pre-season tournament.

Last year, though, the tournament bled into the regular season…with some terrible consequences. Several regular season games has to be rescheduled as teams advanced in the tournament. Players were exhausted at the end of the tournament which led to the final game being a bit of a bloodbath.

North Carolina seemed to take a long time to recover from the 2022 Challenge Cup and all of the injuries and dings and knocks associated with it. They never really got their regular season on track, and they missed the playoffs.

Coaches are still going to be challenged with managing player minutes with the 2023 Challenge Cup round-robin and playoffs running concurrently with the regular season. Still, with a playoff prize pool of $1 million (double last year’s pool), teams want to put their best feet forward.

Sale? L’Equippe reported last week that Michele Kang was set to buy a controlling stake in French club Olympique Lyonnais féminin.

If true, this would have interesting implications on this side of the Atlantic for a couple of reasons:

1. Kang owns the Washington Spirit of the NWSL

2. OL owns OL Reign of the NWSL

OL féminin subsequently denied the report of Kang buying 52% of the club. However, they have announced that OL Reign is up for sale.

I have all the faith in the world that head coach Laura Harvey and the veteran players on OL Reign will work together to navigate what is sure to be a stressful distraction. But seriously, will we ever get through an NWSL season without some sort of ownership drama?

Troubling: There was a lot of reason for optimism around the Kansas City Current at the end of 2022. They were runners-up to the Portland Thorns for the 2022 NWSL Championship. Lynn Williams was set to return from her injury this season and they signed Debinha in the offseason.

Optimism took a troubling turn on Draft Day when the Current made a shocking trade, sending Williams to NJ/NY Gotham FC for the #2 pick in the draft.

Then, in late March, KC’s third-round 2023 draft pick Mykiaa Minniss’ mother, Nicole, wrote an Instagram post alleging the club treated her daughter poorly and set her up to fail. Among the allegations were claims that Minniss had to fly out to training camp with her own money, had to provide her own food, and make her way around a new city on her own.

Minniss took her concerns about her inability to sleep (other than naps) or eat to the team doctor who told her she shouldn’t take naps. When she wasn’t getting any communication from head coach Matt Potter and general manager Camille Levin Ashton, she requested a meeting. They reportedly laughed off Mykiaa’s concerns. The team released her shortly thereafter.

Now comes word that Potter was fired by the Current on Wednesday, just hours before the team was set to take the field against the Houston Dash. Club officials cited “issues around his leadership and employment responsibilities” as the reason behind his firing.

After taking the reins from Huw Williams last year, Potter turned the Current’s season around, leading them through a 13-game unbeaten streak on the way to the championship game against the Portland Thorns.

Kansas City was hit with a long list of injuries to start the season and has gone 0-3 with a -6 goal differential so far. Still, the timing and framing of the statement are curious, given that Potter reportedly traveled with the team to Houston. The vagueness of the club’s statement leaves an open question of whether this was an erosion of relations between coach and players or whether something else—aside from the team’s record—pushed the front office to abruptly terminate his employment.

Assistant coach Caroline Sjöblom will step in as the interim head coach. Whoever leads this team, it sounds like this club needs to rebuild trust, especially given how the Williams and Minniss situations were handled.