Individual stars embody strengths, struggles of NWSL’s NJ/NY Gotham FC, San Diego Wave, Utah Royals

The consistently competitive NWSL gave an unusually obvious sign of its reputation over the weekend, with five of the calendar’s seven matches ending in draws and only one team winning by more than one goal.

The tight margins were the perfect showcase for individual talent, which made the difference during a round of matches that mostly featured one team tactically suffocating the other and sharing the spoils. The importance of singular players wasn’t just visible in the NWSL’s five draws over the weekend, with even the only Round 13 winners – NJ/NY Gotham FC and Utah Royals – able to point to individuals while taking their three points.

However, individual efforts can be a double-edged sword. Brilliant individuals are undoubtedly an asset to any team, possessing the ability to save their team from trouble should the situation arise, but in the absence of consistent performances around these standout players, a team’s weaknesses can become evident. This week’s throwback, then, is full of good news and bad news – the teams and players who will be named are clearly doing something right, but how much they’re getting right is a completely different story.

Here’s a look at the weekend that was in the NWSL.

Gotham’s Superteam Era Finally Begins

Five long months after Gotham made a splash in free agency, the defending NWSL champions are officially kicking off their superteam era – and in style. Women’s World Cup winning quartet Tierna Davidson, Crystal Dunn, Rose Lavelle and Emily Sonnett started together for the first time last week in the team’s 2-1 win over Angel City and followed it up with a 2-0 victory over Racing Louisville over the weekend.

The results speak for themselves as much as the performances. Gotham is now building a habit of dominating possession, recording its highest numbers of the season by holding 61.3% against Louisville, as well as its best passing game after completing 87.7% of its passes. Their offensive effort still leaves a little to be desired at times, as they only managed nine shots against Louisville, but the days of recording single-digit shot counts appear to be behind them.

The individual brilliance that comes with four U.S. women’s national team players with a lot to offer is paying off for Gotham – Dunn scored against Angel City and had an assist against Louisville, while Davidson’s play on defense is a key part of the team. game plan. The best thing, though, about Gotham’s featured soloists is that they’re not exclusively members of the USWNT – just look at Ella Stevens. The team’s other free agent signing in the offseason is already having the best year of his career with five goals, including one at Louisville.

Gotham offers the ultimate example of individual brilliance by bringing together an all-star team, including big names and rare discoveries like Stevens. The superteam era may soon be on pause with the Olympics, but after months of teasing that they would become a force to be reckoned with, they are starting to live up to the hype.

Royals break losing streak

This season’s most unwanted streak has officially ended, with the Royals ending their 10-game losing streak with a 1-0 victory over expansion team Bay FC on Sunday. Defender Kate Del Fava scored the only goal of the game in the 89th minute, undoubtedly providing a sense of relief amid a difficult return to the NWSL for the Royals.

It has been a less than ideal first half of the season for Amy Rodriguez’s side, who have yet to emulate her exploits as a player and have scored just seven goals so far this season. Her track record on offense is undoubtedly the definition of an individual effort, as this year’s first overall draft pick, Ally Sentnor, has two goals and three assists this season. That includes an assist on Del Fava’s game-winning goal over the weekend and the go-ahead goal in their only other win this season – a 2-1 victory over the North Carolina Courage in March. (Coincidentally, Del Fava also scored that day.)

Sentnor has arguably been the Royals’ only bright spot this season thanks to his quick adaptation from the college game to the NWSL and is undoubtedly one of the standouts in an exciting rookie class. The fact that his impressive first season as a pro is an anomaly in his team’s performance, however, calls into question the Royals’ recruiting efforts ahead of their expansion season. The team has no obvious standout players and appears to have not taken advantage of the NWSL’s new mechanisms to sign interesting domestic and international talent, while many other teams have done so this offseason.

As long as Sentnor can shoulder the goalscoring load, it will leave the Royals vulnerable to the “one player team” label, highlighting their collective deficiencies, even if the debutant continues her good form.

Shaw and Sanchez advance to San Diego

While Gotham is at the top of this spectrum and the Royals are at the bottom, the San Diego Wave are stuck somewhere in the middle. Two of their standouts – Jaedyn Shaw and Maria Sanchez – played important roles in the 1-1 draw with the Washington Spirit, showing why they are reliable players in the NWSL.

Shaw scored his team’s only goal on Saturday, his 13th in the league and became the highest-scoring teenager in NWSL history, while Sanchez notched his second assist of the season and sixth on an open cross in the last three seasons. Shaw’s exploits are no surprise at this point, while Sanchez has been a respected forward for several years in the NWSL and is making the most of his dramatic switch to the desperate Wave.

Players like Shaw and Sanchez allow the Wave to overcome their offensive deficiencies despite their attempts to boost their offense by acquiring Sanchez and Savannah McCaskill for this season. They have the second-fewest goals scored this season, with just 11, and are mid-table in most other attacking categories, an improvement on bottom of the league at the start of this season, but far from impressive. The point of players who can do this themselves, partially, is that they can overcome whatever difficulty their team is in, and, at least to the Wave’s credit, having this combination of attackers on their roster seems like a sustainable strategy.

That being said, there is a lot to fix to ensure the Wave truly get the best out of Shaw and Sanchez.