
New-look USWNT dominates China in international soccer friendly
New-look USWNT dominates China in international soccer friendly
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Sydney Leroux talks all things women's soccer and NWSL
Sydney Leroux stops by to break down women's soccer and tells us about her new partnership with ARDA, the Sharing Time Off Contest.
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The U.S. women's national team downed China, 3-0, largely dominating a Saturday friendly that came with some signs that newer U.S. players are forging strong connections.
The USWNT controlled the match from start to finish at Allianz Field, with Catarina Macario and Sam Coffey scoring first-half goals amid long spells of possession. Lindsey Heaps would head home a third early in the second half on an assist from Michelle Cooper, who was lively throughout.
Lo'eau LaBonta, Cooper's teammate in the NWSL with the Kansas City Current, became the oldest player to gain their first senior USWNT cap, while goalkeeper Phallon Tullis-Joyce ultimately had little to do in her second cap. China was initially to be the USWNT's opponent in both matches in this window, but opted instead to play just this one match. The USWNT will instead play Jamaica on Tuesday, June 3.
MORE: Lo'eau LaBonta becomes oldest debutant in USWNT history
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New York Times
4 hours ago
- New York Times
Jonatan Giraldéz addresses departure from Washington Spirit: ‘Football is unpredictable'
Washington Spirit head coach Jonatan Giraldéz on Friday began his first press conference since the news of his midseason departure to lead OL Lyonnes by admitting the situation was 'not ideal.' As he gets set to coach his final three games in NWSL before moving to France, he encouraged fans and players 'keep working, keep supporting the team in the way that they were' last season when the Spirit made it to the NWSL Championship. Advertisement 'I am part of the group. I am not the most important guy,' Giraldéz said. 'I came here with a plan, probably to stay longer, but… in soccer things change so quick.' OL Lyonnes, like the Spirit, is one of three women's soccer clubs owned by Michele Kang under her expanding Kynisca Sports International organization. OL Lyonnes (formerly Olympique Lyonnais Féminin) is the most successful women's club in Europe, having won the UEFA Women's Champions League a record eight times. Giraldéz will start his job in Lyon on July 18. 'Coaching at a club like Lyon, training those players, will be a major step forward in my career,' he added. According to Giraldéz, as well as sources who previously described the move to The Athletic, the organization only began approaching the coach with the opportunity after it became clear that former OL Lyonnes coach Joe Montemurro was leaving. Australia announced Montemurro as the next coach of their women's national team earlier this week. 'From the organization, they thought that the first person to lead that project, it's me,' Giráldez said, describing the timeline for the changes. 'I have to say yes to lead that project, for sure. It's not about them, it's about us, all together, as an organization, owner, CEO and then the sporting director, and then the head coach has to decide something.' In addition to Kang's overlap of teams, Kynisca's global sporting director, Markel Zubizarreta, and Giraldéz worked together at the coach's previous club in Barcelona. Giraldéz will leave the Spirit in July and will bring two members of his coaching staff who came with him from Barcelona, fitness coach Andrés González and club analyst Toni Gordo, to Lyon. Giraldéz arrived in D.C. last summer from FC Barcelona Feminí, fresh off winning two UEFA Champions League titles with the Spanish powerhouse. When he left Barça in 2023, he made it clear he wasn't planning to stay in Europe, as he didn't want to risk facing his former club as a rival. However, OL Lyonnes and Barcelona are regular Champions League finalists. Advertisement On Friday, Giraldéz explained that he would not go directly from Barcelona to a team that competed against them, but clarified he never ruled out a return to Europe. The stopover in Washington helps add distance. 'When I left Barça, I said I didn't want to compete against them right after my departure, that's one of the reasons I came here,' Giraldéz said. 'But I'm 33 years old, and of course, Europe is still on the table. 'Also, I've said many times, we can't plan five years ahead in this sport. Football is unpredictable. I've lived it. You think you'll be in one place, and then everything changes.' Something that has been made clear by Kang's multi-club organization is that having assistant coach Adrián González waiting in the wings makes the transition more comfortable. Giraldéz said as much on Friday. Gonzalez, who was tasked with leading the Spirit through the first 15 games of the 2024 season, while Giraldéz finished the Champions League season with Barcelona, will take over the Spirit full-time again this summer. 'We found that the best option for both sides was going to Lyonnes for the next season, and here (in Washington) they can keep continuing to build some things and be able to get a lot of trophies,' Giraldéz said. 'I don't think the team is going to have less chances to win because the same ideas are coming for the future.' One thing that has been consistent at Washington is inconsistency, especially when it comes to head coaches. The Spirit have had seven coaching changes since 2021, the year they won their first NWSL Championship. After players started catching word that Giraldéz might leave, via other players and agents, they held a players' only meeting, according to goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury. 'It wasn't a big shock just because, like I said, we heard of it, so maybe that was a little easier to take,' Kingsbury said. 'But we're very happy for Jona. We're happy for Adrian. Advertisement 'We've gone through a lot of transition. I think we're well-positioned for this one, because a lot of us have already worked with Adrian. Obviously, he's been here as an assistant coach, and a lot of us had him as a head coach. Yes, we're sad to see Jona go, but just very grateful for the time that we've had with him, the foundation he's laid, the competitiveness he's brought every day.' Despite the optics, Kang has emphasized to fans and players that the Spirit was her first investment in sports, which carries weight. Kingsbury and fellow veteran Ashley Hatch repeated that on Friday. The club limited questions, however, and did not make additional front office staff at Washington or Kynisca available to the media. Under Giraldéz, the Spirit finished second in the NWSL and made it to the championship, where they fell to the Orlando Pride. They won the Challenge Cup earlier this year, a one-off match between the two top finishers in NWSL from the year prior, and currently sit fourth in the league with a 6-3-1 record. 'I know there can be some noise around situations like this, but for me, this is all part of the game,' Giraldéz said. 'Football isn't about coaches, it's about players.'

Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Wave GM says they approached 2025 as a building year, now they're chasing the NWSL Shield
For the past year, San Diego Wave general manager and sporting director Cami Levin Ashton has been commuting an hour and 20 minutes each way to work from Orange County, where she grew up and where her family still resides, to the team's offices 70 miles south. Her move to Southern California from Kansas City last summer, where she was the KC Current's general manager, had been swift, and it helped to be closer to home as she made the transition. It also didn't hurt to lean on family to help out with her one-year-old child. Advertisement Ashton Levin inherited a club in San Diego that was up against multiple challenges on and off the field, from the abrupt firing of former head coach Casey Stoney to the retirement of U.S. women's national team forward Alex Morgan. Four months after she started, the Wave ushered in new ownership in the Levine Leichtman family, who completed their purchase of the team for a $120 million valuation last October. Things only got busier in January. The Wave hired ex-Arsenal coach Jonas Eidevall, transferred defender Naomi Girma on a world record fee to Chelsea, sent attacking player Jaedyn Shaw to the North Carolina Courage and brought on international players including Kenza Dali of France, Chiamaka Okwuchukwu of Nigeria and Gia Corley of Germany. They also tapped into the top tier of the NCAA's talent offering in the NWSL's first offseason without a draft, bringing on Trinity Armstrong from the University of North Carolina, and signed goalkeeper DiDi Haračić from SoCal rival Angel City FC. The newness was raw and plentiful heading into this season, and despite the Wave making history as the first club to reach the playoffs in its inaugural year back in 2022, expectations were reasonably low for a team that finished 10th last season under two interim head coaches. Advertisement 'With so many new pieces, you just don't know how long that's going to take for it to come together, for them to blend and mesh and find this cohesion,' Levin Ashton told , reflecting on the offseason four months later. Yet as they approach their 11th match of the 2025 campaign, they sit second in the league table, four points behind the Current and a point above 2024 NWSL champions and finalists, the Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit, respectively. They've scored 21 goals by 13 different players, and on May 25, set a new club record for most goals scored in a single match with their 5-2 comeback win over the Courage. 'With what we were building this year, we really believed in the group of players that we had, both existing from last season and the pieces we added,' Levin Ashton told . 'We also really believed in Jonas (Eidevall) and the staff that we brought on board to really build something special here.' One of the pillars of NWSL lore is the often abrasive introduction that managers from overseas experience during their first season in the league — and Eidevall, who arrived in San Diego after an underwhelming run with Arsenal, seemed especially primed for that quintessential rude awakening. But Levin Ashton said Eidevall's vision for the Wave throughout his interviews aligned with hers, sparking an interest in the possibility. Advertisement 'In looking at building the roster, if you see the way that we're playing, and obviously in hiring Jonas as the head coach as well, we want to be a team that possesses the ball.' But, Levin Ashton added, 'it's possession with a purpose, because we're not just possessing to keep the ball, it's ultimately to win games. We really emphasize recruiting players that really fit into the way we want to play the game.' Following that May 25 home victory over North Carolina, Eidevall, who was recently named NWSL Coach of the Month, spoke to the media about how the team learned from previous matches against NJ/NY Gotham FC and the Portland Thorns; both meetings exposed disparities between the degree to which they felt they controlled the game and the lack of goal-scoring opportunities they created. That was their primary mandate going into their game against the Courage, and he attributed part of the players' execution of that to the work of the Wave's technical staff. 'A week like this, they've been incredibly challenging in being like, 'What if we do that? That can be a problem,'' he said, reiterating the ways they first tried to imagine potential risks in the game to mitigate them. 'It's long days, and we go over film over and over and over again, but we play out the situation, we create a lot of clarity, and I think there is no shortcut to that, so I'm very blessed with having a strong technical staff that challenges and (supports), and I think that helps us as well, being prepared for the games.' Advertisement That club-wide buy-in also required Levin Ashton to dress some of the wounds from the previous season that needed tending to. As is typical for front-office staff getting settled in at a new team, she had frank conversations with veterans about where and how the club could improve. 'It's not a surprise and not something that we're shy to talk about, the disappointment at the club last season after successful seasons,' she said, referring not only to the team's performance but the jolt of Stoney's dismissal, and the ongoing discrimination lawsuit filed by former club employees, alleging multiple claims of discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination and sexual harassment. Levin Ashton said that after a 'combination of my observations and my evaluations, and feedback I received from players, there was a need to raise some of the standards and that obviously comes with investment from ownership,' like upgrades to resources and facilities and expanding staff. Since then, the Wave have added dedicated meal and meeting spaces to their training center, and rather than constantly catering, the club hired a chef and is building out a kitchen. They're not direct responses to the broader issues exposed by last season's challenges — Levin Ashton did not delve into the specifics of conversations related to other aspects of players' dissatisfaction with the club — but they're attempts at reestablishing goodwill off the field to ensure sustainability on it. Advertisement It helps that soon, Levin Ashton will be moving to San Diego, reducing her commute from almost 90 minutes to 10 minutes to the Wave's training center, which will be crucial soon as she's expecting another child. But her vision and expectations of the team, no matter the distance traveled, remain unchanged. 'We set out this season knowing that this was a building year,' she said. 'But I don't mean we were going into the season with no expectations or no goals. I said this to the team and the staff from day one: Our expectation as a club is to be playing in November and fighting for a championship.' This article originally appeared in The Athletic. San Diego Wave, Soccer, NWSL 2025 The Athletic Media Company


Washington Post
7 hours ago
- Washington Post
Ahead of his exit, Jonatan Giráldez addresses Spirit's midseason shakeup
Washington Spirit Coach Jonatan Giráldez on Friday called the decision to depart for the French club OL Lyonnes 'the best for both sides,' speaking for the first time about his abrupt midseason exit from the NWSL club. 'I came here with a plan, probably to stay longer, but some things, you know, in soccer things change so quick,' Giráldez said at a news conference. 'And everything together we found that the best option for both sides was going to Lyonnes for the next season, and here [at the Spirit] they can keep continuing to keep building some things and for sure be able to get a lot of trophies. 'Not ending the season is a little bit strange, but I am not the most important person here. The club is going to continue with [another] head coach, with the same players, with the same fan base. So I'm here right now. In one, two months, I'll be out, but life continues. … I wish them for sure all the best.' Giráldez, 33, was named the Spirit's coach last January and officially joined the club in June 2024 after finishing the season with Barcelona, where he spent three years and won back-to-back Champions League trophies. He oversaw the second half of the Spirit's 2024 season, which ended with a loss in the final, and won his lone piece of NWSL silverware in March's Challenge Cup. He will lead Washington for its next three games before assistant Adrián González takes the top job on a permanent basis. González's first match at the helm will be Aug. 3, when the Spirit meet the Portland Thorns at Audi Field. Spirit majority owner Y. Michele Kang owns a controlling interest in Lyonnes, a French power that has won a record eight Champions League titles, through her multi-club organization Kynisca. She also owns England's London City Lionesses. Giráldez said the move came together within the past few weeks, when it became clear that Joe Montemurro would depart Lyonnes after one season in charge to become coach of the Australian national team. 'From the organization, they thought that the first person to lead that [Lyonnes] project, it's me,' Giráldez said. 'I have to say yes to lead that project, for sure. It's not about them, it's about us, all together, as an organization, owner, CEO and then the sporting director, and then the head coach has to decide.' Kynisca's global sporting director is Markel Zubizarreta, who overlapped with Giráldez at Barcelona. Zubizarreta is listed as leading all sporting projects at Lyonnes and London City and 'assisting' the Spirit. Giráldez signed a three-year deal with Lyonnes. Fitness coach Andrés González and analyst Toni Gordo will join him in France. He also said Friday he and his wife, Olaia, are expecting their second child this month. 'I never speak about projects on three, four, five years. You have to speak about today, about the present, about the option that you can grow today and let's see what is going to happen in the future,' Giráldez said. 'We need to be prepared as a professional, we need to be prepared as a family to know that something can change in any moment, and the only thing I can do is be positive on that.' The Post reported this week that the Spirit last offseason turned down requests by multiple NWSL teams to interview González for head coaching jobs. The 35-year-old went 10-4-1 in his interim stint last year. 'He made an amazing job last season doing a smooth transition,' Giráldez said. 'It was so easy for me to have a good adaptation from Day 1 because all the information he could share and express with the players was brilliant. I'm very proud of him.' The club limited questions on the coaching transition to Giráldez's opening statement and four follow-up opportunities before shifting to Sunday's match against the North Carolina Courage. Interim general manager Nathan Minion, who took over after Mark Krikorian stepped down earlier this season, and Sporting Director James Hocken were not made available. González will be the club's fifth permanent head coach since 2021. 'We've gone through a lot of transition. I think we're well positioned for this one because a lot of us have already worked with Adrián,' goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury said Friday. 'We're sad to see Jona go but just very grateful for the time that we had with him, the foundation he's laid, the competitiveness he's brought every day.' The Spirit was the first club Kang purchased as she built Kynisca, which is based in London. In the years since, Lyonnes and London City have earned trophies, unveiled rebrands and announced plans for dedicated training facilities. (Kang has spoken of a potential rebrand and hopes for a Spirit-specific training complex, but the club has not offered updates on those fronts this year.) Forbes reported this week that Kang is targeting a South American club. Washington is fourth in the NWSL standings with a 6-3-1 record. 'I don't think the team now is going to have less chances to win because the same ideas are coming for the future,' Giráldez said. 'So I know that it is a little bit strange in terms of organization because we are moving pieces between clubs. But again, all the decisions made are thinking that's the best for both sides and that's the reason why I'm going to leave the club in a few weeks.'