It’s the most confusing time of the year: one-third of the way through the National Women’s Soccer League season, and several teams do not look like themselves. Some are exceeding expectations while the basement of the standings features a perennial playoff contender and one of last season’s finalists.
Sample sizes, however, are small — we’re just seven weeks into the regular season, and the concurrent NWSL Challenge Cup only just began last month, with some teams not even featuring in that competition yet. Inevitably, though, the dog days of summer often bring a regression to the mean across the league.
Will the league table, as it stands now, look this way come October? Almost certainly not. It’s perhaps too early to completely ignore the two-month-old preseason expectations for the NWSL’s 12 teams, but we have to look at what the start of the season is telling us, and how reality has matched up to such expectations.
So, here is how the regular season is shaping up for each team — from best to worst with their win-loss-draw records — and how likely it is that current form will be sustained.
Preseason expectations: Toss up. Washington was not good last year. The Spirit followed a 2021 title run with a second-from-bottom finish in 2022, earning just 19…
