SAN JOSE, Calif. — It was collusion, clear as day. A conspiratorial collection of events aimed at hijacking this moment. A vibe heist at PayPal Park.

The weather was antagonistic: a brisk cold complemented by ominously gray clouds, teases of rain landing like threats as the storm loomed on the horizon. Then the head referee was on one. Eventually, the Houston Dash joined in the hatin’ festivities.

But all failed. The home opener for Bay FC, the glamorous new expansion team in the National Women’s Soccer League, would not be denied its jubilation. The significance and spirit of the evening was too strong for the attempts of disruption. This was too long in the making, too expensive to waste, too meaningful to be missed.

Saturday night belonged to Bay FC. To American women’s soccer and the area so vital to its history and growth. The occasion infused by the legacy of World Cups past, by the mojo of former CyberRays glory, for the sheer Gold Pride of the region.

“When you think about that, you have to think of the Founding Four,” NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said, evoking the gravitas of Bay FC’s faces, Brandi Chastain, Leslie Osborne, Danielle Slaton and Aly Wagner.

“This was really their vision. Their vision of bringing women’s professional soccer to the Bay…

The NWSL will spend its break during the 2024 Olympics playing a tournament with teams from Mexico’s Liga MX Femenil, the leagues announced today.

The NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup will feature all 14 NWSL clubs and six Liga MX Femenil teams with the highest points earned in the 2023 Apertura and Clausura tournaments.

It will feature a group stage commencing on July 19 with a semifinal round ending the week of Aug. 4. The championship match will take place on the weekend of Oct. 25.

The tournament will feature five groups, with the top four teams in terms of points advancing to the semifinals.

A quick look at the NWSL x LIGA MX Femenil Summer Cup tournament groups and format. pic.twitter.com/TztnU0udEO

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) March 20, 2024

How does this impact the NWSL schedule?

Analysis by Meg Linehan

We always knew the NWSL was planning a summer tournament to overlap with this summer’s Olympic Games, and while the league deserves credit for tapping crossover appeal with Liga MX Femenil, the Summer Cup definitely feels like the 1.0 version of a standalone summer tournament.

To be fair, this has been in the works before CONCACAF announced its new qualifiers for the first FIFA Club World Cup, but three NWSL teams are about to have to pull double…

Alex Pfeiffer became the youngest goalscorer in NWSL history in a thriller Saturday, finishing the KC Current’s fifth goal in the team’s inaugural match at its new stadium., a dramatic 5-4 win over the Portland Thorns.

Pfeiffer came on as a second-half substitute and pounced on a chested-down layoff at the top of the box in the 68th minute to make the score 5-1 Kansas City.

At 16 years, 3 months and 20 days old, Pfeiffer beats the previous record for youngest goalscorer set by the Thorns’ Olivia Moultrie in 2022 by about five months.

Another bit of history today

Alex Pfeiffer becomes the youngest goalscorer in league history at 16 years, 4 months! pic.twitter.com/XgjQmumn7t

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) March 16, 2024

“It’s huge for any player in her generation,” Current head coach Vlatko Andonovski said after the game. “She’s proved that it’s possible, we proved that all together that it’s possible.”

Portland made things very interesting in the closing stages, scoring three unanswered to make things 5-4, but KC was able to hold on.

Who is Alex Pfeiffer?

A native of St. Louis, Mo., Pfeiffer became the fourth-youngest player to sign in the NWSL when she joined the Current last year, inking her deal at 15 years and 338 days old.

She came to…

By Jeff Rueter, Meg Linehan, Melanie Anzidei and Steph Yang

Welcome to the 2024 season of the National Women’s Soccer League. This season, which kicks off with four matches on Saturday, is different from its predecessors in a few ways — primarily with the addition of two expansion teams, and the league’s biggest broadcast deal to date. The Olympics are also happening, which has prompted the league to take a midseason break and host an international club tournament while the U.S. women’s national team competes in Paris.

How you can watch the NWSL is changing in a major way this season, too. So we’ve put together this preview with everything you’ll need ahead of the regular season kickoff (and Friday night’s Challenge Cup match) from how to watch to major storylines, plus the USWNT and international connections across the 14 teams.

To keep following The Athletic’s NWSL coverage, don’t forget to follow the league and your team(s) of choice by managing your feed. And to make sure you don’t miss any of our coverage, subscribe to our women’s soccer newsletter Full Time. It’s our biggest stories paired with Full Time exclusive insights delivered straight to your inbox every week. With the season starting, we’ll be sending out each edition on Monday to make…

The San Diego Wave will soon be under new ownership, and at a record-breaking price.

Principal owner Ron Burkle has agreed to sell the club to the Levine Leichtman family for an eventual total of $120 million – easily a record outlay for an NWSL club, at nearly double the previous record of $63 million paid by the Bhathal family for the Portland Thorns in a deal finalized earlier in 2024.

Burkle will remain as the principal owner through the end of the 2024 season as part of the deal, which will be completed over the course of two transactions, according to a source briefed on the sale who was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing deal.

The source added that the sale was voted on by the NWSL board earlier this week.

The new ownership group is comprised of Lauren Leichtman and Arthur Levine, who jointly manage the investment firm Levin Leicthman Capital Partners.

Sportico was first to report news of the Wave’s sale.

“We’re thrilled to welcome the Levine Leichtman family to the ownership group of the San Diego Wave,” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said in a statement to The Athletic. “As longtime supporters of the women’s game, Arthur and Lauren know well the impact that our league can have in our society, and as savvy investors, understand the…

Sign up for Full Time, our weekly women’s soccer newsletter covering all things NWSL and USWNT

In 2024, there isn’t a looming narrative hanging over the NWSL. The league is no longer in the early stages of recovering from a widespread reckoning surrounding player welfare. It’s not a World Cup year either. Yes, the Olympics are coming and the U.S. women’s national team is going through a massive transition with incoming head coach Emma Hayes arriving later this spring, but the NWSL has a bit more clean air compared to 2023.

With that clean air, the league has grown in ways public-facing and behind-the-scenes. In the four months since Gotham FC won its first NWSL Championship at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego, the offseason has dominated the conversation with an expansion draft for the two incoming teams, Bay FC and Utah Royals FC, the reigning champion Gotham loading up its roster through aggressive free agency moves and teams across the league going big on international signings, bringing talent like Barbra Banda, Asisat Oshoala and Jessie Fleming to the United States.

Existential challenges also still exist, with the main one being the clash between the international schedule and the NWSL’s footprint as more and more competitions get added each year. CONCACAF alone…

Full Time Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s weekly women’s soccer newsletter. Sign up here to receive Full Time directly in your inbox.

Some days you’re more of Trinity Rodman needing space and others you’re the Truly Baby. I’m Emily Olsen here with Meg Linehan, Steph Yang, and Melanie Anzidei — welcome to Full Time!

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USWNT News

When will Emma Hayes lead the U.S.?

By the time Emma Hayes takes charge of the USWNT at the end of May, we will have officially waited six months since her hiring announcement. Now we know who Hayes will be game-planning for.

The U.S. will host two friendlies against South Korea on June 1 in Commerce City, Col., and June 4 in St. Paul, Minn.

In the meantime, the U.S. still has a trophy on the line in the Gold Cup after defeating Colombia 3-0 on Sunday.

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USWNT Gold Cup semifinal preview

Last time we talked, things weren’t going so well for the USWNT. The team had just lost to Mexico 2-0 in the CONCACAF W Gold Cup group stage finale, setting up a quarterfinal matchup with second-place finishers from Group B, Colombia.

I won’t lie, I had my doubts about the U.S.’s chances in this one. They were unfounded, as the U.S. won 3-0 and advanced to the Gold Cup semifinal against Canada. Read our instant reaction piece from Sunday here.

The U.S.’s…

It’s time for all new everything in the NWSL. On Tuesday, the league and Nike unveiled new primary and secondary kits for every single team in the league in the first coordinated launch for the NWSL. 

Nike took a more cohesive approach to the design of the kits. “The thoughtful designs reflect each club’s identity, provide a sense of joyful expression, and celebrate the energy created by the sport for the teams and their communities,” the press release reads. “While the primary kits are where the individual club’s unique stories come to life, the secondary kits, which feature a gradient shift from dark to light using club colors, speak to the strength of the collective.”

The good news? White shorts are gone entirely, and there’s no plain white away kits to be seen this year. The less good news? With every team’s secondary kit being part of a league-wide template, teams that had design ambition across the board now have that door closed to them. Is this maybe a chance for clubs to push for alternate third kits in the future? Maybe!

The NWSL will start selling jerseys, pre-match shirts and “an assortment of fan gear” on the store on Tuesday, with a full marketplace launch later in the week. The league also promises replica goalkeeper jerseys later this…

When Gotham FC general manager Yael Averbuch West was an active player, with a career that spanned nine years, she had no use for analytics.

“I definitely, as a player, never had access to analytics that I felt were helpful,” she said.

“I think it’s something that we’ve struggled with on the women’s side, codifying the use of data and analytics to drive decision making. And that’s for a multitude of reasons,” said Orlando Pride general manager Haley Carter, also a former player.

Carter, too, has experienced a dearth of data in her career until now, alongside teams lacking both the expertise to gain insight from those numbers and then the ability to present it to coaches who usually aren’t data experts themselves.

Now, NWSL general managers like Carter and Averbuch West find themselves in a bold new world where analytics aren’t just becoming more common for NWSL teams, but are increasingly considered a necessity. Not every team lists an analytics position yet, but multiple teams in the league — like Gotham, Pride, Washington Spirit, Bay FC and Angel City — consider analytics to be an important part of gaining a competitive advantage in several areas.

In speaking to various data analysts and general managers, it’s clear that any club with serious…

National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) side Bay FC have signed Zambia forward Racheal Kundananji from Madrid CFF for a world-record fee. 

A source with knowledge of negotiations, who is granted anonymity to protect relationships, confirmed to The Athletic that the fee for the 23-year-old is €735,000 ($785,000).

She has signed a contract until 2027 with the option of a further year. 

Bay FC general manager, Lucy Rushton, said: “We are delighted to add Racheal to our group. She is a tremendous talent with dynamic attacking qualities and an incredible physical profile who has produced for both club and country.

“Racheal has a composure in-front of goal and a natural ability to score with different types of finishes and from various locations. We believe she will continue to grow and develop at our club, showcasing her skillset and adding to the array of exciting attacking talent we have here.”

Bay FC is a newly established team in the NWSL, set to embark on their inaugural season in 2024.

Kundananji, meanwhile, has scored 33 goals in 43 Liga F games for Madrid.

At international level, Kundananji showcased her talent by both playing and scoring in the 2023 Women’s World Cup. She also boasts an impressive record of 10 goals in 18 appearances for Zambia.

She becomes the first…