Tag: Chicago Red Stars

‘I didn’t know if I’d wear this jersey again’ – Leroux emotional after scoring on injury return

Leroux scored just 12 minutes into her first appearance in nearly a year

An emotional Sydney Leroux admitted she wasn’t sure if she would ever play for Angel City FC again after she marked her return from injury with a goal.

Leroux was traded to Angel City last summer but made just three appearances for the club before suffering an ankle injury that kept her out for nearly a year.

The striker finally made her return to the pitch against the Chicago Red Stars on Monday night, coming on as a 76th-minute substitute with her team down 2-0. Just 12 minutes later, she got on the end of an Alyssa Thompson cross to halve the deficit in an eventual 2-1 defeat.

It was Leroux’s 40th career NWSL goal, and it made her only the third player in league history to score for six different teams

Speaking to CBS after the game, the 33-year-old held back tears as she admitted she was unsure if she’d be able to return to the pitch.

“Obviously it’s been super emotional,” she said. “I didn’t know if I was going to put on this jersey again. So it was really cool to get out there and score.”

Asked what she was thinking when Thompson got on the ball, Leroux said: “That it’s going to get to me somehow and that I’m going to get there first.”

“I think I owe a lot to the fans,” she added. “I came here last year and I was supposed to make a difference. And I could only play like a game and a half. And so I’m just happy that I could show up today as much as I possibly could.”

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NWSL Weekend Take-Off: Shaw’s central shift, extreme parity highlight week nine

Calling all mentality monsters

When people talk about the NWSL being the world’s most competitive league, this is what they’re talking about.

Parity is back in a big way. The top five teams are separated by one single point — shout out to still league-leading NJ/NY Gotham FC for having that one-point edge over four teams on 16 points — while the Chicago Red Stars got a massively needed win to hopefully put themselves back on course.

Qualities like focus and intensity kept coming up in press conferences, with some teams not quite having it until the late stages, and others seeing it slip away as their game went on. As we drift closer to the midway point of this 2023 season, with the newness of the season wearing off, summer’s heat increasing, and team leaders and stars in many cases heading off to the World Cup, the mentality monsters are going to be the ones getting the results.

Here’s your Take-Off for week nine.

NWSL Weekend Take-Off: Gotham FC top the table after topsy-turvy results

No one’s flying higher than the Bats

Just like everyone expected, NJ/NY Gotham FC is in first place in the NWSL, while the Kansas City Current and Chicago Red Stars are struggling.

It’s fun to start with a joke. Obviously no one really thought the standings would include Gotham FC — for the first time since 2013! — in first place in late May. While Chicago’s off-field problems always looked like they’d undermine their 2023 season, KC sitting in 11th after following a run to the 2022 final with a blockbuster offseason? It’s arguably more of a shock than Gotham’s ascent.

This wasn’t the most artful or edifying NWSL weekend, but with the season now over 36% complete, we have enough to start really sketching out a final product for teams rather than discussing various works in progress. Let that be your North Star as the Take-Off rumbles on.

NWSL Weekend Take-Off: fit Spirit flying, Louisville off the mark as standings tighten

The NWSL crucible is red hot these days

Ask anyone about NWSL and they’ll probably tell you it’s the world’s most competitive league.

This past weekend’s results are exactly what they’d have in mind. Racing Louisville came in winless, yet came up with a dominant 3-0 win. The Houston Dash and North Carolina Courage beat title contenders, the San Diego Wave broke out of a mini-slump with a back-to-basics win, and the Washington Spirit overcame a three-game week to pick up three points on the west coast. Even the lone draw in the set saw the Orlando Pride, a team that entered the weekend in 11th place, go on the road and outplay a Gotham FC team that sits in third place.

Sometimes the truisms are actually true. As we’ll get into immediately after this paragraph, this week showed that to win in NWSL you need world-class mental and physical toughness to go with outstanding skill (we see you, Ebony Salmon and Abby Smith).

Let’s jump into the crucible.

NWSL Weekend Take-Off: Golazos abound as hard times continue in Chicago, Houston

The caliber of NWSL goals is through the roof right now

This past round of NWSL matches saw an abundance in glorious goals and outstanding individual play.

Trinity Rodman set one of those goals up but won’t win the league’s player of the week award for reasons, while Alyssa Thompson bolstered her credentials as some kind of sorcerer and the Portland Thorns hit the absolute heights of what a team working in concert can do, only to end up with a draw after being Kerolin-ed. If you live for highlights, you could have easily over-indulged.

On the other hand, it was a rocky day at the office for the Chicago Red Stars, while the Houston Dash and San Diego Wave were left frustrated once again on the attacking end.

What’s right? What’s wrong? Let’s get into it:

Red Stars fire GM Lomnicki for ‘not sharing important information’

Lomnicki had only been in her position since January

The Chicago Red Stars have fired general manager Michelle Lomnicki for what the club said was a failure to “share important information with club leadership.”

Lomnicki, a former Red Stars player, was named the club’s associate general manager in January 2022. This January, the Red Stars removed the associate title, giving Lomnicki full control over the team’s roster.

But Lomnicki’s time as Red Stars general manager has come to an end after just four months.

In a statement, the club said that Lomnicki was immediately fired for what it called a “lapse in judgement.”

“Yesterday the Board of the Chicago Red Stars ended Michelle Lomnicki’s employment immediately after learning about a lapse in judgement to not share important information with club leadership,” the statement read.

The Athletic reported that the issue stemmed from the relationship between Lomnicki, her husband Wes Lomnicki, and former Utah Royals head coach Craig Harrington.

Harrington is currently serving a two-year NWSL suspension for inappropriate conduct and sexual comments made to players, but was hired as an independent contractor in January by youth club Chicago Empire FC.

Wes Lomnicki serves as the sporting director for Empire FC, while Michelle Lomnicki was listed as a female technical and performance consultant for the club until early May.

Speaking on a call with reporters on Friday, Red Stars head coach Chris Petrucelli said he was mostly in the dark on the situation.

“I don’t know that there’s much I can share with you,” he said. “The club has provided a statement, and really my goal here was to talk about the match, so I’m hoping we can head in that direction. I found out the way everybody else did.”

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NWSL Weekend Take-Off: Youth movement on display as league makes history

NWSL is always bonkers, but this weekend was off the charts

Even by NWSL standards, this past weekend was truly outlandish.

It’s perhaps fitting that this weird, wonderful league’s 1,000th game came mere hours after a weather delay of over three hours resulted in a match being called with fewer than 90 minutes played for just the third time ever. It just feels right that the sequence of events here was a 52-minute game in which a lack of a clear process seemed to be a problem, then a major league milestone in terms of longevity, with both followed by the league’s second-ever goalkeeper goal. That’s just the NWSL for you.

In the midst of all that chaos, though, some of the league’s best young stars produced incredible moments, and the Orlando Pride authored the shock result of the season thus far. Settle in as we look back on what could stand as the league’s wildest weekend of 2023.

NWSL Weekend Take-Off: Ertz changes Angel City, Williams and Kizer standing out

Big names are shaking things up in the NWSL

The NWSL returned to regular season play after its first dalliance with the new Challenge Cup format, and gave fans plenty to think about.

Julie Ertz made her first appearance in the league in over two years, and the early signs are that her presence will change a lot about how Angel City FC executes. That follows some positive changes that came in part from Lynn Williams arriving with NJ/NY Gotham FC this winter, while Cece Kizer’s return to fitness has opened up missing elements for the Kansas City Current.

Unless you’re the Portland Thorns, change is good at this part of the season. For some teams, that means staying the course in anticipation of changes for the better coming to fruition. In other cases, we may have a couple of teams who need to consider more marked changes to avoid being left in the dust.

Here’s your look back at another eventful weekend in the NWSL:

NWSL Weekend Take-Off: Broadcasting woes and new wrinkles for Reign, Red Stars

Once fans could watch last weekend’s games, they got plenty of drama

The international window is over, and NWSL came back with its customary mix of thrills and drama on the field.

Two stoppage-time winners, a two-goal comeback in LA, two teams hanging onto road results under intense late pressure, a league record broken, a team people wrote off putting four goals past a projected contender, and some spectacular goals? That sounds like the NWSL.

Unfortunately, so does a broadcasting own goal that is arguably the major story from this weekend’s games. The NWSL giveth, and the NWSL taketh away.

Pro Soccer Wire‘s NWSL Weekend Take-Off is here to cover all of the highs and lows:

Swanson undergoes knee surgery, offers no USWNT return timeline

Swanson spoke for herself after successful surgery

Mallory Swanson on Tuesday confirmed that she had undergone knee surgery.

The U.S. women’s national team star was diagnosed with a torn patellar tendon after a collision with Ireland defender Aoife Mannion eventually saw her stretchered off in Saturday’s 2-0 win.

Neither Swanson nor U.S. Soccer has provided a recovery timeline just yet. Patellar tendon tears tend to come with a roughly six-month rehab course, which would rule Swanson out of the 2023 World Cup.

In a post on her Instagram account, Swanson gave the latest update on her condition.

“This is hard. I’m in shock and don’t have much to say other than, thank you to everyone for the messages,” wrote Swanson. “I feel the love and prayers, and holding them close to my heart.

“Surgery this morning was a success. I’m thankful for my trainers, doctors, coaches, and teammates for their help throughout this process. The beauty out of all of this, is that God is always good. He’s got me and always has.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq6C4XHu57I/?hl=en

A successful surgical procedure was the best news Swanson, the USWNT, and the Chicago Red Stars could have hoped for given the difficult circumstances.

However, as USWNT head coach Vlatko Andonovski told reporters on Monday, there is no direct way to replace a player who had stepped on the pitch at Austin’s Q2 Stadium as the team’s most in-form goalscorer. Swanson scored at least one goal in each of the previous six USWNT matches, a spell which included a match-winner against Germany and braces against both New Zealand and Canada.

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