Interim coach Adrián González will lead the team in its next two matches, with a transition to conclude during a break in the schedule
Jonatan Giráldez has joined up with the Washington Spirit, but his debut as an NWSL head coach won’t come until well into July.
Interim head coach Adrián González, who has overseen 10 wins in 14 NWSL matches, will continue as the team’s manager of record in Saturday’s home clash against the North Carolina Courage, as well as for the team’s trip to face Bay FC on July 6.
“We want to do the transition as smooth as possible,” González told reporters during a Friday press conference. “We’ve been talking with players, with different departments of course, with [Spirit GM Mark Krikorian], with [owner Michele Kang].
“I’m gonna be on the bench tomorrow [versus North Carolina], against Bay FC, and after that, we have that CBA break and summer, so we thought that it was the best option to to make that transition.”
Giráldez, who arrived in the U.S. last week, is set to fully assume the head coach role in a NWSL x Liga MX Femenil Summer Cup clash against Chivas, which is set for July 21 in Philadelphia.
Washington plans to use that 15-day gap between games, as mandated by the NWSL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NWSL Players’ Association, as a sort of brief preseason to further its adaptation under Giráldez.
González said that Giráldez has been involved in training sessions and will play a part in matchday coaching, and emphasized the desire to keep the changes small and manageable for all parties.
“It’s been pretty smooth,” explained González. “We’ve been working to make that transition easy, and the team culture that we have right now, it’s unbelievable…we have the same intensity during the training sessions. We have the same routines, the trainings are similar. So, we are not changing a lot of things.”
The Spanish manager’s first league match in charge may be a massive one, though, with the Spirit resuming its NWSL campaign on August 25 with a home game against the league-leading Kansas City Current.
Spirit looking to minimize disruption
Speaking with Pro Soccer Wire on Friday, Krikorian explained that the decision has been in place for several weeks.
“All of us were involved: Jona, myself, a sports psychologist, Michele [Kang] was part of it,” explained Krikorian, who noted that Giráldez is involved with training sessions already and will “to a certain extent” be involved during these next two matches.
“We’ve taken a good look at all of the circumstances surrounding the transition with Jona arriving, and thought that probably the best approach for us to take is a slow integration…trying to create a situation that’s the least disruptive to the team,” said Krikorian.
In an interview with Pro Soccer Wire on Tuesday, Giráldez underlined the delicate balance of bringing a coach in midseason while a team is already thriving.
“It’s my responsibility to be smart, to decide what I should do in the next days [and] coming weeks,” said Giráldez. “I am [becoming] part [of the team] in the middle of the season. That is not an easy situation, and we have to make a small transition to keep helping the players, because they are the protagonists.”
Giráldez, whose hiring was confirmed all the way back in January, arrived with two staffers brought over from Barcelona. Fitness coach Andres González will join Vice President of Performance, Medical and Innovation Dawn Scott’s staff, while analyst Toni Gordo will bolster the Spirit’s analytics team.
Once the transition is complete, González will join Mike Bristol, Mami Yamaguchi, and Morinao Imaizumi as an assistant coach.
In an interview with Pro Soccer Wire, the new Washington Spirit coach explained how he plans to keep a winning team on course
The Washington Spirit are one of the most unusual projects in NWSL history, and the next step took place Tuesday, when new head coach Jonatan Giráldez addressed media for the first time.
Giráldez spoke with Pro Soccer Wire during a whirlwind day of media and other obligations for the Spanish coach, and quickly alluded to how part of his job at the moment is to simply not disrupt a positive first half of the season.
“It’s my responsibility to be smart, to decide what I should do in the next days [and] coming weeks,” explained Giráldez, who added that his focus was entirely on his new squad. “I am [becoming] part [of the team] in the middle of the season. That is not an easy situation, and we have to make a small transition to keep helping the players, because they are the protagonists.”
The former Barcelona head coach, who exactly one month ago won a second straight UEFA Women’s Champions League, has arrived in D.C. in a curious moment.
Normally coaching changes come after on-field turmoil or with the team’s previous manager leaving for another opportunity. The Spirit instead announced Giráldez would become its head coach over six months ago, with Adrián Gonzalez operating as interim coach while the 32-year-old manager finished his contract with Barça.
In the meantime, both have thrived. As the spring concluded, Giráldez lifted the UWCL trophy for a second time in his career and then celebrated a third Liga F crown.
The Spirit, meanwhile, recovered from the unexpected disappointment of the 2023 season to become one of the NWSL’s best sides. Washington sits third in the standings, just one point behind the Kansas City Current and Orlando Pride.
Giráldez, in fact, arrived just in time to see his new club surpass its 2023 points total, as Washington’s 2-0 win over NJ/NY Gotham FC gave the club 31 points on the season (one more than last year’s total of 30).
While the mood within the Spirit camp is understandably high, Giráldez is cognizant of the fact that his arrival — no matter how much of a coup it is for the Spirit, and indeed for the NWSL as a league — could destabilize a team that has won 10 of 14 matches.
“When you’re winning, people are happy. That is normal,” said Giráldez, reflecting on his first impressions of the group after their win at Red Bull Arena. “The position in the table is good. We won against one of the best teams in the league, Gotham. And now, what they want is to take advantage about all these feelings to keep improving, to keep moving forward.”
González, who will remain on the Spirit’s staff as an assistant coach, was selected because he and Giráldez were familiar with each other, and had similar ideas in terms of style of play and ways to lead a team. However, the incoming manager recognized that he and his compatriot will impact the Spirit in different ways.
“I have a kind of leadership, for sure [González and I] are different,” admitted Giráldez. “We are not the same person. But in the end, for me it’s like, show as you are.
“Being smart on that and understanding that when we are speaking football, is much easier for me, because we are seeing the same thing, and then try to have a good connection with [the team].”
Coaching one team, particularly one with all the expectations placed on Barcelona, is enough of a challenge. The idea of trying to get up to speed on the Spirit on top of that is daunting, but Giráldez said he was able to be “100% focused on Barça” while still using some down time to keep up with developments in Washington.
“You have time to speak sometimes with the staff and Adri,” said Giráldez, before explaining that those conversations largely focused on club structure and culture.
“For me, the beginning was trying to connect all the players, work in the same direction and have a professional culture,” explained the Galicia native. “And then, try to connect as well all the staff members, understand which is the role of each one, know as best as possible all the persons who are working around the staff, to give them the opportunity to show their skills.
“If you are committed and everyone is working 100%, it’s much better for the players because they will be 100% ready for them. So on that side for me the beginning, it was like ‘Okay, we need to create this connection. Players and staff, be committed, training 100%.’ [I needed to] know exactly what they can do.”
Giráldez said that in terms of on-field matters, the discussions only focused on some general points, with González and assistants Mike Bristol, Mami Yamaguchi, and Morinao Imaizumi entrusted to take it from there.
Giráldez plans to ‘keep continuing with the dynamic’
Washington made the choice to let González remain interim head coach for Saturday’s win at Red Bull Arena, and in a separate interview with Pro Soccer Wire, Spirit general manager Mark Krikorian emphasized that the club is in a position to take its time and get the transition right.
“It’s not, ‘you guys figure it out,'” said Krikorian. “It’s more a matter of, how is it that we want to arrange this so that it can make sense?
“As we’re sitting here today [with our record] it’s far easier to have some flexibility in slow-playing this, and making sure that everything that we do makes sense. If you’re [struggling], there’s going to be a whole lot more urgency to make sure things change quickly.”
Krikorian also pointed out that no matter how good the Spirit have been after 14 rounds this season, “everyone knows nothing has been accomplished yet.”
Washington has considered the possibility that the arrival of a new leader, even one with Giráldez’s demonstrated success, can be destabilizing. However, from the club’s perspective, the fact that the process started with positive results has gifted all parties with room to proceed smoothly rather than moving in a hurry.
“[What’s] in the best interest of the team and the players is a slow step, rather than some major intrusion,” asserted Krikorian. “I think that certainly up to this point, I think the strategy we came up with has worked.”
With that in mind, the young manager emphasized patience, as much for himself as for everyone at the club.
“I don’t want to force any kind of situation, because they are performing well. And the only thing I want is [to] keep helping them,” explained Giráldez. “Keep continuing with the dynamic, not make big changes…the transition, for me it’s not [that it] has to be so fast. We have to take the rhythm, a good base to be part of.
“When you’re arriving away [from home] you don’t know the people. You need time. You have to be patient…you need your time, they need their time.”
What does it take for a teenager to shine in NWSL? We tried to find out
NWSL’s history with truly young players is, thanks to under-supported clubs and a lack of guardrails, a messy one.
As with many situations pertaining to the NWSL during its early years, teams — and the league itself — were unprepared to take on the challenge involved, but also simply lacked a clear plan on how to incorporate players outside of the draft system.
While teams seemed to grasp what it could mean for them on the competitive side — both the Portland Thorns and Washington Spirit moved mountains specifically to be in position to acquire Mallory Swanson, for example — the league was far less prepared for how much the non-soccer side matters.
Swanson’s experience is instructive. Then 19, Swanson, née Pugh, would lead the 2017 Spirit with six goals, but was largely left to her own devices two time zones away from home. Between injuries and little club-level support at a team running on a minor-league financial plan, Swanson’s development path seemed to plateau at a moment when she was largely expected to be U.S. Soccer’s Next Big Thing.
In retrospect, Swanson’s growth being hampered was hardly a surprise given the Spirit’s multipleoff-fieldissues during her time with the club.
Considering the state of the entire league, the series of public missteps, and the multiple investigations involved, it’s safe to say this wasn’t one bad environment. Frankly, it’s not clear that any NWSL club in this time frame was an appropriate environment for a player like Swanson to walk into. The entire league simply was not ready to provide what was required of it.
As Swanson approaches 25 years old, she has reached the level of being one of the best attackers on the planet. Things eventually worked out. However, her path here wasn’t easy, and a major factor was an NWSL club whose on-field ambitions surpassed what their off-field capabilities would actually allow for.
To be sure, there are success stories: Ellie Carpenter’s time with the Thorns — who for all their failings in player safety still had a much more substantial infrastructure than any other NWSL club in that era — became a near-instant starter and is now a fixture for Lyon and Australia.
Back with the Spirit, Trinity Rodman declared for the draft and was immediately one of the NWSL’s best players. The Spirit took some lessons from how they had failed Swanson, having a more robust plan in place to give her a better situation away from the training field. Rodman ended up winning a title and making the NWSL Best XI in 2021, and has broken through with the USWNT over the last year-plus.
Still, with no NWSL rules on how these situations worked, the process is different every time. Swanson’s path to the NWSL was convoluted: the Spirit made multiple trades to obtain the top spot in the Distribution Ranking Order, a mechanism which no longer exists, and she missed the first five games of the season because the league simply didn’t have the wherewithal to come up with a more timely method to get her on a team.
The complications for players just trying to get into the league continued: Olivia Moultrie getting a contract from Portland involved a public pressure campaign and a court case that saw NWSL on one side and one of its clubs (as well as a player who wanted to be in the league) on the other. Even after a judge ruled in Moultrie’s favor, NWSL rules still ended up putting her into an ad hoc discovery process that saw OL Reign acquire her rights before trading them to Portland (for far below market value).
(Photo by Amanda Loman/Getty Images)
The outcome was what the player, her family, and the club wanted. Moultrie has proven her mettle, and even for the defending champions, the 17-year-old gets regular playing time as the team’s attacking midfielder. She’s a serious contributor (three goals and four assists in 17 games last year) for a powerhouse. It’s just that, as with Swanson, she faced plainly unnecessary obstacles that seemed rooted in a lack of preparedness and infrastructure.
Jaedyn Shaw’s path into the league was only slightly less rocky. The Texan, then 17, joined the Spirit in the 2022 preseason and trained with them for months while Washington tried to pursue some backchannel diplomacy aimed at a new method for young players to enter the league.
The campaign didn’t change enough minds, and once again NWSL held a mid-season discovery process to sort the situation out. Sources at the time told Pro Soccer Wire that at least six NWSL clubs submitted bids — Washington and San Diego being the only two ever publicly revealed — and that a weighted lottery placed the Wave atop the discovery list. Another potential star player’s career course was charted by a confusing, opaque method.
In a call with Pro Soccer Wire from San Diego, Shaw took a moment to choose her words before discussing how much of a problem it would have been if she had been denied entry into the league last year.
“It would have been definitely really hard for me,” said Shaw. “I would have been basically with the Spirit for a whole year, and being in that environment, knowing that I can handle it, knowing that I can do it every single day and play at that level, and then just being told no…that definitely would have been hard for me to deal with.”
It’s hard to dispute Shaw’s read on her ability to compete. She scored in her professional debut, and has been a regular starter for a San Diego side that competed for the NWSL Shield last season. In the Wave’s 2023 opener, Shaw scored a splendid goal, while coach Casey Stoney experimented with a formation change designed to make the 18-year-old more of an attacking centerpiece.
With multiple clubs now well-staffed enough to both scout the youth ranks more thoroughly and able to create an infrastructure to truly support teenage players, the situation was only going to repeat itself with more frequency. Shortly after the 2022 season ended, NWSL announced that it had created a new way for young players to join teams. The Under-18 Entry List specified both how young players could end up with a specific team, and installed some common-sense safeguards to prevent teams from choosing short-term competitive needs over a player’s well-being.
For example, the new rules prevent teams from trading or waiving a player before they turn 18 without the consent of both the player and their legal guardian. Under-18 Entry List players can’t be selected in expansion drafts, and their initial contract must run through the season in which they turn 18. If a team wants to make the commitment, the rules oblige them to truly take a longer view, in exchange for removing the bizarre paths to entry players in this age group have had to endure.
So far, the new rules have been applied twice, both for 15-year-old prospects: Washington signed Chloe Ricketts, while the Wave followed shortly thereafter in signing Melanie Barcenas. Both clubs had these players on their radar well before the establishment of the league’s rules, meaning that clubs have essentially been waiting for NWSL rules to catch up.
The time appears to be now, and the league — as it emerges from numerous debacles — has entered a new era.
Resources have changed the game
That era contains a need to balance multiple thoughts: player safety, development, the attention that comes when a younger player signs with a pro team, and the day-to-day process of trying to win games in an endlessly competitive league.
Speaking to Pro Soccer Wire just a couple of weeks before Barcenas signed with the club, Stoney said that when the opportunity to sign Shaw arrived, “as a club, we were like, ‘we need to make it happen,’ because she was such a talented young player.”
What followed was both pursuing the nuts-and-bolts of signing a player, but also showing that they could meet the requirements NWSL said had to be in place: housing for Shaw and her family, “a separate locker room, making sure that every player and every member of staff was qualified for SafeSport to make sure we could bring minors into the environment,” said Stoney. “Making sure we had all the policies and procedures in place, making sure that we were looking after the California law side of things as well.”
(Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images)
Shaw said that the team brought her in for meetings with Stoney, club president Jill Ellis, and general manager Molly Downtain to talk through the normal things a player wants to know about when signing with a new club (team philosophy, training ground, etc.) and also go over how things would be for her in specific circumstances.
“It was just what to expect, basically. They didn’t want me to just come here not knowing exactly what’s going on, and just being completely new to this to the area and everything,” said Shaw, who added that the major offseason change for her was limited to moving to a “more permanent” home in San Diego after the team had set up something more short-term last year.
A major difference between San Diego and NWSL teams circa six or seven years ago? Ownership groups that can afford to create a larger club infrastructure. Shaw said that upon arrival, the Wave had everything in place, rather than trying to build the plane while mid-air.
“I think that the Wave have a lot of resources,” said Shaw, listing off the team’s coaching staff, trainers, and a mental well-being coach the club has made available for the entire squad. “I’m comfortable having that relationship with them and being able to express what I need as an athlete, and what I need as a person from them.”
Spirit president of soccer operations Mark Krikorian told Pro Soccer Wire that a club’s commitment when signing such young players has to start with safety, and that teams should be aiming to surpass league rules when they can.
“I think that we’re all committed to protecting [Ricketts], first and foremost, and any other young player that’s here,” said Krikorian. “The league has done a good job in putting together protocols to protect the players, the states all have different rules, laws, and so on to protect [minors], but hopefully we’re going above and beyond those.”
Speaking to reporters before the season kicked off, Spirit midfielder Andi Sullivan said that in her view, Washington is a good place for a player like Ricketts because of both the infrastructure Krikorian, owner Michele Kang, and others have assembled, and because the players themselves are well-tuned towards helping a youngster out as a teammate.
“I do think we have a lot more ability to support her and hopefully that continues to grow, that we would be able to support her and people her age more,” said Sullivan. “I also think — not to toot our own horn — but I think she stepped into the perfect team to do that, because we’re taking good care of her in terms of the team aspect.”
In Washington, that means so many things: light-hearted ribbing during a rondo, a new coaching staff that has prioritized internal standards and culture, player-to-player communication in training and elsewhere, but also continuing education. Krikorian says that Ricketts will continue the same remote education program she was on in Michigan, and that the Spirit have longer-term plans to link up with regional universities to allow young players an avenue to get their degree while playing for Washington.
“I think that they all realize that they can make a positive impact in this young woman’s life, and help her and help to guide her and mentor her,” explained Krikorian. “It’s not their job. Their job is to go out into play and so on, but I do think that they are sensitive women and I do think that they do want what’s best for Chloe and what’s best for the club and they recognize they can be a positive piece of this.”
The soccer side is the easy part
On one front, the game tells the truth: if a young player brings it on the soccer side, getting acclimated tends to go very quickly.
Stoney said that Shaw got “the respect of the group immediately” with what she showed in training. “She shows what she’s capable of, and the players want her on there because they know that she can make a difference.”
With Ricketts, Sullivan and Ashley Sanchez — no strangers to the cauldron that is the USWNT environment — took note of how she’s got confidence and skill, but is also not timid when it comes to challenges.
“I think Chloe stepped in and was like, decking people,” Sullivan said. “I think [it] shows that she’s not afraid of anything. And I think that fearless mindset will carry her a long way.”
“She came in with the energy, she was hitting people immediately,” added Sanchez. “I was respecting it.”
Sullivan noted that Ricketts is “young, but she doesn’t want to be treated like she’s young,” adding that the Michigan native “is very thoughtful. You [can] tell that in conversations with her: she is very considerate of, and aware of, how things work, and she knows herself really well,” all of which help a player who has to handle a new phenomenon: being hugely talented, but also not being her team’s star attraction from day one.
Young players, eager to show their best stuff, can often make a big impact on arrival. Consistency is harder to come by, and those outsized expectations can pose a problem over time. In San Diego, Stoney is quick to caution that no one is expecting Shaw to carry on without any issues or tough patches. “Are there ups and downs for a young player? Yeah. They’re gonna go for a bit of a bumpy road because they’re not always going to be on a trajectory like this,” she said, tracing a diagonal line heading towards the heavens. “That’s not real life. No one does. They go up, and then they might have a little dip, and then they’ll go up again.”
Stoney said that it’s a coach’s job to sort out when a player needs to push through those down moments to build resolve, and when they’re no longer progressing. However, she adds, “[being] honest about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it” is just as vital.
According to Stoney, the vagaries of the U.S. development system — players remaining stars in their club teams and then doing the same collegiately — can deprive those youngsters of the chance to develop resilience. They get to the NWSL level, and it might be the first time in their lives where they’ve not just walked right into a given lineup.
“They’ve played every game, they’ve been a starter, then all of a sudden they step into a professional environment and they might not even be on the [gameday] roster,” said Stoney. “It’s a massive adjustment for them in terms of their mentality and emotional responses to that, and they haven’t built the resilience to be able to cope with it because they’ve never faced it before. So we try and get ahead of it. We know that it’s going to happen. We put on workshops for those players that have come into professional environment for the first time. We look at the challenges they might be facing and we tackle them head on.”
Still, the task Stoney describes is a next-level problem, one that is normal for a functioning and healthy soccer environment. For the NWSL, “functioning” and “healthy” have been qualities to aspire to, rather than the day-to-day truth. The new system of rules and guidelines, combined with major advances at clubs and player-driven demands for raised standards, has finally put the league in a position to answer that kind of challenge.
Team president Mark Krikorian cited “a combination of factors” in the move
Days after announcing that head coach Kris Ward had been fired, the Washington Spirit provided some—but not complete—clarity over that decision.
The Spirit initially announced the move via a one-sentence tweet on Monday, and on Thursday, team president Mark Krikorian addressed reporters, providing at least to some degree a rationale for removing a coach that helped them win their first-ever NWSL title last year.
According to Krikorian, assistant coach Angela Salem will be the team’s head coach for Saturday’s game against the Houston Dash, and that the club has “identified a potential interim coach, pending a background check.” Krikorian added that the club wants to possibly add an assistant to the coaching staff as well, as former assistant Lee Nguyen came out of retirement earlier in August, leaving Salem and goalkeeper coach Paul Crichton as the only coaches left on the team’s payroll.
Krikorian, who had many years of success at Florida State before joining the Spirit as club president earlier this year, said he is “absolutely not” going to return to coaching, ruling himself out as an interim or permanent option. “It wasn’t that long ago, being on the sidelines, but that was my previous life.”
Citing the club’s disappointing 1W-9D-6L record—Washington’s lone regular season win came in their season opener—and an “incident” at training last week, Krikorian said the club were spurred to act from multiple angles.
“The expectations are to be as competitive as can be, and try and win every game… Up to this point, we haven’t done a great job with that,” Krikorian told reporters in a press conference. “Last Friday, we had a little bit of an incident here at the training ground.”
Krikorian said he wasn’t present at the training session, but that the club notified the NWSL and the NWSL Players Association in the aftermath. That’s in contrast to the last time the Spirit had to fire a coach, which saw the club initially say that Richie Burke was being given a front office position due to a health issue only for extensive allegations of abusive conduct to emerge in the weeks that followed.
Krikorian said that after the Spirit reported the issue, they held multiple meetings with players before concluding that “a change was necessary.” The Athletic reported that the incident in question was a verbal confrontation during a training session, but when asked whether that was a recurring sort of issue or if it had simply been a one-off, Krikorian declined to answer.
Krikorian cited the club’s struggle to get the results they had expected more than once in his remarks, and said that “a combination of factors” caused the club to make the change rather than simply the unspecified training ground incident.
Further details weren’t forthcoming at this point, with Krikorian saying that if there are next steps or an investigation, it will fall to the league and the Players Association.
“It’s complex,” said Krikorian when asked about the club’s nearly three-day radio silence on the matter. “Making sure that everyone is included, and making sure that everyone’s rights are protected, and that we’re following the proper course of action, and things unfortunately don’t happen quickly enough for (media), or all of us, or for our fans, to be able to be as transparent as we’d all like to (be).”
