2026 NWSL Previews: Chicago Stars, Bay FC
/Our 2026 NWSL Season Previews have started and today we hit Chicago and Bay. If you want to support this coverage of the league, you can head to our Patreon. For $5 a month you can get access to a lot of the data visualization tools we use to make these previews.
If you’re more of an audio person, our friends at Expected Own Goals spoke to the Everything Bay Goals podcast to talk Bay, and Lesley Ryder of Gal Pal Sports to talk the Stars. If you want to support them, you can head to their Patreon.
We had our mindset (I made a lot of mistakes)
In August 2024, Chicago Stars GM Richard Feuz said, “I’ve always said, any sports project that needs to be rebuilt almost from scratch, will take at least 1000 days to be fully rebuilt, restructured, reinforced, developed and grow.” It’s been 757 days since Feuz started his job in the Windy City and the team doesn’t appear to be very close to playoff contention let alone competitiveness for a trophy.
Two seasons ago, the Chicago Stars ran hot early in the season, banking enough points to eke into the playoffs, earning the right to be Barbra Banda’d in the first round. The 2025 season was a different story. The team finished with identical underlying numbers in both seasons, -14.6 expected goal difference (xGD) in 2024 and a -14.6 xGD in 2025. However, without that early hot streak and other luck along the way, the team finished with just 20 points. The Stars’ created 30.27 xG (11th in the league), while conceding 44.91 xGA, the most in NWSL in 2025.
The team moved on from two of its most effective attacking players: Ludmila, who was traded to the San Diego Wave for $800,000 in intraleague transfer funds, and Ally Schlegel, who signed as a free agent with the North Carolina Courage. The two combined for more than a third of the Stars’ goals in 2025. With other departures, Chicago returns just over two-thirds of total minutes played.
Chicago hasn’t exactly been quiet in the offseason in terms of adding players to fill those gaps. The Stars’ brought in some NWSL veterans, including Brianna Pinto, Ryan Gareis, Michelle Alozie, and ASA favorite Katie Lund Atkinson. Defender Aaliyah Farmer, formerly of Tigres also signed a three-year deal. They’re joined by signees from the college ranks Emma Egizii, Tessa Dellarose, and Elise Evans who all signed three-year contracts with the team. Dellarose ranks most highly in Paul Harvey’s indispensable college soccer scouting dashboard but even she doesn’t seem like a sure bet to play a major impact in 2026.
The biggest incoming change of the offseason is the arrival of manager Martin Sjögren, whose most notable previous coaching stop was in charge of the Norwegian national team from 2016 to 2022. He’s said all the things new managers do - playing with the ball, wanting to play attacking soccer - but whether that rhetoric survives contact with NWSL opposition remains to be seen.
Bright Spots
First some good news. Mal Swanson will likely return to the field sometime this season.
The less good news. We don’t know when she’ll be back or how effective she’ll be. Swanson starred in the Olympics in 2024 but her form in the league didn’t reach the highs of 2023. Don’t get me wrong, she was still good, but not the dominant force she was the previous season.
Still, for a team with roster questions like the Stars have in 2026, Swanson’s return should provide a huge lift.
Jameese Joseph, firmly in the United States Women’s National Team picture entering 2026, is back, too. Joseph struggled to get into good shooting positions in 2025, with 26 of her 43 attempts in the “poor” xG tier and just five combined in the “great” and “good” tiers.
Still, on a team with few bright spots, Joseph’s upside will be something worth tuning into Stars games in 2026. Micayla Johnson could be a beneficiary of Swanson’s temporary absence, too. The 18-year-old played limited minutes in 2025 but is firmly in the USWNT youth picture and there should be plenty of minutes for attackers to go around in Chicago, at least early in the season.
Everything Else
The Stars return much of its midfield minutes from 2025. Julia Grosso (-0.03 net G+/96), Bea Franklin (-0.09 net G+/96), and Maitane (-0.1 net G+/96). Grosso and Franklin, and second year player Manaka Hayashi, are still firmly in the parts of their careers where they could get better. With Dellarose also likely slotting into the midfield depth chart, Chicago has upside at the position. The question will be if a new system or development can translate that potential on the field.
Even with offensive question marks, the Stars’ defense has been its biggest vulnerability.
Sam Staab (and her diagonal passes) are the highlight of a defense full of questions. She remains one of the best center backs in the league on top of being one of the most reliable. Coming off an Achilles’ tear in 2024, Staab played in all 26 games including 25 starts. As usual, her passing was elite.
Kathrin Hendrich seems like the most likely option to partner with Staab in central defense to start the season. Elise Evans comes with promising ball progression data but it’s too soon to know what her role will be as a rookie.
Natalia Kuikka, who missed big chunks of 2025 with injuries, tore her ACL on the first day of preseason, further contributing to unknowns in defense. Aaliyah Farmer could provide answers, depending on what the team sees as her best position.
Goalkeeping
Alyssa Naeher signed a one-year extension to return to Chicago for her 11th season but how much she actually plays remains to be seen. After a solid 2024, Naeher’s shot stopping regressed in a major way in 2025. Coupled with an already shaky defensive foundation in front of her, Chicago’s defensive woes were exacerbated.
Her heir apparent, longtime ASA favorite Katie Lund Atkinson, signed as a free agent after leaving Racing Louisville. If healthy, and, unfortunately that’s a big if, Atkinson’s historical shot stopping would be a huge boost for a suspect Stars defense, though she was fairly disastrous in 2025 and just not good in 2024.
Outlook
There are some dependable, individual things that’ll make Chicago games worth watching like Staab’s passing and Joseph’s potential. That list will become more compelling if Swanson returns at the peak of her powers and Atkinson’s stopping shots like it’s 2022 or 2023 again. Or maybe there are some splashy transfer moves coming in the summer as the team still has substantial unspent resources. Even with everything going right, it’s hard to envision a path to contention for the Stars, even with 243 days left in the rebuild.
At least fans will get to spend more of the summer by the lake. If anyone can rip a diagonal pass across the field through that wind, it’s Sam Staab.
I don't want to hear you (kick me out, kick me out)
In 2024, despite some early season doldrums, Bay FC was able to go on a half-season run that saw them solidly in the playoffs for their inaugural season. Much expectation was made that with the previous mid-season signings, a couple new promising rookies, and extra familiarity with Coach Albertin Montoya’s system, they would build on that success into becoming a potential contender. Instead they entered the season mired in a harassment scandal involving Montoya, he never seemed to find the combination that made his lineup click, and they spent the back half of the season winless while dropping all the way to 13th in the league.
With the myriad of failures that they were facing, the front office of Bay FC decided they needed to update their priors. Montoya was allowed to step down as head coach at the end of the season, and Kay Cossington, former England FA Women’s Technical Director who had joined the Bay Collective and Sixth Street Investments to head their footballing arm, was elevated to CEO of Bay FC to spearhead their new direction. To guide the team in this new era Cossington brought in her FA collaborator, former England U23 Women’s coach Emma Coates.
Coates arrives to take over a team that had the biggest underperformance of any team in the NWSL in 2025, where they earned only 20 points against 33 expected points based on their underlying metrics. While this wouldn’t have been enough to make them a playoff team, the line having been at 36 points, it was respectable and wouldn’t have had them mired near the bottom. The defense and goalkeeping were problems for the team, conceding 40 goals on 36 xGA. At the other end, the offense was close to the middle of the league in underlying metics while being second to last in actual production (26 goals vs 31 xG).
How Coates will approach fixing… this is somewhat of a mystery. The majority of her head coaching experience comes from running youth programs for the English FA, most recently serving as the head coach of the U23s for over two years. There she was tasked with preparing promising youth players to make the jump to the senior team, where they would have to fit in Sarina Wiegman’s system. During that time frame, she led the team to an undefeated run of eight games against other Euro U23s and had over 25 players make the jump to Wiegman’s squad.
One key through line that seems to have emerged in her plans is that the roster is becoming increasingly built around promising youth players. There have been minimal key departures from the club, defensive midfielder Kiki Picket being the only notable exit, with 88.5% of the 2025 minutes played returning. The additions include USWNT midfielder Claire Hutton and teenage attacher Alex Pfeiffer, both formally of the Kansas City Current. Joining them are two of Coates former England U23 players in attacker Keira Barry from Manchester United and defender Anouk Denton from West Ham United. From the college ranks is Florida State standout Heather Gilchrist, fresh off winning the Women’s College Cup. The most recent signings are experienced Italian striker Cristiana Girelli on loan from Juventus, and Argentine centerback Aldana Cometti from Fleury in D1 Fem in France.
The question becomes, how can this team that performed poorly get better with a new coach and minimal roster turnover? Based on the players available, and the Wiegmanness of Coates' most recent managing work, it seems most likely that the team will line up in a 4-2-3-1. On the forward line, they’ll still rely on Racheal Kundananji as their star player. The hope is that Penelope Hocking will be able to continue her positive attacking work across a full season worth of minutes. To back that production up, two of the incoming attackers, Alex Pfeiffer and Keira Barry, have spent most of their extremely limited career minutes playing on the wing. This may mean more rotation along the line or could push Racheal further up the pitch to be the main focus at Striker.
Taylor Huff, who spent 2025 bouncing between attacking midfielder and out wide, will likely cement herself as the third midfielder in the group. The only other addition, Cristiana Girelli, is only a five-month loan until August, plus she’s 35 years old and has only produced in Serie A Femminile. Her numbers against top competition in Champion’s League were almost non-existent, with only 14 goals across 37 appearances, and only three of those against top competition.
To provide cover and connection for the core up top is most likely a midfield double pivot based around 2025 college signee Hannah Bebar and Claire Hutton. Bebar missed much of the start of the season, but quickly became an important piece of the midfield, displacing 2024 standout Kiki Pickett. Hutton arrives after a dominant turn as the defensive pivot for the historically dominant 2025 KC Current. As a pair, they should be able to provide solid defensive cover for the backline while being elite at moving the ball into attack through key passes and progressive dribbles. If there is something for Bay fans to really get excited about, it’s this. Hutton and Bebar is a well matched set of profiles who can reliably move the ball forward and win it back. All at an age that makes you feel like you could watch them ball together for seven years.
On the defensive side however, the potential for improvements is far less clear. While the team is returning 89% of the 2025 minutes overall, when you factor in players missing due to Season-Ending Injuries or Maternity Leave, that number drops to 75%. The entirety of those missing minutes comes from three quarters of the starting backline: Emily Menges (CB), Abby Dahlkemper (CB), and Caprice Dydasco (RB). The only remaining starter from the back four is Alyssa Malonson, who had a significant drop off from her 2024 performance (+0.16g+ to -0.66g+ over the course of the season).
To account for the missing players, there is 2025 addition Kelli Hubly (CB), college signee Heather Gilchrist (CB), Aldana Cometti (CB), and Anouk Denton (FB). In her 750 minutes in 2025, Hubly was actually the highest-rated Bay CB according to g+, mostly by farming interrupting g+. That’s usually not a recipe for success. Gilchrist is coming off a senior year at Florida State where she anchored the College Cup winning backline, though advanced stats from Paul Harvey’s big board aren’t a fan. The hope is that the Bay analytics and scouting departments see something that these metrics miss. Lastly is Denton, who struggled to get minutes with a lowly West Ham team, but was one of Coates’ U23 players, as well as featuring for new Bay assistant Gemma Davies’ English U19’s. This week Bay announced the addition of Argentine CB Aldana Cometti, who has been plying her trade with FC Fleury 91 in the French Premiere Division. Her underlying stats should make her a decent near term replacement for Dahlkemper’s ball progression, but CB stat evaluation is hard.
Coates and Davies should provide a coaching pedagogy and methodology not mired in “who does my daughter know in the Bay Area?”, which can only be an improvement. Similarly, the addition of Hutton adds a tremendous amount of clarity to the roles of Bebar and Huff, which should bring improvement for two really talented young players. Pfeiffer and Barry should offer real depth behind Kundananji and Hocking, something this team really lacked last season. The defense will likely struggle until some of the starters return from maternity leave, but they will hope that the replacements can hold it down with the improved defending from the midfield in front of them. Bay will also be counting on the potential improvements from second-year starter Jordan Silkowitz in goal. Her shot-stopping was below average (she allowed 4.4 more goals than expected), but it was her first full season as a starter, so there is potential upside. With all of the positives and negatives, plus the regression from last season’s underperformance, we should see a better Bay on the pitch in 2026. They just need too many unknowns to hit for them to be likely to see the playoffs again this year.