When the NWSL announced that both the 2022 Expansion and College Drafts would be held virtually due to concerns surrounding the ongoing pandemic, Angel City FC’s technical staff was ready to adapt.

The Los Angeles club has already been working remotely for months on multiple continents, identifying talent and making deals with other NWSL clubs in an attempt to put together the most exciting expansion side the league has ever seen. Ironically, they began the process by making the expansion draft as irrelevant as possible.

“I’ve had a lot of conviction about the players that I want, the strategy that we’re going with, and … you will have seen that we did pretty much most of our deals before the expansion draft,” Angel City Sporting Director Eniola Aluko told Just Women’s Sports a few days before the drafts.

“I wanted more certainty. I wanted to be able to say, ‘We have the players that we want,’ versus that uncertainty going into the expansion draft of not knowing who was going to be protected and unprotected. I think that way we’ve got a stronger team than we probably would have gotten if we’d waited.”

Like any NWSL expansion team, Angel City has limited assets with which to build a full roster. The team is flush with investor cash and has already sold more than 13,000 season ticket packages. Still, they have to adhere to the restrictive rights distribution and hard salary cap that have upheld the NWSL’s parity since its inception — though not without some friction.

The NWSL has already fined Angel City twice: once for announcing the signing of Christen Press before her contract had been approved, and once for communication with Gotham FC midfielder Allie Long that the league interpreted as tampering. There was a moment in time when one had to wonder if Angel City were building a very successful lifestyle brand with the soccer element yet to actually appear.

As on-field operations begin to take shape, however, the club’s approach has increasingly come into focus. Aluko’s background in European football as both a player and a general manager mixes well with head coach (and former Gotham FC manager) Freya Coombe’s knowledge of the NWSL, which comes with its own nuances.

“Freya has existing relationships in the league, which is one of the things that I thought was going to be really important when hiring a coach,” Aluko says. “I wanted somebody who had existing relationships in the NWSL and had coached and knew [of] the players that I didn’t necessarily know, so that it would make this process easier.”

Coombe shares that sentiment: “What’s great about Eni’s experience of coming from the European model is that she brings that element of, well, this is just football, right? It doesn’t need to be … some of the crazy rules that we have in the league. Her experience with the European game and just her sheer knowledge of players has been really, really helpful when looking to build a roster.”

In practice, Angel City’s approach toward player acquisition meant months of research, phone calls and WhatsApp messages, all powered by many cups of coffee. But how does the highest-profile roster in NWSL history get built? For Aluko and Coombe, it’s all about balance. They evaluated each prospective player based on tactical fit, leadership qualities, talent ceiling and, perhaps most importantly after the year the NWSL has had, their own wishes.

A true free agency period is still a hope for the NWSL’s future, but more than ever, clubs have had good reasons to make sure players are where they want to be. After a watershed season in which multiple coaches were fired for emotional and verbal abuse, the league has progressed toward a long-overdue overhaul of its value systems.

It’s a change Aluko welcomes and hopes will ripple across the sport.

“It’s kind of simple, but intrinsically as a human being, if you want to be somewhere, you will do better, you will perform better,” she says. “If you want to be in a relationship, you will have a really good relationship. Like for me, it’s just kind of obvious. So what’s been nice, honestly, is seeing a change in mindset towards players on both sides.”

Expansion protection has only been a tradable asset since 2020, when the Chicago Red Stars sent Yuki Nagasato and Savannah McCaskill — along with other assets — to Racing Louisville FC in exchange for full roster protection. At the time, the price appeared overly steep, but it also presented a way forward in which teams could put their players’ wishes first.

Coombe, who went through that same expansion draft with Gotham, saw increased interest in those types of deals this year.

“Clubs were interested in getting [trades with Angel City] done to get protection so they didn’t have to divide their squad up in what’s quite a mean way of just being like, ‘OK, we don’t value you.’ I think that’s a little harsh,” she says. “I think there were a few clubs motivated to do that so that they didn’t have to do their lists.”

Consequently, Angel City ended up taking only four players in the expansion draft: midfielder Dani Weatherholt, defender Paige Nielsen, forward Jasmyne Spencer and midfielder Claire Emslie. While not every player might’ve known they were being selected on draft night, Aluko said she got confirmation from agents and general managers that everyone the team pursued was open to a change.

“It is a decision,” Aluko says. “I’ve been offered players and trades that I have no idea whether they want to come to Angel City. Another club will do that trade; I won’t.”

Aaaand that's a wrap! We just KNOW our stadium is going to get loud come 2022... 😎#WeAreAngelCity #22DaysOfSoccer

Recap of last week’s draft: pic.twitter.com/Eo56cTELTq

— Angel City FC (@weareangelcity) December 20, 2021

Fortunately for the club, many players have been excited about the prospect of a fresh start in California, to the point where Angel City hasn’t been able to facilitate every request. The team has gone to work picking up players they believe will make an immediate impact. Aluko has leaned into a philosophy that values versatility, with the understanding that a brand new team can evolve very quickly.

“One of the things that I made very clear when we were recruiting coaches was that I don’t necessarily want coaches who are married to a fixed philosophy, because that’s predictable,” Aluko says. “What you want is a coach and players who have a degree of versatility so that the level of risk is lower.”

The vision for Angel City’s final form prioritizes a beautiful, possession-style of soccer with a defensive edge. But, with that versatility in mind, the club has also acquired players who have experience in many different roles. Press can play on either wing or at the No. 9, and she even spent time as the No. 10 for the Red Stars in 2017. Sarah Gorden, another former Red Star, can play center and outside back and has been a part of both a four-back and three-back formation. Recent signing Allyson Swaby brings her own backline versatility, and Nielsen has three-back experience. Spencer, a forward, also held her own at outside back in Houston in 2021, and the list goes on.

“From a playing-style standpoint, we want to be a little bit more unpredictable than probably other NWSL clubs, and we want to be a headache when teams are preparing against us,” Aluko says. “It’s like, ‘Oh my god, who are they going to play? Where are they going to play?’ We want that.”

“There is an element of risk, as well,” Coombe says. “We can pull in two great players, but can they play together? That’s very much a gamble until we start kicking a ball around.”

Angel City has invested in data scouting to ensure their decisions, while risky, are informed. The team’s data analyst, Kim McCauley, has spent months watching tape and pulling stats on players both at home and abroad, providing a modern counterbalance to the more traditional evaluation style of the coaching staff.

One collaborative project was what Aluko described as the “Americans Abroad” list. McCauley would pass along relevant tape and compare the data of players in lower-profile European leagues to their counterparts in NWSL. If the stats and the eye test suggested the player could be competitive, Aluko would then look into offering that player a contract.

That analysis led to the early signings of MA Vignola and Katie Cousins, both former University of Tennessee standouts. It also helped uncover other players abroad like Japanese WNT prospect Jun Endo, whom the club acquired from Nippon TV Tokyo Verdy Beleza of the Japanese WE League. The same process also informed Angel City’s strategy in the college draft, where they only had a few picks in the later rounds.

Angel City’s resources off the field may have made them a desirable location for players, but it’s this extra step in soccer staffing that could make all the difference on the field.

“The combination of experience, knowledge, Freya’s knowledge and Kim’s knowledge together really helps us make informed decisions,” Aluko says. “It also helps us challenge each other. If I say, ‘This player’s amazing,’ and Kim says, ‘Data doesn’t say so,’ that’s the conversation that we have. And then we have to figure out whether it’s a recruitment decision that we make.”

“It’s like, I really like this player,” Coombe adds. “Well, is that what the stats say? And then, OK, do I have a bias towards this player for whatever reason? So I think that part’s always really interesting, and it certainly helped with the legwork of the sheer number of players we needed to look at.”

What Coombe, McCauley and Aluko can’t quite project is whether all the best-made plans will work right away. Their tactical plans seem tricky and building team chemistry is going to take time, but with the eyes of the soccer world firmly on the L.A. expansion club, their goal is to make one of the league’s six playoff spots in 2022.

“I think we all recognize how difficult that is; the NWSL is the most competitive league in the world,” Aluko said in a post-draft press conference. “All we can do is bring in players that are exposed to [NWSL play] and give our best on the field, but there are no guarantees in football.”

✨ HERE IT IS ✨

The first look at our inaugural jersey! Check it out from every angle. We can’t wait to see YOU wearing it in 2022!

Find out more → https://t.co/Ic88za9bBn pic.twitter.com/2bm8i9HuTf

— Angel City FC (@weareangelcity) November 17, 2021

With draft week behind them, Angel City’s football operations staff is ready to turn an already successful club into an actual soccer team, and one Aluko hopes the city can take pride in.

“I hope fans will be excited about seeing themselves in the team — a diverse range of people, a diverse group of people, incredible characters, players who really care about the community, players who are from L.A., and exciting football, winning football,” she says. “That’s what we want.”

Says Coombe: “I think what we’d like to do is just continue to work on building a team that’s a great environment for the league. Try and change the narrative around what we’ve seen in the NWSL from this year, and make it an attractive destination to come and play, raise the standard. I think we’re as much responsible for that as we are for [what’s] on the field.”

Claire Watkins is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering soccer and the NWSL. Follow her on Twitter @ScoutRipley.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.