The Chicago Stars have landed a head coach, with the NWSL confirming on Wednesday that Hammarby manager Martin Sjögren will join the team when the top-flight Swedish league's season ends in November.
Under Sjögren, Hammarby currently sits second in the Damallsvenskan, with a 2025/26 UEFA Champions League play-in opportunity set for later this month.
No stranger to the global stage, the incoming Chicago Stars coach led the Norway women's national team from 2016 to 2022, leading the Grasshoppers to two group-stage exits at the 2017 and 2022 Euro tournaments as well as a World Cup quarterfinal appearance in 2019.
Calling the NWSL "the most competitive league in the world," Sjögren told The Athletic on Monday that he wants "to build [the Chicago Stars] in a different way," by combining European-style tactics with US soccer's physicality.
"We want to create something sustainable that could be successful," Sjögren explained. "You can always choose to put a lot of money in and buy the best players, but when the money runs out, then you don't have a team anymore."
With just one win on the season, the Stars currently sit 13th on the 2025 NWSL table, with interim managers Masaki Hemmi and Ella Masar splitting coaching duties after Chicago fired head coach Lorne Donaldson in April.
Prior to Sjögren taking the reins ahead of the 2026 NWSL season, his longtime assistant Anders Jacobson will join the Stars "in the coming weeks" to serve as interim manager, with current interim head coach Masar then shifting back into an assistant capacity.
Jacobson will subsequently join Masar as an assistant when Sjögren arrives.
"Martin has been someone I've known and highly respected for almost 10 years," said Masar in a club statement. "Chicago is in good hands."
The UEFA Women's Champions League (UWCL) made the first- and second-round qualifying draws for the competition's 2025/26 season on Tuesday, with clubs across Europe battling for the nine remaining tickets into the continental tournament's new 18-team league phase.
Along with 2024/25 UWCL champions Arsenal, eight other clubs earned automatic byes through to the league phase, including France's OL Lyonnes, WSL winners Chelsea FC, and last season's Champions League runners-up Barcelona.
Four more teams will join the nine automatic qualifiers via the 2025/26 competition's Champions Path, with the final five clubs coming from the League Path.
Under the tournament's new format, 46 winning teams from non-automatically qualified leagues will battle through the Champions Path, with an additional 22 non-league champions hoping to advance via the League Path.
Notable clubs like England's Manchester United, Sweden's Hammarby, and Italy's Roma will enter through the League Path, setting up tense battles as both parity and rising interest spreads through European women's leagues.
Regardless of Path, all first and second qualifying rounds will function as mini-tournaments with single-leg semifinals, a final, and a third-place match, all hosted by one of the participating clubs.
The winners will then advance to a third-and-final qualifying round, with the eventual nine victors guaranteed a spot in the UWCL League Phase while the runners-up head to the brand-new incoming UEFA Europa Cup competition.
The road to the 2025/26 Champions League trophy officially kicks off with first-round qualifying play on July 30th, with the competition's second round mini-tournaments set to begin on August 27th.