Hello and welcome to NWSL Crunchtime. The Cutback’s go-to newsletter for the business end of the National Women’s Soccer League season.
Yes, that’s right, over in the USA, the greatest league in the world™ is into its final third. The team top of the table come 1 November will win the NWSL Shield and then, to decide the NWSL Championship title, the eight-team playoffs will get underway on 5 November.
NWSL teams either have eight or nine matches left to play, and the combination of the transfer window closing on 7 September and playoff chances dwindling has teams weighing up major moves.
Week by week, we’ll be getting you all caught up on what you need to know as the drama unfolds in the U.S.
Orlando Pride sack Hines
The biggest news of the week dropped on Monday afternoon. The Orlando Pride announced they had parted ways with head coach Seb Hines. Assistant Yolanda Thomas will be the interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
Hines is the third NWSL head coach to be sacked this season, following Alex Straus at Angel City in June and Martin Sjögren at Chicago Stars in August.
The Englishman became the interim head coach of the Pride midway through the 2022 season before getting the job permanently at the end of that season. In 2024, he led the Pride to their first trophies, winning the Shield and Championship double.
At the time of his sacking, Hines was the third-longest serving active head coach in the NWSL, behind Laura Harvey at Seattle Reign (July 2021) and Juan Carlos Amoros at Gotham (October 2022). If you include his interim stretch, he was the second-longest-serving. He leaves Orlando with a 42% win ratio.
Orlando currently sit 12th, five points off the playoffs. However, they have played one game more than Seattle in eighth. By no means was their season over, but it’s clear that things had dipped after being an elite side in both 2024 and 2025.
Per FotMob, the Pride’s expected goal difference (xGD) in 2025 ranked second in the NWSL (11.8), but it has fallen to ninth this year (1.0).
Goals scored per match are almost identical between the last two seasons (8th with 1.3 last year, 12th with 1.2 this year), goals conceded shows the defence got leakier (3rd with 1.0 in 2025, 12th with 1.5 in 2026).
Defensively, the impact of losing centre-back duo Emily Sams (sold to Angel City) and Kylie Nadaner (maternity leave), combined with goalkeeper Anna Moorhouse suffering a drop in form, has hurt a team that relied on a sturdy backline.
Hines was a trailblazer in the NWSL, becoming the first permanent Black head coach in league history. Should Thomas get hired permanently, she would become the first Black female head coach in NWSL history.
Bernal set to leave Spirit amid title race
Almost immediately after the Washington Spirit beat Bay FC 1-0 at home on Sunday night, Conner Roberts broke the news on The Cutback that Spirit defender/midfielder Rebeca Bernal is heading to Manchester United.
It feels like a bit of a win all around. United get some much-needed experience, grit and confidence on the ball in the first two thirds of the pitch, while the Spirit likely get a good fee for a player with 18 months left on her deal.
Bernal will become the first Mexican to play in the WSL, and will try her hand in another top international league that can develop her game. She has been excellent for the Spirit over the last 18 months and while things are always changing in football — and the business of the move isn’t bad — the timing of the move is still a blow to the Spirit.
After back-to-back second-place and runner-up finishes in the NWSL, this feels like a title-winning year for Washington. Seeing quality players leave during a title race is tough.
That said, Spirit aren’t short on talent. They are pretty stacked at the holding midfielder position, where Bernal had featured the most this season. Captain Andi Sullivan is back from maternity leave. Hal Hershfelt and Deb Abiodun are thriving as destroyers. And the club just signed WAFCON player of the tournament Monique Ngock.
Sears takes in a Summit game
One of the off-pitch stories to watch has been the future of Louisville star winger Emma Sears. ESPN reported that the 25-year-old, who was the highest-scoring American in the NWSL last season with 10 goals, had handed in a transfer request.
After playing in Louisville’s 3-2 loss away to San Diego on Friday night, Sears was spotted in Colorado watching on in the stands at the Summit’s 6-1 home win on Saturday. Shout-out to the Summit Up podcast for this nice video edit where head coach Nick Cushing avoided giving too much information away.
Tactics corner - Gotham’s ‘no-fly zone’ against the Thorns
Just five points ahead of the Spirit at the top of the table are NWSL champions Gotham. Of course, the Bats have never topped the table in the regular season before, so a first Shield would be a big moment for a club that sees itself as a perennial league winner.
In partnership with Busy Watching Women’s Soccer, we’ve taken a closer look at Gotham’s 1-1 draw with the Portland Thorns on Friday, and unpacked their 4-1-4-1 defensive block formation that steered them towards an impressive draw.
What to watch out for
With 24 points still up for grabs over the coming weeks, it could be another month before we start seeing teams guaranteed a playoff spot. Leading the pack, Gotham have opened up a 16-point gap on Angel City in ninth.
Looking at the table and the points they have accrued, it would be surprising to see any of the top five or six fall out of a playoff spot come November.
The fifth placed Portland Thorns are maybe the exception who, after the loss of Olivia Moultrie to an ACL injury, are trying to figure out how they adapt without a star and team leader. To be fair, Portland are unbeaten (3-1-0) since losing Moultrie, but the underlying numbers suggest they’re not as strong as some others. Thorns are 11th on xGD (-2.2).
When it comes to the chasing pack in the middle of the table, I think the Kansas City Current and Denver Summit are the teams to keep an eye on.
Reigning Shield champions the Current have only lost one regular season match at their home of CPKC Stadium in their history, and Chris Armas’s team have the best home record in the NWSL this season (8-3-0, 2.45 points per game).
The Summit won just once in their opening seven matches and have been trying to claw back up the table ever since. But this is an ambitious team that has spent a lot of money and consistently tried to improve the squad throughout the year.
Although we’re still waiting on mathematical confirmation, for me, the bottom four clubs (13th-16th) in this league will not make the playoffs.
The biggest game of the upcoming week has to be the Portland Thorns hosting the Washington Spirit this Sunday [4:00 p.m. ET U.S. / 9:00 p.m. BST]. This is a rematch of last year’s playoff semifinal that finished 2-0 to the Spirit at Audi Field in D.C.
The Thorns got revenge for that defeat by winning 1-0 at Audi Field on the opening day of the 2026 season, when Moultrie scored the winning goal.
Portland’s home of Providence Park is a fortress, with the team currently on a club-record 12-match unbeaten run at home. Their last home defeat was a 2-1 loss to the Utah Royals in August 2025. However, the Thorns have drawn their last three at home, while the Spirit have lost just twice away from home this season, and those were narrow one-goal losses to top sides in San Diego and Gotham.
This will be a fascinating match that will test Portland’s playoff credentials and tell us more about whether the Spirit can keep up a Shield challenge on Gotham at the top.