NWSL navigates dynamics of USWNT's 'off' year after an offseason dominated by player movement

The 2025 NWSL season kicks off on Saturday

The NWSL offseason is generally busy, but news usually breaks in bursts. Lynn Biyendolo's December trade from NJ/NY Gotham FC to the Seattle Reign, for example, came just eight days before Yazmeen Ryan left the same club for the Houston Dash, which happened just three days before Olympic silver medalist Gabi Portillo joined Gotham from Corinthians. There was a different flurry of news that captured as much attention, if not more, a month later – the choice of three U.S. women's national team players to leave the NWSL altogether. In a span of four days, Naomi Girma, Jenna Nighswonger and Crystal Dunn swapped clubs in the U.S. for counterparts in Europe, completing moves just as the transfer deadline closed across the Atlantic Ocean. That set of moves unintentionally set the tone for the rest of the NWSL offseason, transforming the usual preseason conversations about intraleague dynamics to discussions about where the American falls in the global landscape as women's soccer continues its rapid growth.

That narrative continues to follow the NWSL like a shadow ahead of the 2025 regular season, which begins on Friday. A quote from the Washington Spirit's Trinity Rodman, arguably the league's biggest star, in which she admitted that it's "just a matter of when" she opts to play overseas. The somewhat steady stream of headlines has almost positioned the NWSL and Europe, as a broad concept rather than a series of countries with different leagues, as two sides in the midst of a tug-of-war for the sport's top talents. That characterization is not necessarily false, but it does lack some necessary context.

The strange truth of the offseason transfers is that it is not an indictment of the NWSL at all – or any one organization in particular, for that matter. The international moves are an example of the new realities of women's soccer, ones that signal the increased investment and further professionalization of the sport and reflect the almost breakneck speed at which nuanced dynamics change. A lot of it also comes down to a simple thing that has been true to women's soccer for decades – the timing of the first year in a new four-year cycle.