{"id":659041,"date":"2026-03-16T05:50:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T05:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/659041\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T05:50:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T05:50:27","slug":"angel-city-opens-its-fifth-season-with-dominant-win-over-chicago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/659041\/","title":{"rendered":"Angel City opens its fifth season with dominant win over Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Neither Alexander Straus<\/a> nor Mark Parsons<\/a> were around when Angel City<\/a> played its first NWSL game in 2022. But they didn\u2019t miss much; in four years the team had one winning season and made just one playoff appearance.<\/p>\n

So Straus, in his first full season as coach, and Parsons, 15 months into his job as sporting director, decided to raze the club and its sad history and start over. And that break from the past couldn\u2019t have been much clearer than it was in the opening game of the team\u2019s fifth season Sunday, a 4-0 rout of the Chicago Stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a little bit of a new beginning,\u201d Straus said.<\/p>\n

The performance was the most dominant in club history and the margin of victory matched Angel City\u2019s largest ever. It was also the team\u2019s first season-opening win since 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a completely different organization than we were at the end of last year,\u201d Parsons said.<\/p>\n

For one thing the players are already having a good time, something that rarely happened the first four seasons. So if there was a black cloud hovering over the team when Straus and Parsons arrived, it has lifted \u2014 at least for one afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a lot different than last year,\u201d said teenager Kennedy Fuller<\/a>, who opened the scoring in the 33rd minute. \u201cWe\u2019re just having fun. We\u2019re expressing ourselves and we\u2019re playing how we want to play and we\u2019re doing what we\u2019re able to do and what we\u2019re good at.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re OK to make mistakes. And so that really drives us to want to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuller said that new attitude is the product of having Straus for a full preseason camp. The coach arrived midway through last season and never had a chance to fully implement the aggressive, attacking style he wants to play. Those lessons took hold this winter.<\/p>\n

The second big change was to the roster. Six of Sunday\u2019s starters weren\u2019t with Angel City at the start of last season and three of them \u2014 Evelyn Shores<\/a>, Ary Borges<\/a> and Maiara Niehues<\/a> \u2014 scored. Borges also picked up her first Angel City assist.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe kind of got his time to really structure us how he wanted. And he was able to bring in players that he thought were going to fit his style,\u201d Fuller said of Straus. \u201cWith that, we were able to kind of mold into the team that he wants.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur meetings were very long and our trainings were very long, and so we were really able to focus on exactly what he wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuller\u2019s goal was the only score in a first half Angel City dominated but the second half was just eight minutes old when Shores doubled the lead, heading in a Fuller corner for her second NWSL goal. Borges, a Brazilian international, made it 3-0 in the 66th minute, jumping in front of Chicago\u2019s Maitane L\u00f3pez to intercept a short goal kick by Alyssa Naeher<\/a>, then beating the Stars\u2018 keeper cleanly with a left-footed shot from the center of the box.<\/p>\n

Niehues, another Brazilian international, closed the scoring in the 70th minute on a right-footed shot from the center of the box. Iceland\u2019s Sveindis Jonsdottir<\/a>, got the assist on that goal. Of the four goal-scorers for Angel City, only Borges, who also had an assist in her Angel City debut, is older 21.<\/p>\n

For Straus, part of the challenge now is convincing his young team that it can get better while also preparing it for the struggles that undoubtedly await.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we take this, we learn from the experience of what we were successful with today, and we keep that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd when we try things that fail, we try again.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom a coaching perspective, you have games like today and it\u2019s great and it\u2019s fantastic and it\u2019s amazing. But I do exactly the same job when we when we lose. And [the] players do the same job. The outcome is something that sometimes is out of [our] control.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Also likely to temper Straus\u2019 excitement is that Sunday\u2019s performance came against a team that finished last in the 14-team NWSL in 2025 and hasn\u2019t had a winning record since 2022. Angel City\u2019s long-suffering fans certainly still need to be convinced things have changed because the announced crowd of 16,813 on a beautiful sun-splashed afternoon at BMO Stadium was the smallest ever for an Angel City opener.<\/p>\n

That was the only sour note of the day, though. In fact, the franchise got a second, arguably more important, victory in the 63rd minute when defender Savy King came off the bench to play for the first time since collapsing on the same field 10 months ago. King was rushed to a hospital and later underwent surgery to address a heart abnormality, which temporarily left her career in doubt.<\/p>\n

Those doubts ended Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe game is so much bigger than playing 90 minutes on the field,\u201d Fuller said. \u201cShe came back and she was like, \u2018I\u2019m gonna play. And I\u2019m gonna be better than I was.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cTo see her step on the field and have so much confidence, to be able to have that back in our environment, is so crucial. To be able to get that moment in front of her family, in front of her hometown, is so, so special.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neither Alexander Straus nor Mark Parsons were around when Angel City played its first NWSL game in 2022.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":659042,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[279037,58081,279035,44462,279040,3953,960,65038,24920,5386,1818,279038,279036,53900,554,279039,3007],"class_list":["post-659041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-alexander-straus","tag-angel-city","tag-ary-borges","tag-box","tag-brazilian-international","tag-center","tag-chicago","tag-fifth-season","tag-iceland","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-maiara-niehues","tag-mark-parsons","tag-scoring","tag-shot","tag-shutout-victory","tag-team"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116237294143194520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}