2024 NWSL Roster Breakdown

Taylor Vincent
Taylor Vincent, Resident NWSL ExpertMarch 27, 2024
© USA TODAY Sports

With the NWSL regular season underway and no shortage of chaos and excitement in every single match, now’s the time to look at how roster’s evolved over the last four months of the offseason. The 2024 offseason was unique in the fact that for the first time, the NWSL’s version of free agency would come into play during an expansion year, and the dreaded expansion draft.  

In a normal year, there would likely be slightly more returners per team, but this season there’s only an average of 18.25 returners per team for the 12 squads from last season. Angel City, North Carolina, and Orlando round out the top all with 21, while Chicago had the fewest returners on their first matchday roster at 14. 

Understandably, expansion sides Bay FC and Utah are composed mostly of players picked up from the NWSL expansion draft, trades, and free agency. Bay was also the most active team in getting teams from abroad at seven, while Portland was second at five – three of which were defenders. After having the third most goals scored against them in the league last year, Portland’s focus on defense comes to no surprise. Even though reigning NWSL Champions NJNY Gotham FC had a large number of returning players, they were also the team most active in the signing of additional free agents, and had seven additions, two more than any other returning squad.

The 2024 NWSL Collegiate Draft saw 56 players drafted to NWSL sides prior to preseason starting, 40 of those ended up signing with squads for the upcoming season. Utah and Washington both led the charge signing five each, while Chicago and Bay both had four in close second. Washington and Chicago are both coming into the season with new coaches and the high number of draft signings indicates just how the new staffs plan on moving forward.  

Although preseason rosters are often stacked with non-rostered invitees (NRI’s) attempting to earn one of the 364 active roster spots in the league, this offseason only 10 signed. Bay FC and Chicago both had two, while six squads didn’t end up signing any. 

A more in-depth part of the returning players analysis was done by Dr. Arianna Cascone below by looking at the percentage of minutes played returning per team. 

As you can see, on top of having 21 players return, both Angel City and Orlando also had 77.8% of their 2023 minutes played return to their squads. Chicago, who felt another offseason exodus of free agents— losing six —is the only squad below 50% on the chart. All this being said, Chicago is also the only squad who started off the regular season with two straight wins. Only time will tell if general managers and coaches have the right mix of players, culture, and tactics to win the NWSL Shield 24 games from now.

 

Related:

NWSL Transactions

NWSL 2024 Draft Tracker


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