NWSL Secondary Window Recap

Taylor Vincent
Taylor Vincent, Resident NWSL ExpertSeptember 12, 2024
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The NWSL’s SecondaryTrade/Transfer Window is now closed, so no more intra-league trades until after the NWSL Championship and no players who need ITC (International Transfer Certificates) can be added to rosters. Since it has already come up with CeCe Kizer’s signing with Gotham, NWSL teams can sign domestic players who don’t need ITCs (their last team wasn’t outside of the USA) until the roster freeze. 

Now’s the perfect time to take an overall look at the NWSL Secondary Window, and general trends for the summer windows across women’s soccer. 

FIFA Mid-Year Transfer Window Snapshot

When looking at the secondary window, there is some important context in terms of trends for women’s soccer. FIFA normally just releases a transfer snapshot at the end of January for the previous european calendar year, this year FIFA released data on the 2024 secondary windows (which were close to their closing dates at the time of data publish). 

Unexpectedly, there was continued growth in women’s soccer and all-in-all, the number of international transfers reached a record high of 1,125 in 2024’s secondary window. Looking at the USA alone, there was an almost 4x increase in the incoming transfers during the Secondary Window, while the outgoing transfers stayed pretty even compared to 2023. 

***It is important to note that now that the USL Super League is a division 1 professional league, their acquisitions will also be included. Right now there are 38 players whose national team designation is not the USA***


Source: FIFA International Transfer Snapshot (mid-year 2024)

Along with the growth in the number of internal transfers, the USA also showed a large increase in transfer funds spent to acquire players. This does often come hand in hand with the number of transfers, but even when you look at the average transfer fee spent there was an increase from $32.5k in 2023 to $114k in 2024. 

Source: FIFA International Transfer Snapshot (mid-year 2024)

Looking at the type of transfers, a large number of the players both incoming and outgoing were via free agency — for the outgoing since they are mid-season moves this is where the waived players and mutual terminations come into play. Only a very small percentage of the player movements were loans. 


Source: FIFA International Transfer Snapshot (mid-year 2024)

NWSL’s Secondary Window Changes

As the rosters currently stand, Seattle will be over the 26 player limit when its two players who are off at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup return to the squad. Three teams—Chicago, Gotham, North Carolina—are sitting right at the 26 player limit, while Houston is flirting with the low edge of compliance with only 22 active players on its active roster. 

Looking at both the incoming and outgoing movement, Seattle had the most roster turnover with a total of 14 players moving in and out of the club. The changes seemed to have an immediate impact as following the Paris Olympics the Reign have moved from 13th up to 10th in the NWSL table and are on a three game winning streak. Angel City was at the other end of the spectrum during the window, with only one player incoming and one player whose contract was mutually terminated. With two wins in the last three games, it’s clear that there is no direct correlation to activity in the window and immediate outcomes following the window. 


Overview of current active roster compliance and total number of roster changes over the secondary window

To further break down all the movements by type you can see that a large number of players entered the league via free agency, and compared to last year where there were no trades which included player movement, there were 15 in this past window. Additionally, with the USL Super League in its inaugural season, the NWSL saw nine players go on loan through the end of the 2024 NWSL season. 


Overview of the 2024 NWSL Secondary Window by transaction type, both incoming and outgoing

Separating it down even further by team, you can see which teams utilized which transactions in the window:

There are just seven games left in the regular season, with only unbeaten Orlando at the top of the table having clinched one of the eight coveted playoff spots. With only five points separating seventh through eleventh in the table right now, anything can happen in the final third of the season and only time will tell which general managers got the secondary window right. 





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