It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season for Angel City FC. But it’s not one the team is running away from.
“Did we put it all together this year?” team president Julie Uhrman asked. “No.”
In fact, the team won just one of its last eight games; missed the playoffs for the third time in four seasons; saw attendance plummet; lost Alyssa Thompson, its best and most exciting player, on a million-dollar transfer; and watched its two most-decorated players — Ali Riley and Christen Press — retire after a season in which they combined for two starts.
For sporting director Mark Parsons, however, it still counted as progress. Yet the team has a lot of work to do to clear the high bar of community impact and soccer success it set as its twin goals when it launched in 2022.
“This season was about putting in all the foundations and all the pieces where we get to go compete for championships from ’26 and beyond,” Parsons said. “And I could not be happier with the success we’ve been able to do. That helps us win in the future.
“Of course we’d have all loved to win a couple more games,” he added. “But the priorities were try and win, but build for the future.”
Alexander Straus, center, is introduced as Angel City coach by sporting director Mark Parsons, left, and team president Julie Uhrman during a news conference in June.
(Al Seib / For the Times)
The die for the season, for bad or worse, was cast in the embers of the deadly Palisades fire last January. That first night, as Riley’s family home burned to the ground and other players were forced to relocate, Parsons could see the flames from the gated Brentwood estate of Bob Iger and Willow Bay, Angel City’s controlling owners. He was there interviewing for the job he would get nine days later.
And he was brutally honest about what he thought the club needed.
“I looked at them and said ‘We have a lot of work to do. Unless we get really lucky, it’s going to be a roller coaster. However, we will be really excited about our team by the end of the year,’” Parsons recalled this month.
Part of the problem has to do with how Angel City was built. The team has had three general managers or sporting directors in four seasons and four coaches, including interim manager Sam Laity, over that span. Parsons and Alexander Straus, his hand-picked coach who started in June, were hired to shore up that creaky foundation and bring consistency to the team’s soccer operations, which mostly had been spinning its wheels.
For Parsons, that basically meant tearing things down and starting over. And if he had to sacrifice his first season in doing so, it was a price he was willing to pay.
“We’re going to try and compete and win every single game, because that’s why we’re here,” he said. “We are not going to do that at the expense of building a championship-winning team. This season is about building the future, to not just get to the top, but to stay at the top.”
So the team made 29 transactions in his first nine months. In addition, seven players won’t be re-signed when their contracts expire at the end of the year, among them midfielder Madison Hammond and defender Megan Reid, who are 1-2 in appearances in club history, and Japanese defender Miyabi Moriya, a World Cup and Olympic veteran.
Of the additions, Parsons is especially high on midfielders Evelyn Shores and Hina Sugita, Icelandic attacker Sveindis Jonsdottir and Zambian international Prisca Chilufya. All joined in the second half of the season, adding to a core that included rookie of the year candidate Riley Tiernan and defenders Gisele Thompson, Sarah Gorden and Savy King.
Angel City’s Sarah Gorden controls the ball against Racing Louisville on Sept. 27.
(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
Of those eight, only Gorden is older than 28 and three of the others — Thompson, King and Shores — can’t legally buy a beer in California. Parsons will double down on one of those additions Tuesday, announcing he has signed Sugita, 28, a two-time World Cup player from Japan, through 2029.
“Most teams try not to do too much during the season. It can be unsettling,” Parsons said.
But for Angel City, every second mattered.
“The top teams in this league that have been pretty consistent the last couple of years took three years to get to a point of being in the top four. We don’t have three years,” Parsons said. “This is a city that is expected to compete and to win in a stadium that [is] rocking, that represents this community.”
That hasn’t happened for Angel City, which was founded with solid community support and an A-list ownership group of more than 100, including Hollywood stars, former U.S. national team players and deep-pocketed investors. The vision was to build a team that won games while making a deep and lasting impact on the community.
The club certainly has gotten the second part of that equation right by providing more than 2.5 million meals and more than 51,000 hours for youth and adult education; distributing equipment and staff for ongoing soccer programming for the children of migrants trapped at the U.S.-Mexico border; and funneling $4.1 million into other programs in Los Angeles. Last week the club awarded $10,000 grants and access to business coaching to 13 former players to help support the transition to the next stage of their lives.
From the start, Angel City games offered a welcoming place, especially for the LGBTQ community, and that helped the team finish first or second in the NWSL in attendance in each of its four seasons.
“We are committed to providing an environment of connection, community and belonging,” Uhrman said.
But while doing that the club struggled on the field, making the playoffs just once while going 30-42-24 over that span. As a result average attendance plunged nearly 16%, to 16,257 this year.
In its first three seasons, Angel City played before a home crowd that small just once, although the team still ranks second in the league, behind only the Portland Thorns. Making the team a draw again, Uhrman conceded, will require trying something new. Like winning.
“Our goal is to be a dynasty on the pitch and a legacy off the pitch,” she said. “And for that to be true, we need to win on and off the field. We need to have the positive impact in the community and continue to give back, but we also need to win championships.”
Some of the team’s most loyal supporters have grown tired of waiting.
“I’m just frustrated with the team’s performance,” said Caitlin Bryant of Burbank, a season-ticket holder from the first season who has not renewed for next year. “I’m done dragging myself down to BMO [Stadium] every other weekend until this thing turns around.
“The vibes are great. The stadium environment is great. But watching the team lose game after game, season after season, it’s exhausting and it’s not fun. I need the team to win.”
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