2024 NWSL season review team by team: Who are the favourites

The National Women’s Soccer League is embarking on its biggest and most important season yet. That may seem like a bold statement, but a quick look around the league shows just how much the stakes have risen in the 12-year-old NWSL.
Two new expansion teams will enter the fray in 2024, increasing the NWSL to 14 teams in the league. One is Bay FC, a new team from Northern California led by, among others, former US women’s national team legend Brandi Chastain. The other is the Utah Royals – although the team of the same name previously played in the NWSL before the move, this iteration is a new team that has co-owners such as Crystal Palace of the Premier League Kids Kit Football Shirt and the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA.

Meanwhile, two of the league’s founding teams completed sales to new owners this season, removing the last high-profile decision-makers found guilty in the abuse scandal that rocked the league in 2021 and 2022 Cheap Portland Thorns Football Jerseys were sold to the major investors of the Sacramento Kings, while the Chicago Red Stars were sold to the investors behind the Chicago Cubs. As a result, salaries and transfer fees have risen sharply ahead of the 2024 season.

Bay FC paid nearly $800,000 to sign Zambian striker Cheap Women’s Racheal Kundananji Football Shirt with Madrid CFF, which is a world record in women’s football. Orlando Pride almost matched that three weeks later, signing Barbora Banda from Zambia. A new normal for what NWSL teams are willing to pay is being set in a league that is shedding its humble, penny-pinching past.

This investment and higher spending comes at a time when the NWSL is facing new competition from other leagues around the world. Fresh from the USWNT’s shocking fall at the Women’s World Cup last year, there may be more questions than ever about the NWSL and whether the majority of US national team players should continue to compete in the league instead of moving on to, say, England’s WSL or Spain’s Liga F.
With the investment the NWSL is seeing around the world and with more on the way – commissioner Jessica Berman says the NWSL will expand to 16 teams by 2026 – the NWSL has all the pieces in place to maintain its claim as the most competitive women’s football league in the world.

Who will compete this season, how will the teams outperform each other and who should be considered the favourites? We delve into all 14 NWSL teams ahead of the new season.