THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — On a sometimes heat, sunny spring day in Southern California, Angel City FC sporting director Mark Parsons made it clear that he wasn’t fascinated by doing issues usually. Why? As a result of Angel Metropolis FC is not only one other membership.
Parsons requested to maneuver his interview with ESPN from the group’s information convention room to his workplace down the corridor, the place a slideshow presentation being projected onto the wall answered most conceivable questions on Angel Metropolis’s future. The interviewee had turn out to be the host, a delicate metaphor for a way one of many world’s most well-known ladies’s soccer groups is making an attempt to take management of its personal narrative on the sphere.
The presentation to ESPN was the identical one, minus a couple of confidential pages, that Parsons had just lately given to gamers and employees upon taking the job in January. His mission — and the rationale the membership employed him — is comparatively merely specified by the primary slide: “Be world leaders in ladies’s soccer on and off the sphere.”
Indisputably, Angel Metropolis has rapidly constructed a recognizable model with its off-field strikes since launching 5 years in the past.
The Los Angeles-based NWSL franchise made a splash with a celeb possession group that features Hollywood actress Natalie Portman, tennis icon Serena Williams, and pop star Becky G. The group broke ticket and sponsorship data earlier than gamers kicked a ball in a aggressive match. The group made headlines by mandating that every one sponsors dedicate 10% of their offers to native philanthropy. Final yr’s sale of the group at a $250 million valuation made it essentially the most useful ladies’s sports activities franchise on the planet.
Success on the soccer discipline, nevertheless, is but to comply with. The group has by no means received a playoff sport and has made it to the postseason solely as soon as in three makes an attempt. Final yr’s Twelfth-place end was additional marred by the primary factors deduction in NWSL historical past as punishment for wage cap violations. The group’s basic supervisor and head coach exited 4 days aside within the offseason.
Essentially the most constant on-field attribute of Angel Metropolis in its early years was the inconsistency of the group’s performances. It is a putting juxtaposition: The group with essentially the most outlined off-field model in ladies’s soccer lacked any distinguishable id on the sphere.
Parsons, a 38-year-old NWSL championship-winning coach, should discover options to that downside. He’s additionally just one new character in a wider Hollywood reboot.
New head coach Alexander Straus will arrive in L.A. subsequent month after successful three straight Frauen-Bundesliga titles with Bayern Munich. U.S. ladies’s nationwide group ahead Alyssa Thompson is taking part in at MVP ranges to guide a younger, rejuvenated roster. And new majority house owners Willow Bay and Bob Iger (CEO of Disney, which owns ESPN) have injected each historic money and refreshing optimism into all the operation, based on these all through the constructing.
Early-season outcomes have begun to comply with. Angel Metropolis’s 4-3 street victory on Could 2 over the Washington Spirit, final yr’s championship runners-up, was one of many franchise’s signature victories. A aim deep in stoppage time by ahead Riley Tiernan — a non-roster invitee who ranks second within the league in targets — embodied the growing grittiness of the group, a trait that had too usually been missing throughout late-game collapses of yesteryear.
Nonetheless, Angel Metropolis hasn’t received something but — and there lies the problem. Los Angeles is a metropolis outlined by winners, just like the NBA’s Lakers and MLB’s Dodgers. All the nice work being carried out off the sphere solely goes thus far if Angel Metropolis is only a mid-table group yearly.
“When issues occur [here], it ripples,” Parsons instructed ESPN. “We’ve not even received trophies but. Think about what is going on to occur after we win trophies.
“I believe now we have a duty to win as a result of individuals copy sports activities groups that win. [NBA star] Steph Curry begins capturing from wherever, everybody begins capturing from wherever. Angel Metropolis wins, what’s everybody going to begin doing? They’ll empower feminine athletes. They’ll be rooted in the neighborhood and make a distinction of their cities.”
Parsons stated he has “little doubt now we have the flexibility to be successful trophies throughout the subsequent three years,” however the margins are skinny between success and failure within the ultra-competitive NWSL.
On and off the sphere, Angel Metropolis is at an inflection level — and the enterprise is inherently interwoven with soccer. Each elements of the group just lately hit the reset button.
A serious shake-up in possession, and a brand new route
Angel Metropolis redefined requirements throughout the NWSL and drew international media reward for being an revolutionary, progressive model.
However completely different did not imply excellent. The possession group had no background in sports activities. The group was arrange extra like a startup tech firm, a construction that created battle behind the scenes because the group spent more cash than any competitor.
Julie Uhrman, now the group’s CEO, co-founded Angel Metropolis alongside Portman and enterprise capitalist Kara Nortman. After receiving over 100 rejections from conventional buyers (based on Uhrman), the group related with Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit and husband of Serena Williams. Ohanian had attended the 2019 Ladies’s World Cup in France and grew fascinated by proudly owning an NWSL group.
Ohanian invested thousands and thousands and have become Angel Metropolis’s principal proprietor, however he didn’t construction the deal to provide himself management of the group’s board. The setup created an ungainly energy vacuum — at one level, he was a consultant on the NWSL’s board of governors, however needed to fund choices with which he didn’t essentially agree. In a submit on X final yr across the time of Angel Metropolis’s sale, Ohanian referred to as the error “one of many many laborious classes I realized as a first-time sports activities group proprietor.”
Turmoil spilled into the general public eye final yr as experiences from the Los Angeles Occasions and Wall Avenue Journal final yr detailed infighting on the membership. The mixture of disagreements and rising monetary wants in the end led Angel Metropolis to search for a brand new management proprietor in a course of that intensified in early 2024, sources confirmed to ESPN.
Uhrman argues that the strain was overplayed. “I believe the largest misnomer is there was much more alignment inside Angel Metropolis than what was reported,” Uhrman instructed ESPN in April, however the want for change was clear because the group sought more cash to proceed on its bold path. “Angel Metropolis was constructed in a different way. We have been constructed like a startup,” Uhrman stated.
Previously, Angel Metropolis made money calls or sought exterior funding to maintain up with their wants, however Uhrman stated “the dialog modified” within the final spherical of discussions as buyers expressed curiosity in turning into extra concerned and acquiring extra fairness.
Uhrman stated one in every of her largest classes from the group’s first season was “the immense quantity of labor” and element that goes into growing a taking part in model and philosophy. “These are issues that we may have carried out upfront, that we had the time to do, that we simply did not do,” she stated.
“The opposite factor that was a very large studying was the true quantity of funding wanted to construct a high-performance tradition, employees and group is considerably greater than was ever invested in any membership throughout the NWSL after we joined,” she stated. “Once we joined, we had the most important sporting employees on the time. We have been the one employees with a devoted participant care consultant. So, we felt like we went above and past what the opposite golf equipment had carried out. However the actuality was that, truly, it wasn’t sufficient nonetheless.”
All of which set the desk for Bay and Iger to take over controlling curiosity of the group — and, crucially, for Bay to have full management of Angel Metropolis’s board of administrators.
Uhrman just lately shifted to her CEO function from president, and Carmen Bona was employed to turn out to be the group’s president of enterprise operations, a newly created function.
Ohanian stated a number of instances final yr that he was not promoting any shares within the group. His share of possession decreased by dilution after Bay and Iger took over shares of the group from others in Angel Metropolis’s horde of preliminary buyers, a supply with information of the scenario confirmed.
The drama performed out extra publicly than Angel Metropolis executives would have preferred, however by all accounts, from personnel and sources throughout the membership, there may be an optimistic feeling that Angel Metropolis is in its greatest place up to now, which has allowed the group to focus extra intensely on how one can begin successful on the sphere.
A brand new coaching facility is essentially the most tangible latest proof of change. The group ditched the momentary trailers it had used since its inaugural season to maneuver throughout the car parking zone at Cal Lutheran College and take over a constructing beforehand occupied by the L.A. Rams.
Even that could be a momentary resolution — it is a four-year settlement, though Uhrman stated discussions are underway to remain there — however it is usually a significant step ahead. The 50,000-square-foot area is the most important coaching facility within the NWSL. Plans for the transfer have been already in movement, however they wanted funding from Bay and Iger, who dedicated to spending one other preliminary $50 million post-acquisition.
“The truth is, the second the gamers noticed this efficiency middle and realized that Angel Metropolis had delivered on its guarantees — truly overdelivered and offered them one thing that they really feel that they deserved and is above and past what they’ve skilled anyplace else — it did really feel like a web page flip for us,” Uhrman instructed ESPN.
Uhrman conceded that the off-field model and on-field product should co-exist. There are early indicators of progress.
Early indicators of Angel Metropolis’s progress on the sphere
Almost eight minutes of stoppage time had passed by at Audi Discipline in Washington, D.C., on Could 2 when Tiernan smashed the ball into the again of the web for the dramatic game-winning aim in opposition to the Spirit.
Tiernan is arguably the very best story within the NWSL proper now. She was a non-roster invitee who earned a contract and the beginning ahead function for Angel Metropolis. Tiernan’s late aim at Audi Discipline was her second of the sport and fifth in 5 video games, bringing her to second within the league scoring desk on the time.
Parsons pointed at Tiernan as proof of what is being in-built L.A.: a group centered on successful. “The largest driver of tradition is the way you choose a group,” stated Parsons, who received an NWSL championship and two NWSL Shields as head coach of the Portland Thorns.
“When you do not try this [choose players on merit], and also you choose individuals since you assume they will be good, that is the largest factor that may rip a tradition aside.”
Parsons’ level is implicit however essential: L.A. is a metropolis obsessive about stars, however making choices based mostly solely on exterior expectations is a recipe for catastrophe. Angel Metropolis realized the laborious approach in 2021 when it went to rent its first coach.
The group’s earlier technical leaders recognized North Carolina Courage head coach Sean Nahas as the very best accessible candidate for his or her wants, however after that information leaked, followers expressed outrage that Angel Metropolis, whose model was constructed round fairness for ladies, would rent a person for the job. Angel Metropolis modified course, and whereas it’s not possible to say what may have been if the group caught to its course of, the incident was an early instance of each the exterior model conflicting with the soccer product, and the group permitting its id to be formed by another person.
Each resolution made by interim head coach Sam Laity and the technical employees, which Parsons leads, shapes the brand new id they’re making an attempt to construct.
Angel Metropolis nonetheless has star energy, together with two-time World Cup winner Christen Press, who at 36 and post-ACL restoration has been restricted to restricted reserve alternatives to date this yr. Tiernan was a no person, however she earned the beginning No. 9 job and the appropriate to maintain it by means of her play. Others, like fellow rookie midfielder Macey Hodge, have carried out the identical.
In his presentation to ESPN, Parsons shared 5 attacking metrics and 6 defensive metrics that he feels, in his decade-plus concerned within the NWSL, result in success within the league. Every profitable group thrives in these metrics by means of completely different taking part in types, he stated, however the finish aim should be to win these key areas that vary from non-penalty anticipated targets, to distance of defensive strain from aim and “extensive field space” targets, that are a pattern within the ladies’s sport currently.
“I imagine that to construct a membership it’s important to be very clear on id — very clear,” Parsons instructed ESPN. “That id additionally has to match your tradition and the neighborhood of the realm that you simply’re in. Your id additionally has to guide you to the issues that you should do to win on this aggressive league.”
He confirmed what he already suspected from afar about Angel Metropolis and the L.A. tradition by asking individuals like Bay and Uhrman — who are usually not “soccer individuals” however are a snapshot of the fan base — what they need to see from the group.
“This metropolis is about pleasure, power, successful, scoring,” he stated in abstract. A group in L.A. must win, but it surely wants to take action in model. Meaning out-possessing the opponent and making use of strain greater up the sphere.
Angel Metropolis has carried out that at instances this season, together with in that essential victory over Washington. Nonetheless, the telltale indicators of a mission in its infancy stay. Pretty much as good as Angel Metropolis has checked out instances, the group has nonetheless collapsed in video games and conceded 14 targets, second worst within the league. The win over the Spirit was preceded by a 3-2 loss to the Orlando Pride that noticed Angel Metropolis blow a 2-0 lead late, and getting thrashed 4-0 by NJ/NY Gotham FC in LA.
Parsons factors to these three groups and the Kansas City Current — final yr’s high 4 finishers — because the mannequin for Angel Metropolis’s arc. All 4 have been at or close to the underside of the desk lately earlier than rebuilding to turn out to be champions or contenders.
Uhrman stated she desires a house playoff sport this yr. Parsons would love that too, he stated, but additionally is aware of that successful a trophy in 2025, at this stage of the group’s growth “just isn’t logical” if you happen to have a look at these 4 groups for example.
“We need to be a legacy off the pitch and a dynasty on the pitch,” Uhrman instructed ESPN. “That is not one championship — that is many. I imagine we’re laying the muse at this time with our employees and our services, our teaching choices, our participant choices.”
Change remains to be in progress. Straus will not arrive as head coach till June, which means he can have solely about half the season to work with the group. Straus can be tasked with displaying the gamers how they get to the purpose of attaining these goals. “My job is to make us dream somewhat bit,” Parsons stated of setting the high-level targets as sporting director.
Angel Metropolis remains to be in that dream stage, a startup wading its approach out of some laborious early classes. Which route it heads subsequent will decide whether or not it inserts itself into LA lure, or dangers being simply one other membership.