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    4 questions for Angel City FC heading into the 2026 season
    • March 14, 2026

    Angel City Football Club raises the curtain on its fifth season Sunday.

    It’s the first full season under coach Alex Straus. The team has made some big offseason acquisitions, like trading for defender Emily Sams and signing free agent Ary Borges to add to the returning core of Gisele Thompson, Riley Tiernan, Kennedy Fuller, Sarah Gorden and Jun Endo.

    Angel City also brought in three college players: Karsyn Cherry (Louisville), Carina Lageyre (Duke) and Taylor Suarez (Florida State).

    Throughout its brief history, Angel City has struggled on both ends: failing to score on a consistent basis and stop the opposition from scoring. The addition of Sams should definitely help on the defensive side.

    Some might call this a rebuilding year, but when you’re been down toward the bottom of the standings for consecutive years, this could also be a breakout year for Angel City.

    Here are four questions facing the team heading into the season.

    1. Can Alex Straus turn Angel City around?

    If you’ve ever chatted with Straus, you can see his mind working when talking tactics and positioning and all the aspects of the game. He’s methodical in his answers, but his vision becomes clear. Angel City showed bits of brilliance late last season, but it wasn’t enough to transform into results.

    After years of looking for consistency from the touchline, Straus was brought in to steer the ship to success. His method is simple.

    “We want to be aggressive. We want to defend forward. We want to find a balance between player-versus-player pressing and zonal pressing, and that is often the key and the difficult part to work on. We need to be better at defending our own box than we were last year, so we have been working on that and will continue to work on it,” Straus said. “With the ball, we want to be the protagonist of the game. We want to control and dominate the game. We want the opponents to adapt to us and be more worried about what we do than what they are doing. We want to manipulate, create overloads, and punish opponents when we manipulate them into doing what we want and attack the spaces they give us.”

    In a league as competitive as the NWSL, there is always a team that makes a jump from year to year. Angel City wants to be that team this year.

    2. Is Gisele Thompson ready to step into a starring role?

    Angel City FC went from two Thompsons to one as Alyssa Thompson departed for Chelsea last season, leaving Gisele to become one of the faces of the team.

    The L.A. native signed a contract extension through 2029. With that comes expectations and she said she has started to make some changes to her preparation. The year is already off to a busy start with her national team call-ups and possibly 2027 will also be busy with a World Cup.

    With that in mind, Thompson made some changes to her life and game: “I wanted to work on my nutrition and staying on the field, because last year, I did go down a lot during the 70th minute, getting cramped, so I’ve been working a lot with my nutritionist and working on the off-the-field recovery, so that’s been really important.”

    That’s also meant a change in diet for the 20-year-old.

    “I’ve been doing more protein shakes, (eating) better balanced meals and just focusing a lot on what I put into my body, getting massages and staying really close and connected with our trainers and making sure I get what I need,” she said, “but also not pushing myself to the point where I’m going to get hurt or I do too much.”

    3. Can Riley Tiernan duplicate her rookie season?

    Tiernan forged her path into the starting lineup season, initially coming into camp as a non-roster invitee. The Rutgers product would eventually become a starter, a two-time NWSL Rookie of the Month, an NWSL Rookie of the Year finalist selection and the team’s leading goal-scorer with eight. She capped the year with a contract extension through 2028.

    “I think last year I knew that I had to fight to get a contract, so there was motivation in that aspect,” she said earlier in training camp. “But I would say this year it’s pretty much the same mindset. I try to stay the same through everything. It is a little bit of a different situation. I can be comfortable, but also not too comfortable to the point where I’m not giving my 100 percent.”

    4. Will Sydney Leroux return?

    Leroux sat out the 2025 season for an excused absence. Her last game for the club was in the regular-season finale in 2024.

    In November, the 35-year-old forward went public on Instagram, detailing that she had been diagnosed with anorexia.

    Early this month, she again posted an update on Instagram, saying the past year was the “hardest of my life. Heartbreaking, isolating and devastating. A year that will stay with me forever. A year that changed me ….There will always be moments when you forget how to put foot in front of the other but somehow you figure it out. I did. I fought and I clawed my way through everything that should have broken me.”

    She ended the post: “This comeback is for you. I’ll see you soon.”

    If Leroux returns and gets back to her goal-scoring ways, that would be a huge boost for Angel City. Her contract runs through 2027.

    NWSL SEASON OPENER: CHICAGO STARS FC at ANGEL CITY FC

    When: 4 p.m. Sunday

    Where: BMO Stadium

    How to watch: Victory+

    ​ Orange County Register 

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