Too many games? NWSL teams saw the effects of a busy summer calendar up close

Heather O’Reilly’s return to professional soccer after almost two years was as exciting as it was brief.

The three-time Olympic gold medalist and 2015 World Cup winner was set to join NJ/NY Gotham FC in their international friendly against English visitors Chelsea during the NWSL’s summer pause last month, a rare clash of respective league champions that brought some of the biggest names in women’s football to New Jersey’s Red Bull Arena. But O’Reilly’s signing proved short-lived.

Barely four hours after announcing O’Reilly’s one-day deal as an injury-replacement player, Gotham said the 39-year-old was no longer available for selection.

On the surface, O’Reilly’s signing felt like a marketing ploy: bring back an iconic figure of U.S. women’s soccer to further raise the profile of an already high-profile match. But her signing was, as Gotham head coach Juan Carlos Amoros put it, very much a soccer decision.

Forward Heather O’Reilly is no longer available for selection for tonight’s match. https://t.co/jwCOZ6jga9

— NJ/NY Gotham FC (@GothamFC) August 19, 2024

“For us, the health and safety of the players comes first,” Amoros said, “and we literally had no people to play.”

The club was short on players, partly because of injuries and partly because half a dozen of their top players still hadn’t returned to the pitch following the Olympics’ football tournament, which concluded just over a week earlier. So, Gotham tapped O’Reilly, who trained with them in preseason as a player-coach, but she wasn’t cleared to play in the August 19 match with WSL champions Chelsa after failing her physical.

It was a microcosm of what the team has dealt with this season.

“We are ready for what is coming. It’s going to be very challenging,” Amoros said following his team’s 3-1 loss to Chelsea. “We knew at the start of the year we have endless games, endless traveling (this season), and we are the team from now until the end of the year that is playing the most games, with the final of the Summer Cup, the CONCACAF Champions Cup, the NWSL regular season.

“But we want to be the best team and the best teams play the most games.”

This year’s match calendar has been jam-packed for women’s teams in the NWSL and around the globe.

Last week, Bay FC played a friendly against Barcelona on Tuesday as part of the Spanish club’s preseason tour, a midweek match sandwiched between two regular-season NWSL games on the weekends. Washington Spirit faced another visiting English team Arsenal in midweek before returning to NWSL play a few days later. Racing Louisville and KC Current participated in the Women’s Cup, facing off against teams from Spain, Japan, South Africa, Italy, Brazil, Colombia and Chile over a series of matches throughout several international windows.

This year also saw the start of the inaugural Summer Cup, a tournament between all 14 NWSL clubs and the top six teams from Mexico’s Liga MX Femenil. Gotham and the Current meet in the final of that on October 25.

As interest in women’s club football continues to soar, with world governing body FIFA eyeing an inaugural Women’s Club World Cup for early 2026, this rapid growth comes with its own set of growing pains.

Adapting to a crowded match calendar means resting some of your top stars as they return from international competitions and managing players’ minutes. It also forces teams, at least in the NWSL, to reach deep into their networks for call-ups during international windows, like how Gotham did with veteran O’Reilly and even Mak Whitham, who only turned 14 in late July.

As the NWSL enters the final stretch of its 2024 season, workload management remains a top priority, which is evident in players’ new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the league.

The players’ union recognized in its negotiations that, as the league continues to grow, so will the demand on players. The union identified workload management as key, with the CBA addressing issues including game frequency, travel conditions and time off. The contract establishes for the first time minimum standards for charter air travel, allowing teams to charter six flight legs, or three round trips “as a matter of right” and requiring any midweek games to be chartered. Players are also guaranteed a midseason break and at least 28 days off in the offseason.

These guarantees are important, especially as match calendars show no sign of easing up.

The issue is a top concern in global football, with player unions, such as global body FIFPro, long advocating for player health and better workload management as the sport grows more popular and as international competitions surge. Some of the world’s top leagues, including the Premier League in the men’s game, last month filed a formal complaint to the European Commission against FIFA over the international match calendar being “beyond saturation.”

Before the start of the season, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman spoke to The Athletic and shared her concerns that players were “getting squeezed” by the calendar. While the league does have direct influence over FIFA’s women’s match calendar, it seems the sport’s global governing body did consider player workloads in the 2026-29 calendar, which reduced the number of overall international windows from six to five.

Chelsea goalkeeper Zecira Musovic, who was in the U.S. with her club for their preseason tour, said in an interview with The Athletic that the men’s game and its calendar’s overcrowding could serve as a cautionary tale for those in women’s football.

Musovic was part of Chelsea’s traveling squad for preseason (Vincent Carchietta, USA Today)

“I do think that the men’s game has been through that transition where it went from OK interest to really high interest and loads of games (and) the calendar being super busy,” Musovic said. “That’s something that we’re going through in the women’s game as well, where more money gets involved, more games getting put in, the calendar is just going crazy. And that’s something that we have to learn from the men’s game on how we can improve because we don’t want to end up having a calendar that is too full and we just end up having all these injuries and where you lose passion for the game because you’re exhausted mentally.”

On a more granular level, Amoros has described the importance of establishing academies or second teams for NWSL clubs to lean on when players are unavailable. This system, he reasoned, could take pressure off clubs and keep them from scrambling to fill their rosters during international windows.

This is already a common practice in men’s football, with international preseason-tour rosters often populated with young stars. It happened with the Barcelona and Real Madrid men’s teams this summer when young stars such as Pau Victor and Nico Paz put on a show for fans at MetLife Stadium while some of their veteran teammates remained on vacation having played in Copa America and the European Championship.

“I know it’s on the radar of the NWSL and the future of this league, to have at least academies or second teams, where we can also put a lot of effort on developing young talent,” Amoros said, “and then when it comes to these moments, (to) be able for those young players to have the opportunity to play at the highest level, that will obviously expose young players to the professional world, give them the experience to play.

“Then it will make it a lot easier for clubs who don’t have to recruit players in the middle of the year, and spend a lot of effort doing that, but developing long, lasting talent, more than just players to come in and play a few games and then leaving, plus, obviously, it will be easier when you have players within the system that they already know.”

In the interim, teams are developing their own systems or making the most of developing young stars in their networks through avenues including the under-18 entry mechanism in the NWSL. This has already led to a surge of teens entering the league.

“In an ideal world, I think that will be something that will be massive, not only for these periods of time, but also for the future of the young players, too, (and) for the NWSL clubs as the biggest representatives of the women’s game in America, to have this young team or B teams or whatever you want to call it,” Amoros said.

“I think it will be key.”

(Top photo: Vincent Carchietta / USA Today)