Welcome to this week’s edition of Goalside Gossip!

It has been an absolutely wild weekend across the NWSL, and there is a jam packed issue on deck. We're breaking down all the action on the pitch, starting with a club record win for the Utah Royals over Bay FC, followed by a dramatic stoppage time winner for the Portland Thorns against the Orlando Pride, and a hard fought draw between Angel City and the Washington Spirit.

Off the pitch, we meet the coach behind Utah's unlikely turnaround, catch Rose Lavelle trading her cleats for a Broadway stage, look at why brands cannot buy women's sports ad space fast enough, and ask whether the new season of Ted Lasso accidentally landed on the biggest problem in the women's game.

Let's get into it!

Game Summaries (NWSL):

News:

Utah Royals FC secured a club record 11th win of the season with a thrilling 3-2 home victory over Bay FC on August 14, driven by goals from three different Japanese internationals.

Bay FC opened the scoring in the sixth minute when Karlie Lema capitalized on a goalkeeper error, but Utah's Miyabi responded barely a minute later with her first goal for the club. Narumi put the Royals ahead with a long range strike in the 22nd minute, only for Bay FC's Heather Gilchrist to head in an equalizer off a corner for the first professional goal of her career.

The end to end match stayed level until the late stages, when Mina Tanaka won a penalty in the 79th minute. Her first attempt was saved, but VAR ruled the goalkeeper had come off her line early, and Tanaka buried the retake to seal the historic win. It was her third successful penalty in three tries this season. Watch all three of Utah's Japanese trio's goals.

The Portland Thorns extended their club record home unbeaten streak to 12 matches with a dramatic 2-1 victory over the Orlando Pride on August 15, capped by a stoppage time game winner from returning forward Caiya Hanks.

After a scoreless first half featuring crucial saves by Portland goalkeeper Mackenzie Arnold, the Thorns struck first in the 58th minute when Deyna Castellanos scored her first goal of the season off an assist from Pietra Tordin, who tied the league lead with her ninth assist of the year. The Pride equalized five minutes later through Jacqueline Ovalle, who bundled the ball over the line after a parried cross fell to her.

The match appeared destined for a draw until the 96th minute. Hanks, making her first appearance since June 2025 after a long ACL recovery, curled a shot from outside the box to send Providence Park into a frenzy and secure all three points.

The Washington Spirit secured a hard fought 1-1 road draw against Angel City FC on Sunday, moving back into second place in the NWSL standings.

After a scoreless first half that saw an Angel City goal overturned by VAR for a handball, Trinity Rodman broke the deadlock in the 65th minute, firing a shot into the top netting for her tenth goal of the season and showed off a new Michael Jackson celly.

The night also marked the return of the Spirit's all time leading scorer, Ashley Hatch, who entered in the 83rd minute after 15 months away on maternity leave. Angel City leveled two minutes later when Ally Sentnor launched a stunning strike from outside the box for her first goal with the club, and both sides shared the points.

Belgian coach Jimmy Coenraets has turned Utah Royals FC into one of the toughest teams in the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). A severe heart condition ended his playing career, so the 31-year-old moved to the strategic and business side of the game, including an internship with UEFA's We Play Strong initiative, before landing on coaching.

He built the women's program at Belgium's OH Leuven and was recruited to Utah in 2024. That he made the move at all is remarkable. Coenraets has been through six heart surgeries, three of them open heart, with one in late 2023 nearly derailing the job entirely. He took the leap anyway, joining as an assistant before being thrown into the interim head coach role when Amy Rodriguez was dismissed.

It was not smooth. He faced harsh criticism from fans, struggled with his own mental health, and had to learn the league's salary cap and roster rules on the fly. Rather than force his European tactical ideas onto a roster built under expansion constraints, he adapted to the players he had.

That flexibility came with a bigger shift in how he manages people. His own health scares, plus a frightening cardiac incident involving an Angel City FC player, pushed him to put player wellbeing first. Building real human connections, he decided, mattered as much as any tactical instruction. Players describe the result as a locker room where, as Courtney Brown put it, their superpower is that they like each other.

It has worked. Utah is having the best season in club history, and it is no fluke. The Royals have 11 different goal scorers this season and lead the league in goals after finishing 12th a year ago. Recruiting to Utah is still harder than selling a coastal market, but Coenraets thinks a distinct club identity and heavy investment in facilities and staff, which sit outside the salary cap, can make the Royals a place players want to be. For now he is focused on the playoffs.

Cincinnati native and Gotham FC midfielder Rose Lavelle swapped the pitch for the stage last week, making a surprise cameo in the Tony nominated Broadway musical Titanique on August 11. The show, playing at the St. James Theatre, is a campy send up of the 1997 film Titanic, retold through the music of Celine Dion.

Lavelle's cameo was brief and wordless. She walked on to cheers carrying a large ax, handed it to Rose (Melissa Barrera) so she could free Jack (Constantine Rousouli) from his handcuffs as the ship went down, and walked off. She shared the stage with a cast that includes Jim Parsons and Frankie Grande, adding a fun sports crossover to the Broadway hit.

The cameo was part of a Broadway themed week for Gotham, capped by an August 14 home match with a post game fireworks display set to show tunes. The defending National Women's Soccer League champions have plenty to celebrate right now, sitting top of the table.

Amazon Prime Video is running out of ad space for its WNBA and NWSL broadcasts. According to Amy McDevitt, who runs sports partnerships for Amazon Ads, the platform is nearly sold out, with brands lining up to buy into women's sports faster than Amazon can create the spots.

So Amazon is getting creative. Beyond standard commercials, it is leaning on Twitch Creator Casts, where influencers stream games and pitch brands in their own voices. It is a different experience for fans and it reaches a younger audience.

Because Prime is fully producing the WNBA broadcasts for the first time this year, it is also giving the property the same premium treatment as its men's sports, down to the deep AWS data integrations and a full slate of pregame, halftime, and postgame shows.

The results back it up. Nielsen is now measuring the WNBA on Prime for the first time, so the numbers finally exist to prove what advertisers suspected. And the NWSL is right in the middle of it: Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, is the presenting sponsor of the league on Prime and just ran a campaign built with Amazon's own creative team. Advertising in women's sports is not a goodwill gesture anymore. It is a business decision that works.

In the second episode of Ted Lasso's new season, the show accidentally lands on a glaring problem in women's soccer: the lack of female head coaches. After a three year break, Ted returns to AFC Richmond to manage the club's new women's team, displacing Alice Chilton, a qualified coach whose own playing career ended with injury.

It is meant as a classic fish out of water setup. It also echoes something a lot of women in the sport deal with for real. There is progress, four female head coaches in the NWSL this season compared to two last year, but women still hold only 22% of head coaching jobs across 86 leagues worldwide.

The gap comes from a system that funneled male players into coaching through academies, internships, and assistant jobs, while women rarely got the same on ramp. NWSL veteran Laura Harvey says women once avoided coaching because pro leagues were so unstable. Now the hesitation sits with employers, who see hiring a female coach as a risk.

Landing an elite job also means holding expensive certifications like the UEFA Pro Licence, which requires prior experience. To get experience you need the job. To get the job you need experience. A Catch 22.

The irony is that Ted is exactly the privilege women are up against. He was handed a top job with none of the experience or qualifications, and got to learn on the way. Change is coming, though. A generation of female players with long professional careers is retiring into coaching, backed by mentors who went first, and they need the same room Ted got. Maybe instead of taking Alice Chilton's job, Ted ends up being her Sir Alex Ferguson, the way Ferguson was for Emma Hayes.