With three new teams, California is the place to be in the league – and it may produce the next great rivalry in U.S. women’s soccer
It’s crazy to think that California went 10 years without a professional women’s soccer team. This is a state that icons like Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Brandi Chastain call home, one that boasts four of the very best women’s soccer college programs in the country, one that absolutely loves the sport. Never has that been more evident than in 2024.
“Finally”, in the words of Bay FC star Kiki Pickett, that long wait came to an end when both Angel City and the San Diego Wave entered the NWSL in the 2022 season, followed by Bay FC this year.
“How do you not have a team in California?” she says of the delay. “[We have] these big cities where we can get a lot of crowd numbers.”
It’s a reaction justified by the fact that the trio rank among the top five NWSL clubs for average attendance in the 2024 season, despite all being relative newcomers. Any concerns about over-saturation of the market have been squashed, with one fan believing that the situation has actually “exponentially grown” support for women’s soccer in the area.
That’s because of the love for the sport that exists and it is being boosted by some undertones of rivalry. It’s still early days for these three teams to have a relationship anywhere near the level of intensity seen in meetings between the Seattle Reign and the Portland Thorns, for example, which is certainly the NWSL’s biggest and best rivalry. But not only is California proving to be the place to be in the league, signs also suggest it will surely produce the next great rivalry in U.S. women’s soccer.
USA TODAY SportsWelcome to Los Angeles
Shayla Pham “very vividly” remembers the day that the news came. “It was near my birthday, so I remember being like, ‘What a fabulous birthday gift – my dreams are coming true’.” Ten years after both Los Angeles Sol and FC Gold Pride dissolved, a professional women’s soccer team was returning to California. Angel City FC was coming to LA.
Born and raised just outside of the city, Pham had been a fan of the NWSL for several years but had always needed to make a significant journey if she wanted to watch a game in person, with the Portland Thorns, nearly 1,000 miles away, nearest by. That was all about to change – and she wanted to be involved.
Perhaps one of the best ways to demonstrate the thirst for a women’s team in LA is in the fact that the supporters’ group Pham is involved with, Pandemonium, is one of six fan clubs for Angel City. It means BMO Stadium is one of the league’s most atmospheric grounds, adding to the attractive lore that surrounds a club that had a star-studded ownership group upon launch – and has since become the most valuable women's sport team in the world, featuring a name like Natalie Portman on its board.
“Los Angeles is a melting pot – I like to say a charcuterie board of different cultures,” Pham tells INDIVISA. “We really do feel like our supporters’ section, La Fortaleza, is emulating that. What makes Los Angeles so great is the diversity in itself and when you come to one of the games and you're looking at the supporters’ section, it's truly a mix of everything and everybody. That’s one of the things that makes us so unique.”
AdvertisementImagn ImagesEnter San Diego
It's fair to say the announcement of Angel City drew a bit of envy across the state. California has a rich culture of youth and adult soccer, and while some outside of LA were still eager to make the in-state journey to watch an NWSL team, some were jealous that it wasn’t in their city. That was the case in San Diego, until it was announced that the expansion team for Sacramento was instead heading to southern California.
Suddenly, those who had tickets for Angel City didn’t want them. They were all in on the San Diego Wave.
“The news spread around the city real fast,” Tali Lerner, president of the San Diego Sirens supporters’ group, says. “Because I go to a lot of schools as a teacher, you could see the kids were talking about it, the adults were talking about it, it became very exciting, very quickly.”
Lerner grew up in Israel, a country with historic soccer teams that had been established for decades before she was born. To be in San Diego, where she has lived for nine years, as a new team sprouted up was an interesting experience.
“You could really see a purposeful design of what the story of this team is going to be, what our story as fans is going to be,” she recalls. “That was really, really fun to watch and be part of.”
Does the Wave embody San Diego? Does it represent the city?
“I think so, for sure,” Lerner replies. “Just the atmosphere, the joy, the fun. San Diego is really a city of happiness and inclusive community and a place where the feel is that. It translates into something that people want, a feeling of enjoying not just the fight of the football match but also a real investment into our happiness and joy.
"So you see that in the stands, you see that in the colors, you see that in the involvement of the team, in the community life, you see that in how inclusive this community is around the Wave.”
Imagn Images'The Surfliner derby'
With the two teams just a two-hour drive apart, or a little longer on the scenic Surfliner train, it was no surprise to see this fixture dubbed a derby before either had kicked a ball. Geography isn’t the only thing that played a part. There is also an existing rivalry between the two cities, be it from baseball or general life, with San Diego having “always been like the little brother to Los Angeles almost,” Pham notes. “There’s already an existing pride of which city you're coming from.”
That’s certainly evident when she recalls her reaction to the news that the Wave would be joining the NWSL: “Ew, San Diego. We want to show them up.”
However, she’s quick to point out that it did not feel like a rivalry immediately, as is Savannah McCaskill, who spent two years playing for Angel City before joining the Wave ahead of the 2024 season.
“I feel like, personally, the rivalry was kind of put on us from a media standpoint,” she explains. “We had no real history against each other, we didn't know what to expect against each other, other than we were playing in a game against San Diego and we were being told that it was a rivalry game. That's kind of how the first two years went.”
For Meggie Dougherty Howard, who joined the Wave for its second season and now represents Angel City, there was a sense of trying to “get the edge on the other team early on” in their respective NWSL journeys. M.A. Vignola of Angel City has a good relationship with Jaedyn Shaw, and recalls a few jokes shared between the two on national team camps about “who’s the best California team".
But rivalries are built on history, not just geography, so it was always the case that any real tension between these two sides was only going to come over time. This fixture needs close results, meaningful encounters and other wrinkles in order to create a real rivalry.
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Imagn ImagesThe need for history
Those elements are starting to trickle in. After 11 meetings, the head-to-head shows five wins for Angel City, three for San Diego and three ties, with no match decided by a margin greater than two goals. There have been some dramatic finales too – Claire Emslie's 81st minute winner for Angel City in the first league meeting, a couple of occasions of quick-fire doubles sealing victories for San Diego deep into the second half of tight matches, and Vignola’s 88th-minute winner minute in San Diego last summer – which she celebrated unlike any goal she’s ever scored.
“The energy that we get from the fans just brings up the vibe even more,” Vignola says of the games against the Wave. “A lot of the fans are originally from California, or from LA, so they also have that kind of edge to them saying, 'Oh, we don't like San Diego people, you have to beat them!' So, we're kind of like, 'Oh, OK! What do you have against them?!' But it kind of brings that energy for us and I think that helps.”
McCaskill was on the receiving end of that energy earlier this year, when she was booed upon her return to LA as a San Diego player.
“That’s the piece that is like, ‘OK, this kind of feels like a rivalry’,” she says. “It’s cool to see the fans buy into it and have an extra motivation for coming out to the games, being extra loud, that kind of environment is so fun to play in.”