EVANSTON, Ill. — There's something uncanny about seeing Vlatko Andonovski wearing a Chicago Stars crest.
In September, the Stars named the former Kansas City Current sporting director as its new chief soccer officer. Now, he's tucked away in a conference room in Northwestern University's athletics building alongside team president Karen Leetzow ahead of the Stars' penultimate home game against the Seattle Reign. Just like the day he was announced , he is all in on the project.
"This is going to be a story," he said, "and it's going to be an exciting story." It's also just the beginning of that story as Andonovski conveys confidence in the role and team he decided to take on despite another poor finish to the NWSL season.
Chicago's dismal 2026 season ended on Sunday with 23 losses and the worst goal differential the NWSL has seen: -54. The Stars scored 17 goals (every other team in the league scored at least 30) and allowed 71. Misery has compounded after a last place finish in the 2025 season as well. Chicago had six head coaches over the past two seasons: firing their two permanent hires in April 2025 (Lorne Donaldson) and August 2026 (Martin Sjögren), plus four interim replacements.
The Stars hope they have found the stability they desperately need in Andonovski. They have signaled their intent to not just right the ship, but reboot their ambitions to regularly return to the playoffs as they did in the past.
If there is anyone qualified to lead a turnaround like this, it's him. Andonovski has been part of the league since its inaugural season, first coaching FC Kansas City. He also led a team in Seattle, then the U.S. women's national team, before heading back to Kansas City and coaching the most dominant single season a NWSL team has produced. He knows the NWSL in a way that few others do.
So, yes, he is confident in the work ahead.
"I can tell by the players that we have, the players that are coming. I already know that it's going to work, so that's the positive thing," he said. "I really believe that Chicago is going to be in that mix."
Despite coming in before the end of the 2026 season, Andonovski joined with an eye on 2027. The club needs a permanent head coach and a new general manager. Earlier this month, the Stars made their first signing of Andonovski's tenure, adding Zambia forward Racheal Kundananji from Bay FC for $700,000 in intra-league transfer funds.
"I can assure you that's just the beginning," Andonovski said, smiling again, unwilling to give anything away beyond that more players are lined up for 2027, awaiting announcement. "We're not going to stop working. We're literally working every minute that we have available, and the change is coming."
Turning around a team in a single season isn't unheard of. In NWSL, Gotham went from worst to champions from 2022 to 2023. And in Chicago, the White Sox pulled off similar success between 2024 and 2026.
"Vlatko has the keys to the turnaround, and we're trying to let him do his thing and make magic," Leetzow told The Athletic.
However, that change is not limited to the sporting side. The project requires work for every aspect of the club.
"In fairness to the club, we probably have a little bit of a credibility issue out there. It's not for lack of desire that we are where we are. It's a failure of execution on our part," Leetzow said. "So in some ways, as we try and rebuild and dig deep into a project like this, I believe credibility is everything to convince people to come. Vlatko has it, and we're trying to help ourselves get back to a place where people feel like Chicago is a place you want to come."
Even if Andonovski is the foundation, Leetzow and the front office need to build back the rest of the team that owner Laura Ricketts acquired in 2023 after Arnim Whisler sold the club following intense criticism from players and fans after the release of the Sally Yates report detailing abuse in the league .
When Ricketts stepped in as Chicago's new owner, she understood that she was taking over what she called a "distressed asset" — a club that had been rocked especially hard during the NWSL's handling of the widespread abuse. As part of the league's corrective actions and sanctions following the release of the Yates report and a joint investigation between the league and its players association, Chicago was fined $1.5 million, their former head coach Rory Dames was permanently banned and Whisler sold the team.
But Chicago's history has always been one of resilience. Then known as the Chicago Red Stars, the team was a founding member of the Women's Professional Soccer league in 2009, and had survived that league's shuttering and made the leap to the NWSL in 2013 as an inaugural team. The club's history is deeply complicated, but also reflects the nature of professional women's soccer in America.
"It's a little bit of a redemption story, right? Not just for us, but for the league," Leetzow said. "You can't lose sight of your history. But we are determined, Vlatko and I, to not be defined by the bad things in the background. We want to highlight all the amazing things that this club stands for, and so that's the process."
But there are other challenges in their way, ones not in the past.
Chicago is one of the toughest markets to crack for the NWSL, with the Stars bouncing around the city's metro area. They first played at Benedictine University in Lisle, then moved to SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, before heading north of the city to Evanston and landing at Northwestern's Martin Field (capacity: 12,000) for the 2026 season. The team will continue to play at Martin Field in 2027 as they look for a long-term home.
Reaching a Stars game is possible using Chicago Transit Authority's "L" system, though it requires a long walk from the closest CTA stop through Evanston and the university campus.
While Martin Stadium feels like a temporary solution, there is a certain charm to it — something the Stars have tried to embrace by highlighting soccer on the lake as a selling point. To get to the other end of the stadium, some fans must walk along the lake path before cutting back into the team's fan zone. The view of the Chicago skyline and the sunset behind the stadium are attractions unto themselves. Their previous venue, SeatGeek Stadium, was nearly an hour drive into the Chicago suburbs.
The new location, however, has not solved the team's attendance issues. The Stars averaged 5,574 fans a game in 2025 in their final season at SeatGeek. This year they're last in the league with 4,552 fans per game.
There are plans and architectural drawings for a dedicated training facility, but a permanent stadium solution has been one of the team's challenges even before Ricketts purchased the club .
Despite withdrawing an application to play at Northwestern's Ryan Field earlier this year, following pushback from local residents, the team has still been pursuing the move. The newly rebuilt football stadium has a capacity of 35,000 and a synthetic surface.
"In this city, infrastructure is just an issue," Leetzow said. "You can see it with the Bears, you can see it with the White Sox. There's just a lot going on.
"That said, we're in a really good place here in Evanston to get ourselves into the new Ryan Field."
Ryan Field would still be a temporary solution for a club that still wants to control a stadium of their own and has advocated for equal public stadium funding alongside Chicago's men's teams.
There have been moments of hope in the Ricketts era, breaking through the noise of the Chicago market, primarily hosting a one-off game at Wrigley Field in June 2024.
The club set what was then the NWSL attendance record with 35,038 fans packing the baseball stadium. They also nearly filled Martin Field last year when 10,127 fans watched the Stars run rampant over the Orlando pride with a 5-2 win.
Leetzow said the long tail of that Wrigley game has faded for the Stars when it comes to impact on attendance and ticket sales, though they are still seeing the effects that single game had on awareness of the team in Chicago.
"But the movement and the lack of stability hurts us," she said. "Having a home once and for all that's all our own for a longer period of time, that's transit accessible, is so important."
Leetzow helped sell Andonovski on the potential of the Stars, and now needs Andonovski to act as the next bridge to both potential players and fans. "What we need is a compelling product on the pitch that will then help us drive the narrative that we've always had," she said. "We're Chicago's team."
"I can't imagine it not getting better," Stars forward Jenna Bike said in a recent media availability . "Truly, like, there's no choice."
While the club has been able to leave the worst behind, they are still rebuilding their appeal brick by brick, embracing their work-in-progress label.
"It's not easy," Andonovski admitted. But he uses his own leap of faith as a selling point to prospective players.
"To be quite honest, if I was on the other side two months ago, I would probably say, 'No, not a chance,'" he said. "But then after the conversations I had with Laura and Karen, them presenting where they see this team, where they want to go, how they want to go about it, it was exciting for me."
Stars leadership has said all the right things before, but never managed to convert those words into the turnaround the team needed. Andonovski's addition changes the stakes considerably, and puts his reputation on the line.
"This is the Vlatko Andonovski era," Leetzow said. "It's going to be different because we're bringing standards to every part of the organization that are the highest they have ever been. We're bringing expectations on player acquisitions to the highest they have ever been. And I think if you're a fan and you're looking forward to this particular era, you're going to see a product on the pitch that's better than it's ever been."
This article originally appeared in The Athletic .
Chicago Stars, NWSL, Women's Soccer
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