The Chicago Stars were officially eliminated from NWSL playoff contention last Sunday with six matches to play.
They eked out a point from the Portland Thorns at Providence Park, a result only three other teams have managed so far this year. The No. 2 Washington Spirit is the only club to have bested the Thorns at home this season. Nonetheless, the Stars' postseason scratch feels like a merciful stamp on the foregone conclusion that has defined their entire season.
The stats they have compiled over the past two seasons are staggering, particularly for a team that exists in one of the league's biggest sports markets and who should have no issue attracting top talent. The Stars conceded 54 goals in 26 matches last season and have already matched that figure in 24 games this year.
The soccer itself has been listless, exposing not so much a lack of desire from the players but the absence of a plan or an identity from a coach, a general manager, a sporting director.
The NWSL lauds itself as the most competitive sports league in the world, where results in any fixture can always go either way, but that hasn't always jived with the way opposing teams look on with confidence at Chicago from the other side of the pitch before the whistle blows. It is difficult to be the team against which others see an opportunity to reestablish their confidence in a league like this, yet the Stars found themselves cast in that role again.
After firing head coach Lorne Donaldson last April, the Stars spent the rest of their 2025 campaign leapfrogging across three different interim head coaches before settling on Martin Sjögren, whom they brought over from Hammarby in Sweden . Sjögren was given a clean slate at the start of this season, but by August he was gone, replaced by yet another interim head coach in Karina Baez, who's been with the club for the last three seasons.
Yet just as their latest impressive result against the Thorns shows, there is reason to feel a sense of hope, however thin. The original plan for this story was meant to excavate the Stars' unending struggles this season, but on Thursday the club twisted the arc of their narrative upwards by hiring former U.S. women's national team head coach Vlatko Andonovski as its new chief soccer officer .
Widely considered one of the most successful NWSL coaches in league history, Andonovski joins the Stars after a shocking departure from the Kansas City Current, with whom he parted ways on Sept. 7 after less than a year as its sporting director.
Andonovski served as Current head coach in 2024, guiding the team to an NWSL shield and a slew of records. And now, even though changes are unlikely to happen overnight, or even in a single offseason, anything feels possible with this team again.
As we will do with all teams that get eliminated from playoff contention, here is The Athletic 's review of Chicago's season and what comes next.
Chicago opened its 2026 campaign by conceding more goals than any other team in their first match of the season, losing 4-0 to Angel City in Los Angeles, a result that served as a statement of purpose for Angel City and a trigger warning of sorts that Chicago was headed for more of the same.
They beat Kansas City 2-1 the following weekend, but the upset was short-lived. The Stars then went on to win just two of their next 10 games, earning results against expansion side Boston Legacy and Bay FC, who join them at the bottom of the table in 13th and 14th place out of 16 teams.
Forward Mallory Swanson's return from maternity leave in May offered a morale boost. When she scored her first goal since becoming a mom less than two weeks later, even more so. But Swanson has picked up a few knocks since returning that have sidelined her from play, and even when she is on the pitch, her presence has not proven enough to elevate a squad with pockets of talent desperately in need of direction.
One of the best signings Chicago made before the start of the season was Canadian striker Jordyn Huitema , who was brought in to replace Ludmila after the club sent the Brazilian to the San Diego Wave for $800,000.
The 25-year-old was gearing up to play some of her best soccer after a move from Seattle before sustaining an ACL injury that claimed the rest of her season.
Of the 14 goals Chicago has scored all season, four came from Huitema. She remains the Stars' top goalscorer even though she hasn't played since mid-July, which speaks volumes to Chicago's lack of attacking threat.
Quality forwards such as Jameese Joseph , who earned her first call-up to the USWNT last November, and 18-year-old youth national team standout Micayla Johnson earned inconsistent minutes with the Stars. Joseph was recently transferred to the Utah Royals for $750,000.
Andonovski's first big task will be to hire a head coach.
He said Thursday that a successful club needs "stability, first and foremost, in the organization. It needs a good staff, good people around, and obviously always needs good players."
The next Stars coach, he said, will be someone "that knows how to win an NWSL (match), a coach that knows not just the league, but the U.S. soccer market, the landscape of youth and college soccer, has a pretty good understanding of the game, and staying hopefully very close to how I see the game, and how I believe that the game should be played."
It's a level of ambition that only someone of Andonovski's pedigree in the NWSL could indulge.
But if he's given the reign and resources Chicago's ownership has purported to grant him, the Stars' revival could land them on the right side of the stats table for the first time in years.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic .
Chicago Red Stars, NWSL, Women's Soccer
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