New York’s newest superteam isn’t shying away from that lofty label.
Gotham FC, the defending champions of the National Women’s Soccer League, followed up its first-ever NWSL title in the fall with a franchise-altering offseason, adding four star players in Crystal Dunn, Rose Lavelle, Emily Sonnett and Tierna Davidson.
Their arrivals give Gotham four more staples of the U.S. Women’s National Team who further bolster a roster already featuring standouts in Lynn Williams, Kelley O’Hara, Midge Purce and Jenna Nighswonger.
Expectations are understandably high for such a loaded lineup — and that’s exactly how general manager Yael Averbuch wants them.
“We want this type of attention,” Averbuch, who was born in New York and grew up in Montclair, N.J., said Friday at Rockefeller Center’s Rainbow Room, where Gotham officially introduced its new big-name quartet.
“I’m from this area of the country, and we really want to embody the New Jersey/New York mindset, which is [that] we want to be the best and we want other people chasing us. We want that target on our back.”
The busy offseason aligns with Averbuch’s mission, as she described Friday, to turn Gotham into the “global capital of women’s soccer.” The 2023 season ended with a championship but still left room for improvement in the eyes of Averbuch and coach Juan Carlos Amoros, considering Gotham finished the regular season sixth out of the league’s 12 teams with an 8-7-7 record.
Enter the new additions.
The multi-positional Dunn, 31, is a Long Island native who won NWSL MVP honors in 2015 and boasts three league championships, most recently in 2022 with Portland Thorns FC.
The midfielders Lavelle, 28, and Sonnett, 30, come over from Seattle Reign FC, which lost to Gotham, 2-1, in November’s NWSL final. Davidson, a 25-year-old defender, spent the past five years with the Chicago Red Stars.
All four were members of the USWNT roster that won the 2019 World Cup and the bronze medal at the 2020 Olympics. Dunn, Lavelle and Sonnett returned for the 2023 World Cup, while Davidson did not after tearing her ACL the previous year.
Gotham veterans Williams and O’Hara were also part of that 2023 World Cup club, which failed to medal.
“It’s always exciting to be on a team with a lot of great winners,” Lavelle said Friday.
“It’s an amazing roster before we even got here and we’re excited to add to that, but nothing’s given. Everything’s earned. I know people are saying ‘super team,’ but we still have to show up and put in the work and put the product on the field.”
Despite their USWNT ties, Dunn, Lavelle, Sonnett and Davidson didn’t decide together to join Gotham. The pursuits played out separately, with each determining New York gave them the best chances to win and grow.
“Each of us chose this club, not necessarily for different reasons, but … we went through our own separate, individual processes of what mattered most to us as players at this stage in our careers,” Dunn said Friday.
“For me, I speak a lot about family. Now, being a mom [to a 1-year-old son], there’s a lot of things that play into happiness, not really on the field, but off the field. Being supported as a player, being valued as a player, is what I felt from this club.”
That Gotham stood out as a desirable destination is a testament to the organization’s recent turnaround, much of which came under Averbuch, a former professional player who took over as general manager in 2021.
Originally known as Jersey Sky Blue and later as Sky Blue FC, the club spent years playing at Rutgers University’s Yurcak Field, a modest 5,000-seat venue with a single set of bleachers. Gotham started playing at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J. — a 25,000-seat venue more befitting of a professional team — in 2020.
Gotham finished 2022 in last place with a 4-1-17 record, during which it fired coach Scott Parkinson. The team had losing records in five of the previous six seasons as well.
Averbuch hired Amoros, the longtime coach of the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club Women, before the 2023 season and immediately reached the NWSL pinnacle.
Now, Gotham enters the 2024 campaign with an entirely different level of pressure.
“Having so many incredible players, it doesn’t come easy,” Sonnet said Friday. “You have to train. You have to have the same mentality.
“How can you do the game plan that the coach wants to? Can you guys all do it? [That is] probably the biggest thing we all have to come over,” she said. “People probably look at ‘super team.’ … But it’s really, can you come in and can you train every day, and can you take what Juan wants and apply it to the games?”
Adding star power to the country’s biggest market presents an exciting opportunity to bring attention to the NWSL, which launched in 2012 in place of the Women’s Professional Soccer league and the Women’s United Soccer Association before that.
Uncertainty that once swirled around the current league’s future largely eased after the league’s first Collective Bargaining Agreement came together in early 2022. Months later, the NWSL opened its first-ever free agency period.
“The CBA forever changed the trajectory of women’s soccer in this country,” Averbuch said. “I truly believe until that point, there was always the conversation of, ‘Will there be a league? How do we plan, because is this going to be here? Will all these teams be here?’
“I think at the point at which the CBA was signed, combined with the great momentum surrounding the women’s game and everybody starting to finally see it as the opportunity that it is, I think we’ve hit a new level of stability where people can actually aggressively grow.”
Fresh off its first title, Gotham is set to open the 2024 season on March 15 by hosting San Diego Wave FC in the NWSL Challenge Cup.
Gotham averaged about 6,300 fans at home games last season. That paled in comparison to top-drawing clubs such as San Diego and Angel City FC, which both averaged around 20,000.
In order to continue to break through in a New York market filled with popular professional teams, Gotham must keep progressing on the field, according to Averbuch.
“We need to keep showing an exciting product on the field and winning games,” Averbuch said. “That’s something we are [in] the very early stages of what we’re doing. It’s really amazing to have these landmark moments to celebrate, but that’s something we’re building day in and day out. … I’m really mostly excited for people to come watch us and then to want to come back.”
