U.S. women’s national team forward Ally Sentnor is officially headed to Angel City FC.

Two days after the club dismissed head coach Alex Straus, following a poor first half to the NWSL season, the club’s sporting director Mark Parsons says Sentnor’s transfer is another step in a long-term plan designed to transform the club into a perennial contender.

The 21-year-old joins the team from the Kansas City Current and is the latest major investment in Angel City’s roster rebuild, arriving at a moment when the club is simultaneously searching for stability and trying to accelerate its climb into championship contention. Angel City won only one of its last eight matches before the league’s summer break. The team has made the playoffs just once since 2022.

“This is a massive and very important moment for our club,” Parsons told The Athletic in an exclusive interview. “It’s not just about the goals, the assists and the quality of a footballer. She’s a competitive winner who wants to make the most out of every day.”

Both Sentnor and the team are getting accustomed to change. Angel City is Sentnor’s third team in as many seasons in the NWSL, while Angel City has yet to have a permanent head coach for a full two seasons.

However, the team isn’t presenting Sentnor as a reactionary move to Straus’ departure. According to Parsons, ACFC’s pursuit of the forward began months ago. While the initial conversations date back to spring, Kansas City Current was unwilling to entertain a move at the time. Discussions resumed several weeks ago, eventually resulting in one of the biggest transfers of the NWSL summer window so far. ACFC sent the Current $850,000 in intraleague transfer funds as part of the trade.

Sentnor’s move to the club comes less than a year after she was involved in another landmark transfer. Kansas City acquired the Massachusetts native from the Utah Royals for a then-record $600,000 guaranteed fee in August 2025, plus add-ons and a future sell-on clause.

The Current viewed her as a long-term piece alongside a young core that included fellow U.S. midfielder Claire Hutton. Both players helped the Current capture the NWSL Shield in 2025 and entered 2026 as one of the club’s key attacking players — and now both have departed the club, with Hutton having left for Bay FC in the off-season.

“Throughout my career, I’ve tried to approach every opportunity with more grit, more grace, and a commitment to doing more good, and I’m excited to bring that mindset to Angel City and the Los Angeles community,” Sentnor said in a statement.

Utah drafted Sentnor No.1 overall in 2024 after a successful stint at the University of North Carolina. Her rookie season showcased her attacking and game-building qualities, which resulted in her earning the 2024 U.S. Soccer Young Female Player of the Year award, attracting interest across the league.

For Parsons, Sentnor represents far more than another highly rated young player.

Parsons says the move is part of a broader strategy centered on building around elite young talent while supplementing it with championship-tested veterans such as Emily Sams, Ary Borges, Nealy Martin and Hina Sugita. The result is one of the league’s youngest rosters, but one Parsons believes is built for sustainable success rather than short-term gains.

“We are the youngest team in the league right now,” Parsons said. “We play more under-23s than any team in the league.”

However, those players are now without a permanent head coach as of Wednesday. In the absence of Straus, senior assistant coach Leif Gunnar Smerud will act as interim head coach, and the team will embark on another comprehensive search for a replacement. Parsons declined to discuss the reasons behind the decision in detail, saying it was too soon after the announcement.

“I hope in the next week or two that I can be really clear,” he said. “Like I always have and always will, being really clear and really open on everything that we’re doing. But today is not that day.”

ACFC has undergone sweeping changes since Parsons arrived as sporting director ahead of the 2025 season, overseeing a major rebuild of both the roster and the club’s sporting infrastructure. Angel City revamped its medical, scouting, analytics and technical departments while reshaping the squad around a younger core. That core was previously anchored by 21-year-old U.S. forward Alyssa Thompson, who transferred to Chelsea last year.

The results have been mixed. Across the 2025 and 2026 regular seasons, Angel City compiled a 10-14-11 record. The club finished the 2025 campaign with 25 points, outside the playoff positions and in the bottom half of the NWSL standings. Optimism grew early in 2026 after they opened the season with three consecutive victories, a run that earned head coach Alexander Straus the league’s Coach of the Month award for March.

But the momentum stagnated. By the time Straus was dismissed on June 17, the club sat 12th in the 16-team NWSL standings.

Bringing in Sentnor not only contributes to the ongoing vision of the club’s youth movement, but it also aligns with what Parsons frequently describes as Angel City’s “football DNA.” Parsons was clear about where they wanted her to be.

“We were really clear with Ally: you have to be close to the goal,” he said. Whether that means as a No. 10, a false nine or another attacking role remains to be seen. “She strikes the ball with both feet better than anyone I’ve seen in the country. It’s going to be pretty fun seeing her do that for Angel City.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

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Wrexham’s experienced defender Sarah Harvey believes the club’s historic Women’s Champions League debut can be just the start, saying, “We’re not shy of the big games any more.”

Jenny Sugarman’s side, crowned Welsh champions last spring, have been handed a tough first qualifying round assignment against Pyunik, the Armenian champions for the past three years.

Under a format now into its second season, the winners of the July 22 showdown will then meet whoever prevails in the other semi-final between Glentoran and Riga, champions of Northern Ireland and Latvia, for a place in the next qualifying stage.

All the ties will be staged at the same venue, possibly the Racecourse Ground. A decision will be announced on Friday following a meeting of the four clubs.

Should unseeded Wrexham upset the odds and progress, a semi-final against Danish champions Koge would be next up in another mini-tournament also featuring Gintra of Lithuania and Scotland’s Hearts.

To underline the size of the task facing the club owned by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, no Welsh team has won a Champions League qualifying match since Cardiff Met in 2019 and even then, they failed to progress from a four-team group.

It’s also five years — and eight games — since an Adran Premier League side even scored in Europe’s premier competition, Chloe Chivers the last to do so when netting for Swansea City in a 4-1 defeat to CSKA Moscow.

“It’s so exciting to see the calibre of teams from all the different countries,” says Harvey, speaking to The Athletic after joining her team-mates to follow a live feed of Thursday’s draw at the House of European Football in Nyon, Switzerland.

“As soon as we pulled Pyunik, I’m, like, ‘Where are they from?’. It’s very exciting to look at their history. We’re coming off a double-winning season (Wrexham also lifted the Adran Welsh Cup), how do we play against them? What’s our tactics?”

Competing in the Champions League qualifiers will be the latest notable step forward for a women’s setup that was effectively mothballed just a decade ago due to lack of funds.

Relaunched in 2018, Wrexham’s revival gathered pace following Reynolds and Mac’s takeover three years later. Promotion to the Welsh top flight — a primarily amateur and semi-professional competition, in contrast to the fully professional Women’s Super League (WSL) in England — followed in 2023.

Since then, further investment has secured a long-term permanent home for the team at the Rock, the 3,000-capacity former home of Cefn Druids bought by Wrexham last year, as well as the signings that helped land the club’s first league title when Cardiff City, champions in each of the previous three seasons, were thrashed 4-1 in March.

“To win one (trophy) is amazing,” says Harvey. “To win two is indescribable. To do it with a club like Wrexham, that has the community and the fans like we do, is so special and meaningful.

“My friends in Canada or my family in Ireland and Scotland can follow us and get behind us because of how well Wrexham promotes the women’s teams. It’s like our 12th man.”

Next month’s foray into Europe will stir memories of previous European campaigns for the men’s team, Wrexham having competed in eight editions of the European Cup Winners’ Cup between 1972 and 1995.

Along the way, notable scalps were claimed by the serial Welsh Cup winners, with the aggregate victory over Porto in 1984 a clear highlight along with reaching the quarter-finals eight years earlier.

Now, Sugarman’s side have an opportunity to create their own history in a competition where half of the 18 teams who will compete in the league phase come late September are already known, including holders Barcelona and Manchester City, the English champions.

Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Roma, Paris FC, Lyon, Benfica and Europa Cup winners Hacken have also all qualified.

The route to joining those big names can be long and testing, particularly for teams such as Wrexham entering at the earliest of three qualification stages. The first two of these rounds take the form of mini-tournaments, while the final qualifying stage will be a two-legged play-off also featuring teams such as Chelsea, Inter and Real Madrid.

Signed last February from Lewes in England, Harvey boasts Champions League experience, having played for Georgian side Samegrelo in the 2023-24 campaign.

After edging past NS Mura, the dominant force in Slovenian football, on penalties after a goalless draw, they bowed out of qualifying to Cypriot side Apollon Limassol.

“No one had money on us to win and rightly so,” she says about taking on Mura. “We went down to nine players (due to two red cards), got through extra time and then won it on penalties.

“That was amazing. Luckily, my dad came. It was really special to play in that game and have a family member there to share the moment. Then, our second game (against Apollon), due to the red cards, we had maybe one player on the bench.

“We were told to play everything in our half, pretty much ‘park the bus’. We were hoping for another penalty shootout but we lost 3-0. The whole experience, though, made me want to do it all again.”

Wrexham already boast several notable firsts for women’s football in Wales, including the first to own their stadium outright and the first to buy a player for a fee from a league rival when snapping up Maria Francis Jones from The New Saints.

Can this trailblazing stretch to becoming the country’s first qualifiers for the Champions League group stage? It’s a very, very tall order on debut, especially with first-round opponents Pyunik having claimed 18 wins from as many league games in 2025-26, in the process racking up a goal difference of plus 99.

But Harvey adds: “I’m fortunate that this is my second time. It’s not like a nervous feeling, like last time. I was, like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the Champions League, such a big stage and one of the tournaments not a lot of players get to play in’.

“All those nerves are out the door. Now, we have our playing style and are coming off a successful season. The majority of our players have been retained so our core and culture is very much there.

“It’s another big game for us and we’re not shy of the big games any more.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Wrexham FC, Women's Soccer, Women's Champions League, Championship

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The Commissioner’s Cup final is headed back to New York, where the Liberty will face the Las Vegas Aces on Tuesday, June 30, for a $500,000 purse. It is a rematch of the 2023 Cup championship, when New York upset Las Vegas in a preview of their eventual WNBA Finals matchup later that season.

The Liberty are the hosts this time around, after winning their previous Cup in Las Vegas. They hosted the 2024 championship game — a loss to the Minnesota Lynx — but had to relocate to Long Island because of the NBA Draft. This is the first Cup title game to be contested at Barclays Center.

New York clinched its berth in the final two games ago, but the Liberty earned the right to host by eking out a 96-95 win over the Chicago Sky on Wednesday. That gave New York a clean sweep (6-0) of its Eastern Conference games and the tiebreaker over Las Vegas.

The Aces were in control of their destiny Wednesday due to their head-to-head win over Minnesota, needing only a win over the Phoenix Mercury to secure their berth. Las Vegas pulled away in the fourth quarter to win 86-76 in its first trip to Phoenix since clinching the 2025 league title on the Mercury’s home floor. Aces star center A’ja Wilson led the way with a game-high 33 points, 10 rebounds and five steals.

The Liberty and Aces have not played each other yet this season. Their first regular-season matchup is on Saturday, June 23, in Las Vegas, an appetizer for the main event to follow in New York. But the teams are no strangers to one another; in addition to the 2023 Commissioner’s Cup, the Liberty and the Aces met in the 2023 and 2024 postseasons, splitting the two series as they split the two WNBA titles.

The star power is off the charts, as the Liberty’s Breanna Stewart and Jonquel Jones and the Aces’ Wilson have won six of the last seven MVP awards and five of the last seven Finals MVPs.

The Liberty finally have their full roster together, after welcoming back Sabrina Ionescu on Sunday against the Washington Mystics following a three-week absence due to injury. Ionescu had 5 points in her return and doubled that to 10 against the Sky, including the game-winning bucket with 10.3 seconds to play. New York is riding an eight-game winning streak.

The Aces have won seven of their last eight games behind the dominance of Wilson, who is the favorite to capture yet another MVP trophy. She leads the league in points and blocks per game.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

New York Liberty, Las Vegas Aces, WNBA

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