This Week In Women's Soccer 2/27/2026 -- Predictable European Leagues A Major Problem

Over the weekend Bayern Munich beat VfL Wolfsburg 4-1, a scoreline that was perhaps deceptive about how entertaining the match was (Wolfsburg got the first goal early, Bayern added their last two late) but one that does show Bayern's dominance over Wolfsburg and the Frauen-Bundesliga as a whole. It's now just a countdown until Bayern win their fourth consecutive title, 14 points up on Wolfsburg with eight matches to play.

This isn't the only European league that's functionally finished, here in late February. Barcelona has had a 10-point lead in Spain since the fall, and Lyon's lead in France is a massive 16 points, albeit with the two caveats that it would be 10 but for PSG's points punishment, and that France does have a playoff system to create some artificial drama for the end of the season. 

The only league that's really still in doubt is England's WSL, where Manchester City have an eight-point lead (seven if Arsenal win their games in hand) with six matches to play. City have only dropped points in matches against other superclubs, and a March 28th match against Manchester United is the only one of those left – they'd still need to drop points in two matches and Arsenal or United would have to be perfect, so really, me saying that this is "in doubt" is almost certainly cope.

Why is this? At one level, having championship races functionally finished early is a risk run by the European model of just having a regular season, no playoffs – sometimes there just is a better team than everyone else. But if it's consistently the same club, and consistently winning by such a huge margin, as is the case in many of these leagues, there's a problem.

In Spain, Barcelona has won every league title since 2020 by at least ten points save the first in a COVID-shortened season. Lyon have won the French regular season the last three seasons by over ten points when France instituted a playoff round, Lyon won all those too. Bayern's dominance in Germany has been a little less profound, this season they're up by over ten points, winning by seven and eight points the two years before that, and only two in 2023. The WSL is more complicated; although Chelsea did win eight titles in nine years, several of those were close, including a tied league where the Blues took the trophy based only on goal difference in 2024. 

Secondary statistics tell an even more damning story. You can only win three points in a match, after all, but you can score as many goals as you want. At the top of each league, 2/3s of the way through the season, the stats are incredible: Barca has a +89 goal differential, Bayern, +65, Lyon +54, and Man City is at +34. By contrast, in last year's NWSL season, Kansas City's legendarily terrific season had a GD of +36….in ten more matches than City's played so far this campaign. (Orlando, whose 2024 was almost as good, had only a +24 GD.)

This is the downside of the superclub model: if a small number of teams simply have more resources to pay and develop players, their teams will consistently be better in fundamentally uninteresting ways. In Spain, the only real question about where the title will go is "will Real Madrid ever catch up to Barca?" In France, it's "Will PSG rebuild to Lyon's level?" just as in Germany it's the same question with Wolfsburg and Bayern, respectively. England may have four superclubs, which causes somewhat more chaos, but the question is still "Which of City/United/Arsenal/Chelsea will take the crown?" than anything else.

Compare this to the NWSL, where since 2021, there have been five different regular season champions (Shield winners) and four different playoff champions and you can see that European women's football has a major issue with competitive balance. It's not an issue the superclubs are unaware of, but whether they can handle it and get women's club soccer into a healthy place is a difficult question. 

Is a cross-national super league the answer for Europe? Slow but steady improvement? Something in-between? Something completely different? That's a question I'd like to examine in further detail in the future. 

RECOMMENDED MATCHES

It's our first full international break, which means no club soccer (unless I go to the Portland-Monterrey friendly on Friday). Three international competitions are getting going, with a fourth later in the month: one small and easy to watch, one medium-sized and a little more difficult and one sprawling and difficult. 

The smallest competition is the SheBelieves Cup, a yearly mini-tournament hosted by the United States with three of the best available international teams to play a little practice World Cup group, essentially. In years like this, this may be the most competitive matches the US plays, although they do have North American World Cup qualification matches this year that's, uh, not normally a difficult thing for the US. 

This year the three invited teams are Canada, Colombia, and Argentina, which is a somewhat lower-quality group than years past but understandable with every confederation in the eastern hemisphere playing their own competitive matches.

The good-sized tournament beginning this week is the Women's Asian Cup, one of two continental championships in March, with the Women's African Cup of Nations, or, sigh, WAFCON starting later. Both of these overlap with the club seasons for the players in Europe and the United States, which may cause some interesting decisions for clubs like Tottenham Hotspur or North Carolina Courage, who rely on Asian players. 

Japan and Australia are the class of the Asian confederation, while China, South Korea, and Philippines are the other three World Cup qualifiers from 2023, so my recommendations will focus on those. Happily every match is available on Youtube. 

Finally, European World Cup qualifiers start on Tuesday. If you're used to the men's qualification system of one big nation with several smaller nations, that's not how UEFA does it with the women – instead they use the Nations League rankings to put together the big teams all in their own groups, with lots of cushion and playoffs for the ones that don't qualify directly. 

The good news is that this leads to a lot of matches between high-quality opposition. The bad news is that it means there isn't anywhere near as much jeopardy in each match. The worse news is that it's hard to tell how to watch these matches in the US – UEFA says they'll have some available on their website, but that's not a predictable statement! I will include a couple in the recs here and hopefully update with more info if/when I have it.

1. Australia v Philippines (Sun 1am PST, Youtube) - The opening match of the Asian Cup features hosts Australia against surprise World Cup qualifiers Philippines, with the former looking to rebuild after having their best players hit by injury in the last few years and the latter looking to solidify their place as one of the best in Asia. How much and how well Chelsea's Sam Kerr and Manchester City's Mary Fowler can play is one of the big questions of the tournament, both for Australia's potential success and the marketing of the tourney in Matildas-mad Australia. 

2. Canada v Colombia (Sun 11am PST, TNT/HBO) - A competitive match between two very good nations trying to take the step up into global power? Yes please. The winner of this match also becomes the chief rival for the US in trying to take the trophy. Especially exciting as the two nations have some of the best young wingers in the game. We are lucky to be able to see Colombia/Real Madrid's Linda Caicedo and Canada/Arsenal's Olivia Smith burn defenders for the next decade or more. 

3. USA v Argentina (Sun 2pm PST, TNT/HBO) - The sort of match against decent-but-not-great opposition that you might see in the World Cup group stage, like, say, the Portugal match that the US almost lost in 2023. The sort of match the US should absolutely dominate. (But that's why they play the games, etc.)

MIDWEEK MATCHES

1. USA v Canada (Wed 3:45pm PST, TNT/HBO) - The biggest rivalry in North America, possibly the biggest rivalry in women's sports all-together, and one that may have a bit of extra added spice after the Winter Olympics. Canada is looking to build their way back into contention for major trophies after Christine Sinclair's retirement and the end of that gold medal generation, the United States has a nearly full-strength squad for the first time since the Olympics after a year of experimentation and development. 

2. Japan v Chinese Taipei (Tue 9pm PST, Youtube)- How Japan line up with their absolute bonanza of young, creative attacking talent is one of the big questions in global football heading into the next Women's World Cup. If manager Nils Nielsen can find a way to fit Manaka Matsukubo, Aoba Fujino, Momoko Tanikawa and more, while getting the most out of them? That's exciting. 

This may not be an especially competitive match, as Chinese Taipei haven't made the World Cup since the inaugural not-quite-a-World Cup in 1991, where, fun fact, they made the knockout round and were beaten 7-0 by the US.

MIDWEEK SICKO ZONE

3. Italy v Sweden
4. Poland v Netherlands (Tue 9am PST, UEFA?) - Look, if you can find these two matches, they're my pick of the litter from the Tuesday European qualifiers. 

5. Colombia v Argentina (Wed 12:30pm PST, TNT/HBO) -  Argentina is simply not as good in women's football as in men's, but they took Colombia to penalties in the Copa America semis last year.

6. Philippines v South Korea (Wed 7pm PST, Youtube)
7. Iran v Australia (Thu 1am PST, Youtube) - This might be the group of death at the Asian Cup, with three World Cup squads plus a decent Iranian team. 

LAST WEEK'S RESULTS

As mentioned, Bayern Munich beat Wolfsburg to essentially guarantee the championship in the Frauen-Bundesliga. In the race for third place, Hoffenheim beat Leverkusen 1-0 and Frankfurt beat Freiburg 3-0 in the big matches, while Koln also lost. These results leave the last Champions League spot likely a four-club race between Frankfurt, Hoffenheim, Leverkusen, and Werder Bremen, with Freiburg and Koln falling off the pace. 

In Italy, Roma beat Inter Milan in a hard-fought match to take pole position for the Serie A title. In France, surprise contenders Nantes and Fleury both took draws while the big clubs won, leaving four teams within one point of each other for the playoff/Champions League slots with six matches to go. Finally in FA Cup action in England, the big teams largely won, with Chelsea beating Manchester United 2-1 in the only superclub on superclub contest, while Spurs and London City played a classic that ended 2-2, 9-8 on penalties in Tottenham's favor. 

IN OTHER NEWS

Quiet week in women's football! Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury announced that she was pregnant and due in June, which if you're doing the math, says that she was already pregnant when she won a penalty shootout against Louisville in the playoffs. 

In other NWSL news, ESPN dropped a new three-episode documentary on last year's NWSL season, centered on Angel City, Kansas City, and Washington. These are clubs that had interesting seasons and are filled with big personalities, so it could be good. The new NWSL kits were also announced, and I'll be honest, I love several of them, and even the bad ones are interesting. Gonna be a good-looking league this year. 

The worst news of the week, unfortunately, was that the US-instigated flareup of cartel violence in Mexico caused in the immediate short-term, the postponement of the Liga MX Feminil match between America and Chivas, and threatens Mexico's stability as a World Cup host this summer. 

GOALS OF THE WEEK

Let's check out Gotham FC legend Evelyne Viens against Inter Milan. It's not a great goal, it's not even an especially good goal, just cleaning up a rebound, but it was enough to give Roma a 1-0 victory in the biggest match of the season and likely a Serie A title. They all count.

For a couple bangers, the highlights of Sevilla-Atletico Madrid have some tremendous ones. Sevilla's Andrea Alvaraz scored a penalty, then this absolute banger from range, and then got a red card. Now that's a hat trick! Atletico only pulled one goal back, but it was a superb diving header from Xenia to make the end of the match interesting. 

Speaking of long range golazos, London City's Jana Fernandez scored the second against Spurs in the FA Cup from a ways out, though they ended up losing on penalties.