With just one win and three draws through their first five games, the Washington Spirit have made one of their poorer starts to an NWSL season, certainly the worst since 2018 when they gleaned just one point from five games.
It has not been for want of trying. The team from the capital have created opportunities game after game, but allowing late goals have been their bane.
Still, head coach Adrián González is not concerned, at least not yet.
“I don’t get obsessed with results, whether we win, lose or tie,” González told ESPN.
“Results are just consequences. For me it is about the process, how we train, how we compete and what we transmit and how we want to play. The results are going to come, no doubt about that.”
After going winless through their first four games, the Spirit finally claimed their first win of the season at Bay FC just before the international break.
They now open their post-international break schedule Friday against the Kansas City Current at Audi Field, but so far, while they have looked good in spells, their efficiency has yet to resemble the team that reached back-to-back NWSL Championship finals in 2024 and 2025.
The players inside the building insist the foundation remains as sound as it has ever been: “We have to trust what we are doing in training and what we are showing every day,” said forward Sofia Cantore to ESPN.
“Apart from maybe the first game against Portland, in which we didn’t create a lot of chances, I think now we create a lot. Maybe we have to be more concrete to score. But I think it’s something that is coming.”
That inability to take their chances is what has been their undoing for the most part. Against Utah Royals, that inefficiency was punished when they failed to add to Rebecca Bernal’s opening goal early in the game, only to be punished by Mina Tanaka‘s equalizer with four minutes of play left.
“The stats show we dominated, and probably should have put that game to bed a lot earlier,” said defender Esme Morgan.
“So then that last sort of 15, 20 minutes when we didn’t have as much control in the game, we don’t get punished, or the punishment didn’t matter as much. So that’s a little bit frustrating.”
But González maintains that the Spirit are not in freefall. They are, as he keeps insisting, simply been somewhat unlucky and no change is needed.
“To be honest, I don’t know what needs to change,” he said. “I don’t think we are going to change anything. Obviously we want to change the result, but that is something we cannot control. The way that we are training, the way that we are competing, we are doing a good job.”
González pointed to the quality and volume of chances being created as the primary indicator he tracks. The Spirit led the NWSL in possession through their first three matches, created significantly more big chances than their opponents in the Bay FC win, and have outshot their opponents in every match since the opening-day defeat to Portland.
“We are seeing clear chances,” he said. “Results come from scoring goals you cannot control that all the time. Sometimes it is just decision-making, small details.
“For me, what I want to transmit is that we need to be calm, we need to be patient. This is the beginning of the season, so I am not worried.”
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Bay FC vs. Washington Spirit – Game Highlights
Watch the Game Highlights from Bay FC vs. Washington Spirit, 04/06/2026
Midfielder Hal Hershfelt, one of the league’s breakout performers last season, echoed that steadiness while acknowledging the frustration at allowing that late goal against Utah.
“It’s still early days, so I’m not very worried, but it is frustrating, of course,” she told ESPN. “I feel like we were the better team (against Utah) and at the end of the day, you want to feel like you deserve to win.”
But, like her coach, Hershfelt is not overly concerned about the slow start to the season, pointing to the Spirit’s 2025 season, when the team struggled at home in their first five regular season games but went on to finish second in the league and reach the championship game.
“Last year, we started pretty slow,” she said. “I feel like this is a marathon, not a sprint. I don’t want to be the best team in the league right now, because I feel like the year is so long, and I don’t want to peak too soon. So I feel like we’re on the right track.”
That makes sense. The last time the Spirit failed to make the playoffs was in 2023 when they ended the regular season on a 1-5-4 slide, finishing with a 7-6-9 record.
In many ways, the international break could not have arrived at a more opportune moment for the Spirit, right on the heels of their first win of the season. That 2-0 result at Bay FC not only delivered a long awaited victory, it also brought in a clean sheet and the clinical finish the team had been chasing before players dispersed for national team duty.
Standing in the way on Friday is Kansas City, the reigning NWSL Shield winners who led the league by a wide margin through most of 2025. The Current have their own early-season challenges this year, playing without two-time league MVP Temwa Chawinga, who is out for the season with a hip injury.
González made clear he will not treat Friday’s match differently based on the opponent or the run of results preceding it.
“We will face all games the same, whether we play at home or away,” he said. “The results are going to come, no doubt about that.
“Probably in the future we will win a lot of games and we will have the same conversation. I will say the same.”
If there is one thing the Washington Spirit have shown over the last few years, it is that their championship ambitions is not limited by a less than pristine start, which suggests, at the very minimum that the conversation about this season is a long way from over.
