NWSL Labs
A read-only analytics view of the National Women's Soccer League. One site, all 16 clubs, the same numbers on every page: opponent-adjusted team strength, a match model, playoff odds, player ratings, and AI-written previews and recaps grounded in those numbers. No accounts, no ads, no tracking beyond a single cookie that remembers your club.
What you can do here
Matchup predictor
Pick any two clubs for a hypothetical head-to-head with win, draw, and loss odds and an expected-goals line.
Fixture previews
Every upcoming fixture gets a model-grounded preview, written on-device from the numbers.
Match recaps
Every finished match gets a recap, written on-device and grounded in the model's expected goals.
Best XI
A season team of the league on goals-added plus a monthly side on box-score form.
Browse the players
The player index ranks the league on goals-added, by position, with headshots and short bios.
Track the race
Playoff odds show each club's shot at the postseason, the Shield, and the title, computed from the match model.
Or start from the Pulse — the home dashboard is the league at a glance: form, movers, this week's fixtures, and a Best XI.
How the NWSL works
- 16 clubs play a regular season, each team facing the others home and away. Three points for a win, one for a draw, none for a loss — that running total is the table (the standings).
- The team that finishes top of the table wins the NWSL Shield — the regular-season title.
- The top finishers then enter the playoffs, a knockout bracket whose winner is crowned NWSL Champion. The Shield and the Championship are two different trophies.
- A team's goal is to score more than it concedes; we also track expected goals (xG) — the quality of the chances created — to see past lucky or unlucky results.
How the numbers are built
Full glossary →Power ratings
Each club gets an opponent-adjusted strength rating split into attack and defense. Beating a strong side counts for more than beating a weak one, so the table and the ratings can disagree, and that gap is the signal.
Match model
Head-to-head predictions come from a Dixon-Coles model: a bivariate Poisson on each side's expected goals with a low-score correction, validated out of sample rather than fit to look good in hindsight. It returns a win, draw, and loss split plus an expected-goals line for any pairing.
Playoff odds
The rest of the season is simulated tens of thousands of times from the match model. The make-playoffs, Shield (the regular-season title), and championship percentages are the share of simulations in which each outcome happens. The odds are calibrated, so a 70 percent really means about 70 percent over the long run.
Player metrics
Players are rated on goals-added, which measures the total value a player contributes across everything they do on the ball, then shown as a percentile against others in the same broad position. Bright is elite, rose is below average. Low-minute players carry noisy percentiles and are flagged as such.
Play-style archetypes
Each club is profiled on five style axes (attack, defense, pace, press, build-up) scored 0 to 100 versus the league, then labelled with a plain-English archetype so a matchup reads as a style clash, not just two ratings.
Want the full definitions? The methodology and glossary explains every metric, from goals-added to the calibration checks behind the odds.
Where the data comes from
- Match and player data from American Soccer Analysis, the source for the underlying expected-goals and goals-added inputs.
- Schedule and results from ESPN.
- Club photography from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licenses. Each image credits its contributor on the page where it appears.
- Player headshots from Wikimedia Commons, used under their Creative Commons licenses.
- Player bios from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA with attribution.
The fine print
Everything here is a model estimate. The predictions, odds, and AI write-ups describe what the model expects, not what will happen, and none of it is betting or financial advice. NWSL Labs is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the National Women's Soccer League or any club.