Kansas City Current is still molding an on-field identity. And that’s its secret weapon

The Kansas City Current is a popular pick to win the NWSL Supporters’ Shield this season after a slew of stunning offseason signings. The club’s ambition to build its own training facility and soccer-specific stadium helped it land a free agent class headlined by former NWSL Championship and Challenge Cup MVP Debinha. And she was far from the only big name to join.

USWNT veteran Morgan Gautrat and her long-time Chicago Red Stars teammate Vanessa DiBernardo signed as free agents, while Swedish internationals Hanna Glas and Mimmi Larsson came from overseas. Michelle Cooper and Alexa Spaanstra, first-round draft picks, both have extensive U.S. women’s youth national team experience and are expected to play big minutes in their rookie years.

These players add to a squad that finished just four points off the top spot in 2022 — while playing some interesting soccer in a 3-5-2 formation, featuring center backs willing to dribble up the pitch and wingbacks capable of scoring goals. Ultimately, injuries to stars Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams limited the team’s depth in midfield and attack, and the Current dropped the championship game 2-0 to a loaded Portland Thorns team.

KC’s signings introduce the kind of good problems that every coach would like to have: Too many talented players for a limited number of positions. If you’re wondering how coach Matt Potter is going to get all of his best attacking talent on the field at the same time… well, he can’t. A few high caliber players are going to start games on the bench, unless he wants to run a terribly unbalanced setup with limited defensive capabilities. 

But we can take a crack at speculating about what the best version of the Current will look like, and I think it’s going to be a bit different than last season. Preseason lineups suggest we’ll still see quite a bit of the 3-5-2 they used last year, but I think a 4-4-2 diamond formation lies in this team’s future.

Debinha is everything she’s hyped to be and more

Dope goal break: Enjoy this Debinha rocket from the 2020 season.

🚀🚀🚀

Debinha powers it into the back of the net and @NCCourage tie it back up! pic.twitter.com/lUm8NTKuJJ

— CBS Sports Soccer (@CBSSportsSoccer) September 12, 2020

Among players that Opta qualified as midfielders last season, Debinha led the NWSL in expected goals, post-shot expected goals, expected assists and passes in the final third, as well as posting above-average stats in basically every dribbling category. She’s absolutely everything a team could possibly want in an attacking midfielder/second striker.

She feels like the player who deserves the longest section in any piece about the Current’s prospects for this season, but there are no complexities to be explained. If you watch her highlights, you understand her. The highlights are just what she does all the time. She has more of them than anyone else. Any uneducated viewer could watch a game she plays in, instantly pick her out as the best player, and be correct. She is the best goal threat and playmaker at her position in the league, and it isn’t close. Whatever salary she’s making, she’s underpaid.

Do other players adjust to Debinha?

Know who was second behind Debinha in goals and xG among central attacking midfielders last year? None other than KC’s celly queen, Lo’eau LaBonta. She’s been with three different iterations of this franchise continuously since 2016, moving around the pitch as a role player under different coaches. Last season, she finally found her place as a No. 10, and it’ll be interesting to see whether or not she can keep it.

Lo'eau LaBonta faked the hamstring injury for the celebration 😂

(via @nwsl) pic.twitter.com/ZT2LZJjCRq

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) August 20, 2022

There are a couple schools of thought about what to do in this situation, and I don’t think either is always right or wrong. One says that Debinha can make an impact anywhere because she’s on a different level of talent, so you can play her at striker and let LaBonta continue in a position where she had so much success last season. The other is that you should put your best players in their best positions, and make other players adjust around them.

KC could adjust to more of a 3-4-2-1 formation with a pair of half-winger, half-central attackers in Debinha and LaBonta behind a dedicated striker. But I think it’s more likely that LaBonta gets moved back to utility duty.

Spaanstra is another player who’s going to have to make a significant positional adjustment to fit into the way KC’s been playing. She’s been a winger throughout her college and youth national team career, but KC aren’t playing with true wide players. The Current revealed that Spaanstra has been starting preseason games, but their lineups don’t make it entirely obvious if she’s doing so in a central midfield or wingback position. The games haven’t been streamed. It’ll be interesting to see if she becomes a multi-position utility player, or if Potter has a full time position change in mind.

DiBernardo and Gautrat add some defensive midfield depth

Team captain and Canada stalwart Desiree Scott returns to KC this season, and she’ll have some experienced players to rotate and partner with. In previous seasons, the Current lacked defensive presence in midfield when Scott has been unavailable, but Gautrat and DiBernardo should change that.

Neither player is really a true defensive midfielder in the way Scott is. Both played more attacking roles when they were younger before transitioning into deeper-lying roles. Neither is quite the crunching tackler that Scott is, but they’re still really good ball-winners — and much more dynamic at progressing the ball.

DiBernardo was one of NWSL’s premier attacking midfielders before injuries started slowing her down, and she’s retained a lot of those skills while playing in a more defensive role. She had 12 progressive passes and carries per 90 minutes last season (75th percentile among all midfielders) and 7.5 passes into the final third (71st percentile). There was someone better at everything than DiBernardo last year, but she was arguably the most well-rounded, deep-lying midfielder in the league. Scott was a top five midfielder in the league in successful tackles, but surprisingly, DiBernardo was one of few who had more. Her experience playing in multiple positions is going to give KC a lot of flexibility, whether they play with a single or double pivot, or with three in midfield or a diamond.

Gautrat didn’t play enough minutes last season to have meaningful stats due to an injury, but she was previously nicknamed “The Butcher,” in case you’re curious about her tackling credentials. 

It’s possible the current only uses one of these players at a time in starting lineups, and it almost certainly will only use two of the three in defensive situations or in times of injury crisis. But the signings of Gautrat and DiBernardo virtually ensure that the club will always have at least one experienced midfielder for a defensive role.

Placing a big bet on internal improvement at center back

Veteran center back Kristen Edmonds has departed the team, and that’s the only position where the Current didn’t retain a star or sign a big name replacement. Rookie Gabrielle Robinson signed a contract and should get plenty of playing time this year, but the team’s roster moves suggest to me that they believe Alex Loera and Jenna Winebrenner are going to be better in their sophomore campaigns than they were last season.

In Winebrenner’s case, I don’t feel like I’ve seen enough to have a strong opinion. But Loera had some spectacular performances last year, even if they came with a handful of big standout errors. She also makes a good active, dynamic partner for the more consistent, but understated, Elizabeth Ball.

Center back is probably the hardest position in soccer to evaluate with event data, and the area of recruitment where teams are still trusting their scouts a bit more than their analytics department. Ball is a great example of this. She was almost universally regarded as one of the most improved players and best defenders in NWSL last season, but she’s a very positional player who wins a low volume of tackles, interceptions, and aerial duels. Loera, meanwhile, is an aggressive ball-winner. She had 11.9 combined tackles, interceptions, aerials won and loose ball recoveries per 90 minutes, compared to Ball’s 8.8. Loera also played a bit in midfield last season and had 10 passes into the final third per 90 minutes (81st percentile for defenders) and provided 3.44 xA from both passing and being a set piece threat. 

I’m not sure Ball or Loera is ever going to be considered the best individual center back in NWSL, but with skills that complement each other, they might eventually evolve into the best partnership.

Win big or lose it all at the striker casino

Mimmi Larsson and Michelle Cooper certainly have the ability to score lots of goals, but there isn’t evidence to make me feel confident that they’ll be able to do so at the rate required to win the Shield or championship at the end of the season. Kristen Hamilton is as reliable as they come and scored 7 goals last season, but KC will need to get similar production out of her partners to compete for trophies.

Larsson posted a respectable 0.62 xG per 90 minutes in the Swedish Damallsvenskan last season, according to WyScout, but only scored 5 goals from 7.52 xG, and put 41.5% of her shots on target. As a result, she hasn’t been a regular for the Swedish national team since 2021. Clearly someone who’s had double-digit scoring seasons in the Swedish league and 33 Sweden caps is capable of being an effective starting forward in NWSL, but she’ll need to find better form than she had last season.

Cooper, meanwhile, is a 20-year-old rookie, and it’s very common to have unproductive first seasons even if they go on to become global superstars later. But she was probably the most entertaining player in college soccer last year. If you’re not familiar with her, familiarize yourself:

I apologize for being The Grinch, but I feel obligated to do so for just one paragraph, and then I will stop: Cooper would have been due some pretty serious regression if she stayed in college, and she was really smart to capitalize on a huge sophomore campaign before her stock went down through no fault of her own. She took a really high percentage of her shots from outside the box and finished a ridiculously high rate of her good shots. She was awesome, but her shot profile was not 19 goals awesome. 

Where I do think Cooper is going to make an instant impact is with her combination play and passing. Yes, she will not have as much time and space to turn and pick passes as she did in college, but I think she’ll get up to speed in that area faster than she will with shot volume and quality. Expect to see Cooper assisting Debinha more than the inverse, at least this season. Cooper’s going to become a nutty goal-scorer as she gets deeper into her 20s, though.

A couple other notes

CeCe Kizer provided seven goals and one assist last year after joining from Racing Louisville, but I feel like she’s the attack-minded player whose playing time will be damaged most by the roster shake-up. She’s proven capable of playing midfield or striker, and I think she’ll sub into most games at one position or the other depending on the team’s tactical needs.

I don’t know how the arrival of Hanna Glas is going to change things at wingback. My hypothesis is that her arrival is part of the reason KC was not more aggressive in signing a replacement for Edmonds. Last year’s first choice right back, Kate Del Fava, was a very good outside center back in a back three during her rookie campaign. She struggled in the center of back four formations until finding her role as a wingback last year. Glas’ arrival gives Potter the option to use Del Fava as a member of the back three if he wants.

In goal, Adrianna Franch might be the most well-balanced goalkeeper in the league. It’s a very cool development for a player who was once thought of as an elite shot-stopper, but average at best in other aspects of goalkeeping. Last season, Franch improved her long distribution considerably, completing nine longballs per 90 at a 55.8% success rate, both above league average. And she’s retained the shot-stopping ability, preventing 7.2 goals above average based on post-shot xG, second to only Louisville’s Katie Lund.

I highly recommend this thread by former USWNT goalkeeper and current NWSL commentator Jill Loyden on how well Franch played last season.

4 days until the start of the @NWSL season and today will be day 2 of highlighting some of the best goalkeeping in the world.

Following her move to @thekccurrent, @ADizzle23 is playing some of the best football of her career.

— Jillian Loyden (@JillLoyden) March 21, 2023

So what does this all add up to?

I think we’re going to see more of a mix of back four and back three formations from Kansas City this season, depending on matchups and available personnel. I don’t think Potter knows his best midfield configuration yet, but given those players’ experience and consistent performances, I don’t think it’ll hurt the team much if it takes half a season to figure it out. Their additional depth in midfield, combined with the high volatility of their forward group, could push Debinha farther up the pitch into a striker role. 

KC has some question marks at center back and striker, but also a ton of upside. It’s easy to imagine a scenario where Cooper’s great right away, Loera shows steady improvement and the team has no weak spots.

The thing that this team has, more than anyone else in NWSL, is options. They can play as attacking or defensive as they wish. They can pack the midfield and turn games into a slog, or they can open things up and make the game into a track meet. It’s great to have an identity and philosophy to build around, but it’s even better to have the ability to play any game you want. The Kansas City Current are the most interesting team in NWSL because they have the ability to morph into absolutely anything on the pitch.

(Photo: Omar Vega/Getty Images)