NWSL week 6 in review: Chicago Red Stars quietly one of the league’s best teams

Carli Lloyd, Megan Rapinoe, Lindsay Tarpley, Cristiane Rozeira, Karen Carney, Kate Markgraf, Erin McLeod, Leslie Osborne, Inka Grings. These are the names of just some of the most notable of the long list of Chicago Red Stars alumni. All of them veterans of World Cups and Olympics and all capped countless times by their respective national teams. All of them players who were -- or were supposed to be -- key parts of Chicago teams of years, and leagues, past. Some were part of the 2009 or 2010 WPS-era Red Stars, while others played in the first two seasons of the NWSL as members of the 2013 or 2014 teams. And none of them -- the year or league is irrelevant here -- ever played a postseason game in a Chicago uniform.

None of those Red Stars teams ever made it that far. Chicago did make it to the postseason in both 2011 and 2012 while competing in the semi-professional WPSL and WPSL Elite, respectively, but as far as fully professional leagues go, their luck hadn’t been quite as good. Chicago finished sixth in two consecutive years of WPS play (the Red Stars opted not to play in what turned out to be the final season of WPS for financial reasons), and again in the inaugural NWSL season. In 2014, the Red Stars got as close as they’d ever been, ultimately missing out on the postseason thanks only to tiebreakers. Through two leagues and four seasons, Chicago had perfected the art of “almost.”

It wouldn’t have been that surprising then had the Red Stars repeated this non-feat again in 2015. This was a Chicago team that on paper had only limited star power to begin with, and that was before the World Cup wreaked havoc on the roster. With international duty taking away Christen Press, Lori Chalupny, Julie Johnston, Karina LeBlanc and Abby Erceg, the Red Stars would be left to field a bunch of rookies and veteran players most casual fans had never heard of. Another year stuck somewhere between underachieving and just plain bad wasn’t so far outside the realm of possibility.

So, naturally, the Red Stars opened the 2015 season with a seven-game unbeaten streak, lost once, and then went on another six-game unbeaten run. When it was all said and done, the Red Stars had lost just three times, landing in second on the table on the strength of eight wins and a league high nine draws. When it was all said and done, the Chicago Red Stars were in the playoffs for the first time ever.

Press and Johnston made 12 appearances each for the Red Stars in 2015, and while their contributions -- Press had 10 goals in those 12 appearances -- certainly helped, one of the biggest reasons for Chicago’s success wasn’t in those national team players. Instead, it came in that middle part of the season, when those players were away. The Red Stars could have folded up, hoped that the points they’d accumulated through the first two months would be enough to get them through until after the World Cup because hey, everyone’s missing players, right? This though, was not what Chicago decided to do.

The Red Stars, it turned out, had a contingency plan. They’d made smart picks at the college draft, and quietly kept around a solid core of players, building a team from within while everyone else was spending time searching for players from national teams that hadn’t qualified for the World Cup, or for internationals who hadn’t made their countries’ World Cup roster.

In the absence of Press, Sofia Huerta took the scoring reins, ending her rookie season with six goals. Fellow 2015 draft pick Danielle Colaprico ended up taking home Rookie of the Year honors and Arin Gilliland and Cara Walls also made significant contributions in their first seasons as professionals. Goalkeeper Michele Dalton, who’d spent previous seasons playing in Iceland and the Swedish second division, was one of very few signings from an overseas league. And if the new kids needed some backup, the Red Stars had plenty. With the exception of the rookies and new-to-NWSL players, every single player on the 2015 Chicago roster had been a Red Star for at least part of the previous season, if not longer. Many of them had spent their entire NWSL careers in Chicago.

All four of those rookies -- Huerta, Walls, Gilliland and Colaprico -- are back for this season, as is much of the rest of the Red Stars’ core, some of which has been with Chicago since the beginnings of the league. Jen Hoy, who scored both of Chicago’s goals in Sunday’s win over Seattle, has been a Red Star since being drafted by the team in 2013. Midfielder Vanessa DiBernardo was a 2014 Red Stars draft pick, and defender Samantha Johnson came to the team through an open tryout the same year. Alyssa Mautz has been with the Red Stars since 2012, when she was a part of the WPSL Elite team. Even the now-allocated Johnston was just a college draft pick when she joined the Red Stars in 2014. The only major additions Chicago’s made this season were acquiring Alyssa Naeher from Boston and Amanda Da Costa from Washington.

In another year where there’s bound to be some major roster revolving doors happening, this time thanks to the Olympics, the Red Stars again look like one of the teams best suited for making it through. Chicago will lose Press, Johnston and Naeher to some international commitments, but the whole rest of that core will be sticking around, and as they’ve already proven, they’re more than up to the task.

There is still something important about attracting the star players, because it does satisfy some weird legitimacy thing that we’re forever after and because we’re still not past the Alex Morgan Attendance Bump and sometimes those names are what get the casual fans to show up. It also does pay off on the field sometimes (see: Seattle 2014-15). But there’s also something about not making the big signing, and instead focusing on developing what you have. It’s not the most popular strategy, or one we’ve seen too many NWSL teams use, but as the league continues through year four and beyond, it may be the one that starts to reap rewards. It’s already paying off for Chicago.

Friday

Saturday

Sunday