Angel City founder tired of waiting for success: ‘It’s time to win’

When Julie Uhrman and a new ownership group that would quickly grow to more than 100 people announced plans to start a women’s soccer club in the summer of 2020, the goal was to build something unique and different.

And in that, it was immensely successful: Four years after its founding, Angel City became the most valuable team in the history of women’s professional sports while funneling millions of dollars into community programs throughout Southern California.

What the team didn’t do was win. And that, Uhrman said, must change.

“It’s time to win,” said Uhrman, who is leaving his post as the team’s general manager this month to take on a new role as senior advisor. “We’re in Los Angeles. We live in a city of champions and we want to be under the same roof with them. It’s a process but we have the right team in place, on and off the field, to make it happen.”

Angel City will begin its fifth season on Sunday at BMO Stadium against the Chicago Stars. In its previous four seasons, Angel City lost 12 more games than it won, finished with a winning record just once, and made just one playoff appearance. And he called on four coaches, three athletic directors and more than 70 players in his quest for success.

So this year, athletic director Mark Parsons and coach Alexander Straus decided to try a new approach.

“We had to tear it all up and start again,” Straus said.

As a result, more than half of the players present on opening day were not with Angel City at the start of last season. And nine women who started at least a half-dozen games last season aren’t there this year.

“It’s Angel City 2.0,” Parsons said. “We went through huge personnel changes. We went through huge roster changes. And January 2026 became the first year.

“Year 5 is the first year of building what we believe is a sports organization that can get to the top and stay that way.”

That’s probably not what the team’s long-suffering fans wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that this was the year Angel City won a trophy. But after watching his team finish 11th in the 14-team NWSL in 2025, Parsons said that’s not realistic.

“You don’t go from 11th to a top four team. I think you come from 11th and become a playoff team,” said Parsons, who as coach took a Portland Thorns team with a losing record to an NWSL Shield and a league title in his first two seasons. “Last year was a tough year. Now we’re in a better place. So we’re still on the road.”

Angel City coach Alexander Straus monitors a workout at the team’s practice facility in Thousand Oaks in February.

(Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press)

The league too. With the addition of expansion franchises in Denver and Boston, the NWSL began its 14th season on Friday with a record 16 teams, meaning each club will play a record 30 games. The top eight in the standings will participate in the playoffs.

For Angel City, the move to version 2.0 began in earnest about six months before Parsons arrived, when Disney CEO Bob Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, dean of the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, became majority owners of the club and committed $50 million to improve it. Part of this investment financed the purchase and renovation of a large, state-of-the-art training center at Cal Lutheran University, and part allowed Parsons to come and tear it all down.

When he took over as athletic director last winter, Parsons quickly set about overhauling the roster, leaving Angel City with one of the youngest teams in the NWSL, with an average age of 25, this season. Two players are still teenagers and eight others are not yet 23 years old.

A year ago, eight players on the roster were 32 or older.

Key offseason additions include defender Emily Sams, an Olympic champion with the U.S. national team, and midfielder Ary Borges, a Brazilian international. They will join a core of Japanese midfielder Hina Sugita and Zambian striker Prisca Chilufya, who joined the team at the end of last season.

Of the four, only Sugita, a two-time World Cup veteran, is over 26 years old.

“We’re getting closer to competing for trophies,” Parsons said. “But do [the] the playoffs right now are a logical next step. This year is about showing that we are moving in the right direction. But we can’t go from 11th to 1st. Those days are over.

“We have exceeded our efforts over the past 12 months by building a sports organization, staffing departments and [constructing a] list. There will be ups and downs this year, like every year. »

Goalkeeper Angelina Anderson, entering her fourth season with Angel City, making her one of the team’s longest-tenured players, believes in Parsons’ deliberate approach and is confident the team is close to turning the corner.

“Having this methodical approach is really smart and it gives us some kind of insight, we want to win the championship, we feel like we’re in a really good position, but there are daily, monthly and season-long challenges that we’ll have to overcome if that’s where we want to get,” said Anderson, one of the team’s three captains. “It’s actually a very smart way for all of us to manage our expectations.”

Uhrman also agrees, but it’s hard to be realistic. When she helped launch Angel City, it was with the vision of building a winning team and nearly six years later, she’s still waiting for that vision to be revealed.

“Our aspiration is to win the championship. Our goal is to make the playoffs,” she said. “And we’re very confident that we can do it. It’s a process. We’re realistic about where we are in the process and what we need to do to develop and grow.

“Believing that this is a process is comforting because we are realistic about who we are. But it doesn’t change what we want to accomplish.”