a 4-0 victory over the Chicago Stars<\/a> on Sunday, but in NWSL, the season moves fast.<\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s room for improvement,\u201d ACFC forward Sveind\u00eds J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to get too comfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always good to win. Four-nil is a great result for us, but we\u2019ve already stopped thinking about that game and started thinking about the game on Saturday. But yeah, it\u2019s great to win at home, our first game, but all eyes on our next game now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next game is the first rivalry clash against Bay FC. The Northern California-based club opened its season with a 2-1 win over expansion club Denver Summit FC.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect it be a very, very tough game,\u201d ACFC coach Alex Straus said. \u201cThey have grown a lot since last year. I watched them in preseason in Coachella and I was really impressed with them at that point. I expect them to be confident coming off of their performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Confident is a good way of describing Angel City\u2019s attack last week. Ary Borges and Kennedy Fuller each had a goal and an assist. J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir had an assist on Maiara Niehues\u2019 goal.<\/p>\n
The versatility of the attacking core is something that Straus likes about this group.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have the roster of 30 players,\u201d he said. \u201cWe want to have a tight and competitive roster and to do that in this league is a big issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to raise the quality, which we still have to do, in a salary-cap league, you need to be smart and you need to have players that are capable of handling different situations, when it\u2019s needed. We\u2019re still in the process of a lot of things, but one is to try to to set up the players in situations, not so much about if they play as a 9 (forward) or as a 7 (winger) or as a 10 (attacking midfielder), or whatever, it\u2019s more about how can they have more actions, situations, where they can utilize the skills and strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sugita suffers season-ending knee injury<\/p>\n
Angel City announced Tuesday that midfielder Hina Sugita would be placed on the season-ending injury list after suffering a left ACL injury.<\/p>\n
Sugita was acquired in a trade with the Portland Thorns in September and was signed to a contract extension through 2029 during the offseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cHina is a world-class athlete and teammate,\u201d Straus said. \u201cWe are devastated for her, but know she will bring the same focus and determination to her rehab as she does on the pitch. The entire team and club are behind her. We are prepared to support her on her road to recovery and look forward to having her back.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Sugita\u2019s injury, Angel City\u2019s roster is now at 22 active players.<\/p>\n
ANGEL CITY FC at BAY FC<\/p>\n
When: Saturday, 5:45 p.m.<\/p>\n
Where: PayPal Park; San Jose<\/p>\n
How to watch: ION<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angel City Football Club couldn\u2019t have had a better season opener. Angel City kicked off the 2026 season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":230165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[104510,88,90,89,1083,127],"class_list":["post-230164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-angel-city-football-club","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/230165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}