Saturday, June 7, at 7:00 p.m., Angel City Football Club hosts the Chicago Stars at BMO Stadium. The game will stream live on ION, with radio broadcasts on iHeart and KFWB in English and Spanish, respectively. You can buy tickets here.
Matchup
Angel City’s last game was a 2–3 loss at home to Racing Louisville FC. Forwards Alyssa Thompson and Riley Tiernan scored for ACFC, with midfielders Taylor Flint and Savannah DeMelo, as well as forward Emma Sears, securing the win for the visitors.
Chicago also lost last week, falling 1–3 at home to Kansas City Current. Midfielder Shea Groom notched the consolation goal for the Stars.
ACFC last faced Chicago on September 1, 2024, earning a 2–1 win. They are 3–2–2 (W–L–D) all-time against the Stars.
LA are currently in seventh place with a 4–4–2 record—tied on points with Seattle and Louisville. Chicago sit in 14th at 1–8–1.
Scouting Report
After a 2024 season that saw them scrape into the playoffs in 8th place, Chicago have had a historically poor start to 2025; even in 2023, when the club finished in last place for their worst-ever run, the Stars’ record after week 10 was 3–6–1.
One of the team’s biggest challenges is the absence of USWNT forward Mallory Swanson, who is pregnant and out for the season. In 2024, Swanson was Chicago’s co-leading scorer, with seven goals, and top creator, with four assists. The team has struggled to score in her absence, with just six goals on the season, the worst in the league.
The defense, however, has fared no better, conceding a league-worst 22 goals.
In response to their losing record, the club parted ways with Head Coach Lorne Donaldson after just six games. Donaldson was hired in late 2023 and helped lead the Stars from their historically poor 2023 back into playoff contention in 2024—but he failed to deliver in the early weeks of 2025. Assistant Coach Masaki Hemmi was elevated to interim head coach after Donaldson’s departure.
Coach Alex Straus Arrives
After wrapping up his third season with Bayern Munich—winning the Frauen-Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal cup and the DFB-Supercup for the first time in club history—Alex Straus arrived this week to start his new role as head coach of Angel City FC. He takes over from Interim Head Coach Sam Laity, who will stay on as a senior assistant coach alongside Eleri Earnshaw and the rest of the ACFC technical staff.
Straus is a proven winner, having won the German league all three years he was in charge at Bayern, but Sporting Director Mark Parsons emphasized this week that what was just as important in the coaching search was an alignment of values and coaching philosophy.
“When it came to the things around football and leadership and methodology—all the things where we were very clear on what we wanted—I didn't know the profile fit existed when I started the process,” said Parsons. “After meeting [the candidates], no one else was close.”
For Parsons, the ideal candidate had a few key attributes: they had to be a player-first, development-oriented coach; they had to be proven not just as a winner but as a builder of winning teams; and they had to have succeeded with a team over the medium to long term.
“Coaches get judged every weekend and it's become a short-term world,” he said. “If you look at a hundred coaches and ask, ‘who over the last three years has made their teams consistently better?’ It’s maybe five or 10. It’s such a small category.”
Straus, says Parsons, is in that category.
