Angel City Football Club Draws Chicago Stars FC at Home

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NWSL Angel City FC

Angel City Football Club Draws Chicago Stars FC at Home

June 7, 2025 - National Women's Soccer League (NWSL)
Angel City FC News Release


LOS ANGELES - Angel City Football Club (ACFC) drew the Chicago Stars 2-2 at home tonight following goals by midfielder Kennedy Fuller and defender MA Vignola under the leadership of new Head Coach Alex Straus. Chicaog forwards Nádia Gomes and Ally Schlegel scored for the visitors.

The first chance of the game was a first-minute look by Chicago. Forward Ally Schlegel played a long through ball into the box for midfielder Manaka Hayashi, who took a close-range shot. Goalkeeper Angelina Anderson blocked the effort for a corner kick.

After that attempt, the early minutes of the game were a midfield battle, with neither side threatening on goal, but things started to pick up around the 20-minute mark. In the 23rd minute, ACFC forward Riley Tiernan played a dangerous ball across the face of goal, which a Chicago defender headed out over the endline; on the resulting corner kick, forward Alyssa Thompson connected with her head, but sent her shot wide.

Tiernan had a look of her own in the 25th minute, cutting sideways past several defenders near the penalty arc to take a long-range shot, but it also went wide.

Angel City broke through in the 30th minute when defender Sarah Gorden sent a line-breaking ball to forward Julie Dufour, who played a quick one-two pass with defender Miyabi Moriya on the right wing. Dufour then sent a cross into the six-yard box, which midfielder Kennedy Fuller hammered into the back of the net.

In the 58th minute, Chicago pulled one back when forward Nádia Gomes attempted a cross from the right, with Angel City defender MA Vignola marking her tightly. The ball deflected off Vignola's foot and looped high into the air, coming down at a challenging angle for Anderson and landing unluckily inside the back post.

Fuller had another look in the 62nd minute, picking up a sideways pass from Thompson at the top of the 18, but her attempt went wide.

Chicago pulled ahead in the 66th minute when forward Ally Schlegel capitalized on a turnover in midfield, drove toward goal, and unleashed a hard shot from 25 yards. Anderson dove and got a hand on the ball, but couldn't stop it from landing in the back of the net.

In the 77th minute, Vignola had a near miss, hitting the crossbar with an angled shot from the left side of the penalty area. Vignola made up for it when she got a second chance just three minutes later. She pounced on a deflected shot by Tiernan that had fallen to the corner of the six-yard box and hammered it into the top of the net with her left foot to level the score in the 80th minute.

The visitors had a chance to pull ahead again in stoppage time, taking an angled shot from inside the 18-yard-box, but hit the back post.

In a joyous moment of the match, fans were notified that ACFC defender Savy King was in the stadium sitting with her teammates just three weeks after the medical incident that resulted in her undergoing a heart procedure.

Angel City is at home again next Saturday, June 14, at 7:00 p.m., against the North Carolina Courage live on ION.

POST-MATCH QUOTES

ACFC Defender MA Vignola

On having a new head coach midseason:

"It's interesting. We were ready for a little bit of change, and there is excitement with a new coach coming in. We don't know what to expect, but him coming in is a big flip. He comes with aggression and came in knowing what he wanted.

"With the way he came in, we all took to that and listened. We know that it's not gonna be perfect the first week, but I think we showed the implementation of what we did throughout the week and really appreciate him and how he's coaching so far."

On scoring the tying goal:

"With the score being 2-1, there were a lot of high emotions. It was the point in the game where we can either deal with what's happening or we can slow down a bit. So I think we took some time to regroup and came in together, not backing down, either to win this game or tie it out. With Alex coaching now, he wants everyone to get high and into the box, so I took that opportunity to get into the box and took the shot. "

On ACFC's Pride Night Celebration:

"It's amazing, we talk about BMO Stadium being that kind of community environment, where we can hear the fans throughout the entire game. Playing in BMO is one of those special experiences where we are able to express ourselves for our community, especially on a night like this. So you can really feel the energy of the stadium even more which takes us to the next level."

ACFC Midfielder Kennedy Fuller

On the game overall and scoring the opening goal:

"It's so fun. I love playing with this team so much. With our new coach [Alex Straus], it's been super fun to learn. We've learned a lot this week, and coming back from international break, and for us to be able to execute the things he's implementing was really good. I'm very proud of our team. And for my goal, Julie played a really nice ball and Alyssa's run allowed me to be open, so everyone kinda did the job for me."

On the difficulty of having a new coach come in:

"The first thing I heard from Alex was from social media when he said, 'We want you to be you in the structure that we have.'

"I think a lot of us have freedom within our structure and that's something I am very thankful for as a player. Even though we learned a lot this week, he still made it very clear that he wants us to be our unique selves and I think everyone did that today. He asked us to play as hard as we can and give everything we got, and I think we all did that."

ACFC Head Coach Alex Straus

On his first game at BMO Stadium:

"We go and we play at the stadium in front of all of these people, all of these fans, which was a great experience coming here. I've played at big stadiums before in Barcelona and in München and in different places where there are huge, huge stadiums, but the atmosphere here, you feel like it's 50,000.

"The same is [true] for me, and maybe I get sometimes a little bit excited and engaged on the sideline, because you really want to perform for the people and everybody here, so it was a nice experience to get the first game out of the way."

On his overall thoughts on the game:

"I think that the first half, after the first seven or eight minutes, we were good. We went to halftime [in the] lead and I think we deserved the lead. The goal we scored, it was a fantastic build-up and combination play, exactly what we had started to work on here.

"So we saw some textbook things from our training session this week. Then we gave it away in the first 25 or 30 minutes of the second half. I need to look at that. How can we help the players go out in the second half and control it the same way that we did in the first half?

[Chicago's first goal] was unfortunate, a goal from a cross, and the second was shot from distance. Besides that, I think that the biggest chance they had in the game was in the first 10 seconds [of the match]. So I don't think that they created that many chances against us- but then we cannot let in two goals. That is going to [make it] difficult to win matches. So we need to learn."

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