{"id":91424,"date":"2025-09-04T13:45:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T17:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/?p=91424"},"modified":"2025-09-04T20:55:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T00:55:32","slug":"alyssa-thompson-chelsea-angel-city-transfer-analysis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/2025\/09\/04\/alyssa-thompson-chelsea-angel-city-transfer-analysis\/","title":{"rendered":"Alyssa Thompson has joined Chelsea. What comes next for Angel City is a mystery.<div class=\"eqs-premium-tag\"><\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>Angel City has paid a hefty sum three times over in order to get and keep <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/2fcc0a10\/Alyssa-Thompson?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=equalizersoccer.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-09-01_fb\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Alyssa Thompson<\/a> within their ranks.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>First, there was the tangled web of rule-shaping to ensure that Thompson would be available to be drafted, having just turned 18 in late 2022, and with no under-18 signing mechanism formally in place yet in the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/nwslsoccer.com\">National Women&#8217;s Soccer League<\/a><\/strong>. The club gave up three college draft picks, including the No. 5 overall pick in 2023 (not to mention passing <a href=\"https:\/\/fbref.com\/en\/players\/22502cce\/Yazmeen-Ryan\">Yazmeen Ryan<\/a> through to Gotham), <a href=\"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/2023\/01\/05\/four-team-trade-sends-nwsl-first-overall-draft-pick-to-angel-city-fc-and-yazmeen-ryan-to-gotham-fc\/\">to acquire the No. 1 overall pick<\/a> and thus keep the Southern California prospect in her own backyard.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The contract Thompson then signed likely wasn&#8217;t cheap, either. As a blue-chip teenage prospect who was the top pick of the 2023 NWSL draft and seemed to become draft-eligible that year to be signed only by Angel City, Thompson held all the leverage. A three-year deal for a player already with two caps for the <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/ussoccer.com\/uswnt\">U.S. women&#8217;s national team<\/a><\/strong> was sure to tie up a great deal of the club&#8217;s payroll.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"equalizer-paywall\">\n<div class=\"paywall-block\">\n<div class=\"paywall-heading\">\n      Access the best women&#8217;s soccer coverage all year long\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"paywall-body\">\n     Start your FREE, 7-day trial of The Equalizer Extra for industry-leading reporting and insight on the USWNT, NWSL and beyond.\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"paywall-button\">\n      <a href=\"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/eqs\/subscribe\">Subscribe<\/a>\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"login-note\">\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/?memberful_endpoint=auth\">Existing Users Sign In Here<\/a>\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"paywall-fade-block\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The club paid hefty sums to draft, sign, and extend Thompson. What do they do now that she&#8217;s gone? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":91425,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","MSN_Categories":"Sports","MSN_Publish_Option":true,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"No","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2289,7,82,9],"tags":[2568,3159,2313,2238,1791,34,768,2010],"class_list":["post-91424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angel-city-fc-los-angeles","category-news","category-nwsl-national-womens-soccer-league","category-uswnt","tag-alyssa-thompson","tag-angel-city","tag-angel-city-fc","tag-chelsea-fc-women","tag-extra","tag-featured","tag-nwsl","tag-stream"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91424"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91526,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91424\/revisions\/91526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}