Angel City fires Freya Coombe, the franchise’s first coach who struggled to win
Angel City FC, whose star-studded roster has underperformed during its first 1½ seasons in the NWSL, fired coach Freya Coombe on Thursday with the team stuck at the bottom of the league standings.
Assistant coach Becki Tweed will serve as interim manager until a replacement can be found.
“It’s never an easy decision to let someone go and this was no different,” Angela Hucles Mangano, Angel City’s general manager said.
“It was very thoughtful and deliberate and not taken lightly in any way,” Mangano said of the move. “There wasn’t a last straw but an evaluation of many factors and taking a look at what we still have in front of us. We are at a midway point in the season and [have] a lot more games to play.”
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Coombe responded with a statement posted to her social media account in which she thanked the team “for the chance to build something influential on and off the field” and thanked its supporters “for your tremendous support both in the stadium and the community. Your passion has truly set a new bar for women’s football.”
Coombe was not Angel City’s first choice as manager heading into its inaugural season in 2022. Early in the summer of 2021, Eniola Aluko, then the team’s sporting director, had reportedly decided on Sean Nahas, an assistant with the North Carolina Courage, but backed down in the wake of criticism from the team’s supporters, who wanted a woman coach. So she turned to Coombe while Nahas took over as manager of the Courage, leading it to the NWSL Challenge Cup title last season.
The personal, well-liked Coombe grew up in Buckinghamshire, England and played and managed at Reading before coming to the NWSL in 2019 to coach New York/New Jersey Gotham FC. Her team went 2-6-3 this season and 10-15-8 overall in regular-season play, winning once in its last 12 matches in all competition this season and just once in 12 games since April 2.
Angel City is tied for last in the 12-team NWSL with nine points halfway through the schedule, though three of those games were decided by goals Angel City conceded in stoppage time.
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Injuries also played a big part in the team’s struggles. The roster was built around Christen Press, a two-time World Cup winner, who signed a three-year contract worth reportedly worth around $700,000. But she tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee in the team’s eighth game and hasn’t played since.
Angel City quickly traded for former national team standout Sydney Leroux as a replacement, but she appeared in just three games and took only one shot in 2022 before an ankle injury sidelined her. Leroux has played twice this season, scoring once, but she has yet to start a game.
Before its first season the team also acquired Sarah Gorden and two-time World Cup winner Julie Ertz from the Chicago Red Stars, but neither played during Angel City’s inaugural season, Gorden because of an injury while Ertz took time off to start a family.
Tweed, who was named Coombe’s assistant in January, was also an assistant at Gotham FC. She has 12 total years of professional coaching experience and is also an assistant for the U.S. U-20 women’s national team.
“With Becki as the interim head coach, she is in a position to make her mark with the squad in a different role, which requires her to look at the full picture of how we start and end games,” Mangano said.
