Angel City FC has fired head coach Alex Straus just over a year after appointing him.The Los Angeles-based team has won just once in its last eight matches, sitting 12th in the 16-team NWSL standings.Angel City finished last season in 11th with just 27 points and, although the club went through a period of transition ahead of the 2026 NWSL Season with an emphasis on younger players, results have not improved.The Norwegian coach was hired last summer from Bayern Munich, where he won three consecutive Frauen-Bundesliga titles, cementing the German team’s domestic dominance. Angel City spoke of his tactical expertise and championship-winning leadership upon his announcement.Angel City said in a statement Wednesday that its focus remains on supporting players and competing at the highest level, while senior assistant coach Leif Gunnar Smerud, former interim coach of Norway men and women, has been appointed interim head coach while the club conducts a search for Straus’ successor.“Alex brought real energy and passion to Angel City, developing our style of play and overseeing the important development of our players,” said Angel City’s sporting director Mark Parsons in a release.
“He guided one of the youngest rosters in NWSL history through a pivotal period of growth. We are deeply grateful for Alex’s leadership and the progress made during his tenure, and we wish him nothing but success in his next chapter.”Shocking upheaval at Angel CityAnalysis by women’s soccer writer Tamerra GriffinOf all the possible midseason departures of NWSL managers, Straus’ is easily among the least expected. If anything, the tone from the club since he was hired exactly 14 months ago has been quite the opposite of this surprising announcement — one of long-term investment and future plans that were understood to have justified the bandwidth Straus had been given.The Norwegian also appeared to have been in lockstep with Parsons, who said at the time that when the club went about the hiring process, it looked for “specific characteristics such as a dominant style of play, a proven winner at the highest level, a focus on player development, a collaborative mindset, and a leader in high performance,” and that Straus “fits this profile at every measure.”Perhaps more importantly, several Angel City players have spoken highly of Straus’ intentionality as a coach, his attention to detail in training sessions, and his clarity of vision in crafting a club identity. Straus’ reputation from his success with Bayern also played a key role in signing Icelandic forward Sveindis Jonsdottir.“I’d already been talking to Angel City and I was trying to decide what I wanted to do, and then I saw that he’s gonna be the coach, and it made me more excited about Angel City, knowing how well he’s done for Bayern,” Jonsdottir said last May.Angel City parting ways with Straus and midfielder Kennedy Fuller is a shocking upheaval of a club that, despite stumbling to the summer break, has still shown more promise than recent seasons that produced similar results. It begs the question of how Angel City will fill these voids, and yet again raises the expectation that the club take big swings for both positions in order to revive its campaign.
