In Lynn Williams, Gotham FC signed not just a needed scorer, but a needed winner

ORLANDO, Fla. — At the end of January, not long after the blockbuster trade that sent her to Gotham FC, Lynn Williams was in Manhattan for a team promotional event.

Once the cameras were done rolling for the marketers and social media, Williams sat down for a news conference with a cluster of local and national reporters. Always a charismatic personality, she had plenty to say. And one of the most important things she said almost flew away unnoticed.

In her eight years as a pro, the 29-year-old forward’s teams have missed the NWSL playoffs just once: her rookie season in 2015 with the old Western New York Flash.

Yes, there’s a caveat that she didn’t play last year with the Kansas City Current because of a brutal hamstring injury suffered right before the season. But the Current acquired her 13 months ago for the same reasons Gotham swooped to land her now: not just her many goals, but her many trophies.

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Over her years with Western New York and its reincarnation as the North Carolina Courage, Williams helped her teams win three NWSL championships and three regular-season titles, including league and playoff doubles in 2018 and ‘19. Along the way, she won the NWSL’s 2016 top scorer and MVP awards, earned 49 U.S. national team caps, and made the 2021 Olympic team.

There’s no doubt that Gotham will benefit from Williams’ pedigree as an attacker: 73 goals and 33 assists in 139 career club games, and 15 goals and 11 assists for her country. She’s also a great high-presser defensively, which new Gotham manager Juan Carlos Amorós values. And she can play as a winger or centrally, depending on the tactics.

But Gotham just as badly needed to sign a winner. It has made the playoffs just twice in the NWSL’s 10-year history, as the fourth-place finisher in 2013 (when the team was called Sky Blue FC) and in fifth place in 2021. The only trophy on the team’s mantel is the 2009 Women’s Professional Soccer championship in the league before the NWSL.

That’s not good enough for any team. It’s especially not good enough for the only pro women’s soccer team in the New York area, a place just fine with ignoring losers not called the Yankees or Giants. And Gotham has felt the brunt of that. Last year’s average attendance of 4,415 fans per game at Red Bull Arena was the highest in team history but the next-to-worst figure in the league.

Gotham needs to win games. Williams is a winner. It’s rarely ever that simple, but right now, it’s a big help.

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“Every team I’ve been on, we’ve had quality players, and Gotham, I look at the roster, and I’m like, ‘We have quality players,’” Williams told The Inquirer in an interview a few days ago at U.S. national team training camp, where she’s preparing for the SheBelieves Cup.

“I just think that there is something about just the grit and desire to make the playoffs, especially when it’s opened up to six teams now instead of four,” Williams said of an expansion that started in 2021. “Just the ability to get on the same page and say, ‘You know what, I’m going to put the team first, and whatever the team needs me to do, whatever role I have to take and accept that role, that’s going to get us to [the] playoffs.’”

She cited the North Carolina powerhouse where she won many of her titles, playing with other serial winners including Jessica McDonald and Heather O’Reilly.

“We probably had 13 starters, and so every week it was two players that knew that they weren’t going to start, and there was no complaining about that,” Williams said. “It was just like, OK, my role today is being on the bench, and maybe tomorrow it will be coming off the bench, and maybe the next day it will be starting. Just everybody getting on the same page and realizing the team is bigger than any one player.”

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There’s no better example of that in women’s soccer than the U.S. national team. How many times over decades have the Americans gone down, 1-0, but believed they’d win and gone on to do so? Williams has seen plenty such occasions.

The program’s generational transition since the Olympics has led to some rocky days and nights. But in the 2022 season finale, the last game Williams missed because of her injury, there was a little of the old gumption in a comeback win over Germany. And in the first game of 2023, Williams punctuated her return to action with a goal.

“It definitely feels like it was a long time,” she said. “I’m happy to be back. I think I still have a little bit more to feel like myself. But yeah, it definitely was a long time.”

The good news is she is right on time to not just lead Gotham, but fight for a place on the U.S. World Cup squad.

“Obviously, it’s a big year and it’s stressful, but I think that that’s what makes it the team that this is,” Williams said of the national team. “There’s a lot of competition, but that makes you be on top of your game every second of every day. … I’m hoping that what makes Lynn ‘Lynn’ will get me on that plane, but we’ll see.”

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