Atticus Ginsborg‍

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Never Draw FC

August 29, 2024

Entering Week 18 of 26 of their inaugral season Bay FC has 18 points. They are only a point back of Louisville for the last playoff spot and have the most wins, 6, of any team among the NWSL’s bottom half. How can Bay FC both be a point from the playoffs and have the most wins of any team below the playoff bubble? They refuse to draw.

As seen above having a streak of that many games without a draw to start the season is incredibly rare. Only the North Carolina Courage and NY/NJ Gotham FC have had longer streaks among all NWSL seasons both drawing their final games to prevent drawless regular seasons. Incredibly though Bay FC doesn’t even have posession of the record yet for most decisive games to start a season for an NWSL expansion side as both the Orlando Pride, currently tied with Bay FC, and that aforementioned Courage season happend in their inaugural years as well!

With Bay FC still on track for what would be a first ever drawless season I took a look at just how rare it would be if they managed to pull of this feat across all women’s soccer. Using Sports Reference¹ I looked for all team-seasons without a draw and at least the 17 games Bay FC have played so far. Across their entire dataset there were only 22 team-seasons². Of those teams 12 were league conquerors averaging over 2.15 points a game such as the famous 2018-2019 Arsenal team who only lost once a piece to Chelsea and Manchester City on their way to the title. 7 more teams were the exact opposite with under 1 point per game such as the infamous 2020-2021 Pink Bari squad who suffered 21 losses as part of their 1 win campaign and subsequent exit from Serie A Femminile. These 19 teams on the extremes of soccer finishing without a draw in their season make sense. The three remaining team-seasons did not.

One of these three teams is the 2020-2021 Standard Liege squad that somehow won 15 games and lost 11 during the regular season. They managed to still make the playoffs and finished the playoffs without a draw as well going 1-0-7 in the playoffs before being eliminated.

One of the other squads was the 2018 Hammarby team of the Swedish Damallsvenskan. They went 8-0-14 finishing 11th before being relegated.

The final one is, you guessed it, Bay FC. It is truly dumbfounding they’ve made it this far into the season without a draw. Even more so because they’re not a special team in the best or worst case of that word. They are simply a team in the mix for the playoffs as the NWSL enters it’s stretch run. A team that needs any points possible — even if it means taking a draw that would prevent them from carving a space in the NWSL record books.