The game isn’t necessarily the thing for Angel City FC, which last year stormed into the National Women’s Soccer League as if on a mission from God, fundamentally altering the 10th-year competition’s landscape and revealing a vision for what women’s sport can be.

Arriving with a Who’s Who ownership group heavy on Hollywood stars and American soccer legends, the Los Angeles-based club provided a path toward permanence that has eluded the professional women’s game for decades, doing so by approaching soccer as a means to far more vital stuff. The payoff has been extraordinary.

Angel City’s crusade for female empowerment and the importance of women’s sport and its laser precision in targeting community connections ignited a passionate and multicultural fan base — one that set attendance records, spent millions on merchandise and furnished maybe the most exciting game-day atmosphere in the women’s game — while eliciting tens of millions in sponsorship dollars from like-minded outlets. And now there’s an HBO docuseries on the way, due in May, executive-produced by Oscar-winner Natalie Portman, a club co-founder.

It’s all manna for the scandal-scarred NWSL, changing the public narrative after an investigation into sexual-abuse allegations led to the removal of several top coaches and administrators and forced the ongoing sale of one of the league’s two most successful franchises — reigning champion Portland Thorns — all the while suggesting, for the first time, that true major-league status might be in reach.

It’s a tale of business more so than of sport, and the perception in what might already be the league’s foremost rivalry says fellow expansionists San Diego Wave FC — a side that spent a good deal of the season atop the standings and lost a semifinal to the Thorns in stoppage — is about soccer while Angel City is about the show. Year two offers the opportunity to correct that, and it is the “show” that must do so.

Enter Alyssa Thompson, an 18-year-old “generational talent” (in general manager Angela Hucles Mangano‘s estimation), a budding U.S. national-teamer with exquisite skill and explosive pace who is wrapping up her senior year at prestigious Harvard-Westlake School just over the hill in Studio City. Angel City engineered a three-team trade to snag her, one step from Stanford University stardom, with the top selection in January’s draft, the first high-schooler taking such a step.

Thompson, whether or not those in charge like it, is the new “face” of the franchise. That was apparent just five minutes into her public debut.

With her first significant touch before a crowd in an Angel City jersey, in a 3-0 romp March 8 over Club America Feminil, she collected a ball inside the midfield stripe, raced past four defenders, fending off one of them, rounded the goalkeeper, and deposited into an empty net. The magnitude of the moment could not be denied. Nor its promise.

She’s a star in the making in a city that embraces stars, smart and mature, a delight to watch, fittingly representative of her diverse hometown: black, Peruvian, Filipino and Italian. Watch the run on No. 21 jerseys.

“I don’t think players we play against will necessarily know how to defend her,” captain Ali Riley, another Harvard-Westlake product, said a few days before the game. “I think what I’ve seen, she’s so composed, she’s so mature, she’s such an exciting player, and it’s really cool to have this very impressive young talent playing at home in L.A. on this team. … I think she’s going to show that when you have the talent, anything is possible.”

Angel City, which kicks off its second campaign Sunday evening at BMO Stadium against Gotham FC, can certainly use what Thompson brings. It prospered everywhere but the field in 2022, struggling to find the net amid a season-long injury crisis and missing the playoffs after a dismal closing stretch left it 8-9-5 and four points out of the running. The prospect of Thompson teaming up front with Christen Press, the team’s biggest name, and Sydney Leroux is most tantalizing.

Nobody knows when that will happen.

Leroux, 32, is nearly ready to return from an ankle injury that limited her to 182 minutes across three games after she was acquired, following Press’ torn anterior cruciate ligament, in a late-June trade with Orlando. Press, 34, has undergone three surgeries on her right knee, and there’s no timeline for her return. The club’s line: “She is focused on rehabbing and will be back as soon as she is ready.”

Winning matters

Winning is key to Angel City’s greater ambitions. It’s “a club with the vision of being a global brand,” Hucles Mangano, a two-time Olympic gold medalist with 109 U.S. caps, told Soccer America. “Of doing things differently, of setting new standards.”

That starts with ownership, with a lot of celebrity bling among dozens of investors, including the likes of Portman, Eva Longoria, Serena Williams and Christina Aguilera, among many more, and also eight National Soccer Hall of Famers: Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, Abby Wambach, Joy Fawcett, Shannon Boxx, Shannon MacMillan, Lauren Holiday and Cobi Jones. There’s big money behind it, with internet entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, Williams’ husband, the lead investor.

The group, as a unit, is committed to creating a passionate following for women’s sports, one composed of, well, everybody: young girls and their families, teenage boys, friends looking to be entertained, older couples, the elite and the working class. They want to be everything to everyone and believe they can.

The club’s culture of diversity and inclusion and of community partnership, not unlike stadium partner Los Angeles FC’s, has resonated in what can be a finicky town, as has its role as beacon for “progressive” causes — equality and equity for all, ultimately. Angel City stands for something, and that’s a powerful marketing tool.

Trophies, it is understood, will amplify its voice.

“This club has made such a positive impact in Los Angeles, in the league, in women’s sports and globally. And people are talking about this club,” said Riley, who grew up in Pacific Palisades and captains New Zealand’s national team. “And I do think it will help change the culture, which is what all of us are trying to do, really. Yes, we want to win soccer games, and if we win, it’ll make it easier to change the culture, because the successful club gets more attention.

“I just think that this club is doing something so special, and it’s setting a new standard, and I think other clubs will follow. That’s the whole point, that there will be a domino effect, not to be the outlier.”

Head coach Freya Coombe (below), asked after the Club America victory about Angel City’s ultimate legacy, desired “for us to be known as a champion.” She believes the tools are there.

“A club objective for how we are on the field and how we are off the field is we’re ambitious,” she said. “I think that’s something you’ll see from us, is ambitious play and that we want to be ambitious in terms of the goals we set for ourselves this year.”