It was the Stars’ first clean sheet of the 2025 season. Naeher is now up to 50 career NWSL shutouts, 45 of those coming with Chicago.

It was the Stars’ first game since firing coach Lorne Donaldson on Wednesday. Assistant coach Masaki Hemmi took charge as the interim coach in Donaldson’s place.

Gotham dominated but couldn’t find a way into the Stars goal. The closest the hosts came to scoring was when Jaelin Howell crashed the crossbar with a long-range effort in the second half.

Gotham finished with 14 total shots to Chicago’s four. Gotham also had the lion’s share of possession (58%). The visiting Stars won 66% of the aerial duels.

Former UCLA player Sofia Cook came off the bench to make her NWSL debut for Gotham in the 79th minute.

The tie keeps Gotham (3-2-3) third in the standings. The Stars (1-5-1) are glued to 14th, last place.

In the only other NWSL match Sunday, Trinity Armstrong scored on a header in the fifth minute of stoppage to hand the San Diego Wave a dramatic 2-1 win over California rival Bay FC.

The Fire (3-4-4), who played a man down for more than 50 minutes after goalkeeper Chris Brady was sent off with a red card, are winless in six straight.

Orlando City (4-2-5), which is unbeaten in eight consecutive games, has not allowed a goal in 526 minutes, a club record. The previous mark of 364 was set mostly during the 2023 MLS Cup playoffs.

Gallese made back-to-back saves in the 10th minute, diving to stop a shot from Philip Zinckernagel and then scrambling to swat away Hugo Cuypers’ put-back attempt, before he stopped Jonathan Bamba’s shot in the 16th.

Brady was shown a red card in the 36th minute after he collided with Orlando City’s Duncan McGuire, and the Fire played a man down the rest of the way. Bamba, a midfielder, went off to make room for Jeffrey Gal — the only other goalkeeper on the roster — to replace Brady.

Gal, a 32-year-old in his third season, made his MLS debut and finished with one save.

The Football Association said it had decided to change its rules that had allowed transgender athletes to play on women’s soccer if they had reduced testosterone levels. The Scottish Football Association made a similar decision that applies to competitive women and girls’ soccer.

The U.K’s highest court issued a ruling two weeks ago that defined a woman for anti-discrimination purposes as someone born biologically female. The head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said after the ruling that transgender women would be excluded from women’s toilets, hospital wards and sports teams.

While the ruling was cheered by some feminist groups, it has been condemned by trans-rights groups who said it would have a broad and detrimental impact on daily life.

The issue has been polarizing in the U.K. and beyond, particularly in the United States, where President Donald Trump has signed executive orders to prohibit participation of transgender athletes in sports and to use a rigid definition of the sexes, rather than gender, for federal government purposes. The orders are being challenged in court.

The FA said that its policy before Thursday had been to make the sport accessible to as many people as possible, but that it would make alterations if there were changes in law, science or the operations of “grassroots football.”

“We understand that this will be difficult for people who simply want to play the game they love in the gender by which they identify, and we are contacting the registered transgender women currently playing to explain the changes and how they can continue to stay involved in the game,” the FA said in a statement.

About 20 transgender women have been playing in English grassroots games this season.

“The people I know that are talking about this are saying: ‘Well, that’s it for football for me,'” said Natalie Washington, a member of the group Football v Transphobia. “Most people clearly don’t feel that they can go and play in the men’s game for reasons of safety, for reasons of comfort.”

Fiona McAnena, of the group Sex Matters, welcomed the English FA decision, saying it was long overdue.

“The FA has had ample evidence of the harms to women and girls caused by its nonsensical policy of letting men who identify as women play in women’s teams,” McAnena said. “The requirement to lower their testosterone tells you that everyone knew they were not women.”

McAnena said that every other sporting body needs to take similar action.

The group that oversees netball, an offshoot of basketball played mainly by women, said Thursday that its female category would apply to those who were born female.

England Netball said its decision wasn’t the result of the court ruling. It said that it would have three gender categories of participation: female, male and mixed, with the latter category allowing people to compete according to their gender identity.

The club announced the decision Wednesday morning. Assistant Masaki Hemmi will serve as interim coach.

When he was hired in 2024, Donaldson appeared to offer stability to the Stars in the aftermath of the ousting of former coach Rory Dames. Donaldson, a well-respected manager who led the Jamaican women’s national team to the knockout round of the 2023 World Cup, offered a bridge between an era of dysfunction and a new future under new ownership.

In his debut NWSL season, Donaldson led Chicago to the playoffs with a 10-14-2 record. But that success quickly dried up for the Stars, who started 2025 with a 1-5-0 record. The year began with a brutal 6-0 drubbing by the Orlando Pride. Six games into the season, the Stars have scored only three goals while posting a league-worst minus-11 goal differential.

“We are grateful to Lorne Donaldson for the culture, respect and sense of self-belief he helped build within our squad,” general manager Richard Feuz said in a statement. “We appreciate his work and wish him the best for the future.”

This is the third time the Stars have replaced a head coach in the last four years.

The cycle began in 2021 with Dames’ firing amid a leaguewide abuse scandal. The Stars hired Chris Petrucelli in 2022, then fired him with a game left in his second season after a 16-18-9 record with the club.

The problems on the pitch extend beyond coaching. The Stars have played their entire season without star striker Mallory Swanson, who has yet to participate in any team activities due to unspecified personal reasons. Despite receiving notice from Swanson in January about her indefinite absence, Feuz made no moves to fortify the front line, leaving the Stars in limbo with the NWSL’s lowest-scoring offense.

The Stars have not recorded a winning season since 2022 and have not won a playoff game since 2021. The team will play their first game without Donaldson on the road Sunday against Gotham FC.

With the game seemingly over, Ascanio produced an instinctive finish from inside the box to punctuate the win in the third minute of stoppage time.

Hanna Lundkvist rifled a shot into the net from 12 yards out in the 31st minute for the Wave. Stars defender Sam Staab turned the ball into her own net to make it 2-0 for the Wave in the 81st.

Although the Stars (1-5-0) outshot the guests 12-9, the Wave (3-1-2) did take one more shot on target (5) than the Stars (4).

Elsewhere in the NWSL, the North Carolina Courage beat the Kansas City Current 3-2 on Saturday. The Courage were the last remaining winless team in the league.

The Premier League is in sight for the Welsh soccer team transformed by Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney after successive promotions from non-league to playing in the second tier of English soccer next season.

But making a further leap from the Championship to the top flight will be another challenge entirely.

“I think everybody knows the jump is huge,” Wrexham manager Phil Parkinson said. “I think that a lot of tough decisions will be made this summer, in terms of who we bring in and how we add to this fantastic squad of lads we’ve got. But let’s see if we can build a squad to compete at that level.”

From next season Wrexham will face the likes of Leicester – a Premier League champion in 2016, Champions League quarterfinalist in 2017 and FA Cup winner in 2021. Leicester is just one of a clutch of teams with recent top-flight experience and finances, such as Southampton and Ipswich, which were both relegated this season.

Recruitment

Wrexham’s transfer business in the off-season will likely be key to its chances of competing at such a high level. Its rise in double-quick time has been partly achieved by convincing players to drop one or two divisions to help the club progress.

Iconic striker Paul Mullin moved down from the fourth tier to non-league and fellow forward Ollie Palmer dropped down two divisions.

If Wrexham follows this same model that has proved so successful, it will need to attract players from the Premier League, where the top earners can command in excess of $400,000 per week.

“It’s interesting because the jump in salaries is incredible, mind-blowing,” Parkinson said. “That is a challenge, but what we’ve always tried to do is make sure the culture in the club is right and I think that’s key. No superstars, no egos in the dressing room and we’ve got to try and get that balance right again where you always need extra quality.”

Big names

Parkinson may say no superstars, but there will be some big names available as free agents at the end of the season.

The likes of Kevin De Bruyne at Manchester City and Jamie Vardy from Leicester.

So just how realistic a prospect would it be to see players of that stature wear the Wrexham jersey?

Parkinson was not prepared to write off anything as he basked in the afterglow of promotion on Saturday.

“We’ve always got our eye on players who are free transfers and are going to be available and will continue to do that,” he said when asked directly about De Bruyne and Vardy.

Ambition

No team has ever risen from non-league to the top flight in successive seasons.

Swansea climbed from the fourth tier to the top flight in five seasons from 1977-1982. More recently Luton climbed from non-league to the top division over a 10-year spell.

It would be uncharted territory if Wrexham were to do it in consecutive years, but Reynolds and McElhenney are still dreaming big four years after they bought a once down-on-its-luck club for $2.5 million in 2021.

“I remember the first press conference, we were asked what our goals were… and I think Rob jumped in with, ‘The Premier League,’” Deadpool star Reynolds posted on Instagram on Sunday. ”People laughed. They had every right to. It seemed insane… but we weren’t kidding.”

The Fire (3-4-3) are winless in five consecutive matches.

Surridge — the 19th player in MLS history to score four goals in a game — opened the scoring when he converted from the spot in the 14th minute and Jeisson Palacios scored his first goal in MLS to give Nashville a 2-0 lead when he headed home a corner kick played in by Mukhtar in the 22nd.

Mukhtar added goals in the 25th — when he tapped in a rebound from point-blank range — and 31 minutes before Surridge made another penalty kick in first-half stoppage time to make it 5-0. Nashville became the fifth team in MLS history to score five goals in the first half of a match and the first since Philadelphia on July 8, 2022.

Surridge slipped behind the defense to score goals on the counter-attack in the 50th and 57th minutes to make it 7-0.

Philip Zinckernagel scored for the Fire in the 64th and Hugo Cuypers made it 7-2 in the 71st.

Surridge (two) and Mukhtar (four) are the only players to record multiple hat tricks for Nashville (5-4-1).

The Buenos Aires club that the Argentine pontiff supported throughout his life also was mourning its most famous fan.

The wider soccer and sports world also paid homage after Francis died at 88.

All sports events scheduled for Easter Monday in Italy were postponed, including four Serie A games: Torino-Udinese, Cagliari-Fiorentina, Genoa-Lazio and Parma-Juventus. The four games will be played Wednesday, the Italian league announced.

A minute of silence will be observed before all sports events later in the week, the Italian Olympic Committee added.

Likewise, three top-flight games in Argentina were postponed from Monday to Tuesday: Tigre vs. Belgrano, Argentinos Juniors vs. Barracas Central and Independiente Rivadavia vs. Aldosivi. The games will be preceded by a minute of silence to mourn Francis, who was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires before being elected pope.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he was “deeply saddened” over the pope’s death.

“I was privileged enough to spend some time with him on a couple of occasions, and he always shared his enthusiasm for football and stressed the important role our sport plays in society,” Infantino said on Instagram. “All the prayers of the whole football world are with him.”

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said “we are losing a great friend and supporter of the Olympic movement.” Bach added that Francis’ “support for the peace and solidarity mission of the Olympic Games and the many refugee initiatives of the IOC has been unwavering.”

Tennis great Rafael Nadal expressed his “sincere condolences” for Francis in a post on X in Spanish.

Francis’ passion for soccer became known almost immediately after he was elected pope in 2013 when the Argentine club San Lorenzo tweeted a photo of him holding up the team’s crest. He was even a card-carrying member of the club, with San Lorenzo ID No. 88,235.

San Lorenzo is nicknamed “the Saints.”

“He was always one of us,” San Lorenzo said in an Instagram tribute, remembering how Francis watched its 1946 championship team as a young boy.

San Lorenzo performed well after Francis was elected as the 266th pope in March 2013. The team won a national title in 2013 and then claimed the South American Copa Libertadores for the first time a year later. Club officials traveled twice to the Vatican carrying trophies to thank Francis for his support.

A planned new San Lorenzo stadium is to be named for Francis.

In Italy, there were also suggestions that Francis supported Juventus because his family came from the Piedmont region where the Turin club is based. Francis’ father, Mario Bergoglio, was a basketball player.

Francis met his fellow Argentine Diego Maradona twice as pope. There was a special audience in connection with a charity soccer match in 2014 when Maradona presented the pontiff with a soccer jersey, emblazoned with the name “Francisco” — Spanish for Francis — and Maradona’s No. 10.

“We all now realize he’s a (star),” Maradona said after another meeting in 2015. “I’m Francis’ top fan.”

When Maradona died in 2020, Francis remembered the soccer great in his prayers.

“A different, approachable, Argentine pope,” Lionel Messi, another Argentine soccer great, said on Instagram. “Thank you for making the world a better place. We will miss you.”

Record 15-time European soccer champion Real Madrid also mourned Francis in a message on Instagram:

“Real Madrid would like to express its condolences to the entire Catholic community on the loss of a historic and universal figure,” Real Madrid said in a statement. “During his pontificate, characterised by the scale of his immense legacy, Pope Francis has represented an enormous spirit of solidarity and support for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable people.”

During a meeting with the Argentine and Italian national teams shortly after he was elected, Francis noted the influence of athletes, especially on youth, and told the players to remember that, “for better or worse” they are role models.

“Dear players, you are very popular. People follow you, and not just on the field but also off it,” he said. “That’s a social responsibility.”

Francis often hailed sports as a way to promote solidarity and inclusion, especially for young people.

During a global conference on faith and sport in 2016, Francis implored leaders to do a better job of keeping corruption off the playing field and said sports must be protected from manipulations and commercial abuse.

“Francis was a special pope, able to illuminate in his time like only the greatest can,” Gianluigi Buffon, the former captain of Italy’s national soccer team who met the pope on multiple occasions, said on Instagram. “He showed us the way with great courage and moved our souls. I will carry his example forever in my heart.”

AP’s Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo contributed.

The forward, who also plays for the U.S. women’s national team, will be sidelined indefinitely. The Washington Post was first to report Rodman’s absence.

“We look forward to her returning when she’s healthy,” the Spirit said in a statement.

Rodman won a gold medal with the United States at last summer’s Paris Olympics. In September she was injured during a match against the Kansas City Current.

She returned to the national team early this month and scored in a 2-0 victory over Brazil. She also played last weekend in the Spirit’s 2-0 victory over Racing Louisville. She has played in four games for the Spirit this season.

Following the Spirit’s 1-0 road victory over the Orlando Pride on Saturday, coach Jonatan Giráldez said he was focused on the match.

“Being honest right now, it’s too soon to speak about that,” he said. “Today I was focused on the game. In the next days, I will have more information, and I will be able to share with all of you.”

Last month Rodman told reporters the problem was not an injury as much as it is the way her back is structured.

“I don’t think my back will ever be the way it was my rookie year, which is unfortunate,” Rodman said.

Soccer star Trinity Rodman explains estranged relationship with her father, Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman: ‘He’s not a dad’

Evander staked Cincinnati (6-2-1) to a 1-0 lead in the 9th minute with an assist from Sergio Santos. His second goal — and sixth in his first season with the club — came in the 71st minute with an assist from Luca Orellano for a 3-1 lead.

Hugo Cuypers pulled the Fire (3-3-3) even at 1-1 in the 31st minute when he took a pass from Jonathan Bamba and scored his sixth of the season. Bamba’s assist was his fourth.

Cincinnati grabbed the lead for good when Santos fed rookie Kévin Denkey for a score in the 42nd minute for a 2-1 halftime advantage. It was the fourth goal for Denkey.

Brian Gutiérrez capped the scoring for the Fire in the 85th minute with a penalty-kick goal. The PK was awarded after Andrew Gutman was fouled by Miles Robinson. It was the third goal this season for Gutiérrez.

Chris Brady finished with five saves for the Fire, who are 0-2-2 in the last four matches and haven’t won since a 3-1 victory over the Vancouver Whitecaps on March 22.

Roman Celentano saved two shots for Cincinnati, which leads the all-time series 6-4-3 after improving to 4-1-1 at Soldier Field.