NWSL and NWSLPA join Project ACL, aimed at reducing ACL injuries in women’s soccer

“My hope and ambition is, really, that we don’t have as many ACL injuries happen in the game,” Tori Huster, a former NWSL player and the NWSLPA’s deputy executive director, said on Monday. “Over the course of the last two seasons, we have seen somewhere between 20 and 30 players sustain an ACL injury. Personally, (I) don’t want to see that anymore.”

FIFPro are the drivers behind Project ACL. The NWSL and NWSLPA will work closely with existing project partners to continue building an “evidence-informed” body of work to better understand ACL injuries. This will examine the physical causes of the injuries, as well as environments players train, compete and recover in.

The goal is to better understand the working environment, identify best practices and provide solutions to support the reduction of ACL injuries in the NWSL. The project will run for three years, beginning in June. Notably, this will be the first study of its kind that looks at professional women’s football across multiple leagues.

The project has so far surveyed multidisciplinary teams across 12 WSL clubs about available resources and injury-prevention strategies. Researchers have so far conducted interviews with more than 30 players about their experiences.

An example of progress includes tracking players’ workload, travel and “critical zone appearances,” or games with less than five days of recovery time. This data is spread across FIFPro’s Player Workload Monitoring tool, which helps assess potential links between player workload and subsequent injury. Soon, NWSL player data will be loaded into the database.

The NWSL expanded by two clubs to a 16-club format in 2026, which, of course, translates to more games this season. This has meant more mid-week matches, meaning players may have weeks where, for example, teams are playing three matches across eight days. The league is only growing, with expansion clubs in Atlanta and Columbus debuting in 2028.

That’s without considering the introduction of international competitions, both at the national team and club levels, as women’s football continues to expand.

“The more leagues (that are) a part of this, the better,” recently retired Crystal Dunn said during a player panel on Monday to help launch Project ACL. “We should be pushing for leagues to get behind this so that we support and protect the product that is on the field.

“Demand for us to play more games should never go away. We should be continuing to push for these opportunities for players have more visibility and to be able to play in multiple games. I think now it becomes, (a conversation about) ‘what does load management look like?’”

Jordan Angeli, a former NWSL-player-turned-broadcaster and Denver Summit co-founder, founded the ACL Club, which encourages athletes through their ACL recoveries. Her playing career was cut short by injury. She tore her ACL in her left knee three times in five years.

“More players are not just playing in the league, but they’re playing in the league longer,” Angeli said, hinting to potential changes that could stem from Project ACL. “Maybe this helps change with load management. Maybe there’s more players on a team because of the research, that we understand how women’s bodies work better.”

Merritt Mathias played 11 years in the NWSL before retiring at the end of the 2024 season. When she tore her ACL in 2019, the first question she remembered being asked was, “Are you on your period?” The correlation between a menstrual cycle and injury remains under-researched.

“There is such an opportunity to really shape how women professional athletes are treated within their environment, and that’s not to say you mitigate the risk of ever tearing your ACL but can we have understanding around this time of your cycle,” Mathias said. “Maybe you are going to eat differently, you are going to live differently, you are going to be set up in a way that, in the best way possible, we are starting to really understand and shape what it feels and looks like to be a women’s professional athlete in the NWSL.”

The hope over the next three years remains, in addition to meaningful progress in better understanding ACL injuries in professional women’s soccer, that this project will help the NWSL become a better league for it.

“When we get to the end of it, and there are findings and there are recommendations, the implementation of those recommendations is going to be massive,” Huster said. “Although we have minimum standards set by the CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement), if this project calls for above and beyond those minimum standards, I really, really do hope that can be something that’s implemented.”

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

NWSL, Women's Soccer, FIFA Women's World Cup

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