What's Going Right for the Royals

Okay, let’s (finally) talk about the Royals. I meant to put together some deep tactical analysis during the World Cup break, but when I started this blog I promised myself to not treat it like homework. And between legitimately celebrating my team’s success and watching the World Cup, sitting down to overanalyze Coenraets’ tactics felt like homework. But now I’m ready to give the squad their flowers.

Before I get into the why and how of the season, it’s important to truly wrap our heads around how unprecedented this season has been so far. The 2026 Utah Royals- with TWELVE games to go- have more points than they did in both the 2024 and 2025 seasons (25). They’re two points off the 2018 team’s total, and one point off the 2019 team. They’ve scored more goals than any of these previous teams, and are on track to double the goals per game rate of the 2019 and 2024 teams. Most significantly, they are well positioned to make the playoffs for the first time in Utah Royals history.

The players are the engine behind this incredible season. Cloé Lacasse is putting up MVP level numbers, leading the team with six goals and seven assists. Mina Tanaka, while her season was interrupted by a hamstring injury, remains a key piece of the attack. Her 0.55 expected goals and assists per 90 is the highest on the team. Cece Delzer is playing like she did in her breakout years in Kansas City. Narumi Miura is in the 80th percentiles in both won duels and tackles, while on track to have the highest scoring year of her NWSL career. Nuria Rabano is responsible for some of the best assists and progressive passes in the league. Kate Del Fava earned herself a callup to the U23 USWNT. I probably could name an accolade for every player on the team, but to keep it brief, every player is playing at or near their peak.

This success, in my opinion, is driven by one thing. In the last offseason, I think the ownership, front office, and coaching staff realized that they are always going to struggle to sign the big names or top young prospects. Not really by any failing of the club, just because any player with interest from multiple NWSL clubs will probably choose one of “cooler” cities to live in. (Though, for what it’s worth, multiple players and staff members have talked about how they came here not knowing what to expect and have ended up loving it.)

So how do you create a winning team without the big names? By ensuring that absolutely everything else is firing on all cylinders. The first step is off the pitch: surrounding the players with the best and most extensive support staff possible. As Coenraets has said to the media, “there’s no salary cap on staff.” On the medical side, there’s team doctors, athletic trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, physical therapists, and multiple directors of performance. Royals players, injured or no, have a massive team of people there exclusively to keep them healthy. The team also has Tom Golightly, a clinical sports psychologist, supporting the mental health of the players. And as someone who sits behind the Royals’ bench every home game, I can tell you that the vast majority of those people are on the sidelines supporting players every game. Golightly specifically impresses me; I’ve seen him celebrating with the team, talking to players after a tough game, and even supporting a player who lost her spot in the squad throughout warmups. From a cursory glance at other teams’ staffs, the Royals have one of the best.

The same philosophy carries over to the technical staff. Coenraets has five assistant coaches, and each has an individual focus. As covered in the Orlando game, James White is the goalkeeping and set piece coach. He’s done great work on URFC’s set plays, which we’ll get to later. John Griffiths is focused on the minutiae of the Royals’ tactics, creating what seems to be an “URFC Bible” of sorts with every possible detail of the team’s gameplan. His work has helped give every player extreme role clarity. Sam Lismont (and James Chandler) are the team’s analysts. The most unique role in the Royals staff, though, belongs to Emily Simpkins (and I think Jessie van den Broek, but she is new and I’m not really sure what her job is yet). She is the team’s individual development coach, who is solely focused on player development and improvement. The players constantly have practices with Simpkins, where they get uber-individualized feedback and training. The club’s focus on development is unique among the NWSL, and in combination with the focus on health and performance, is why so many Royals players are having career seasons.

In post-match press conferences, nine times out of ten Coenraets will say he’s focused on “controlling the controllables,” mainly referencing his team’s effort. This, through their press, has become the Royals’ greatest weapon. They press teams high and hard, creating a shell of pressure right on their opponents’ back line. It asks a lot of the teams’ forwards- again, shoutout to the performance staff- but the benefits are clear. It prevents teams from being able to build out the way they want. In so many games, URFC’s opposing keeper is forced to kick the ball over the touchline because a Royals forward is literally sprinting at them and giving them no time to pick a pass. It often forces teams to go long, giving the team a chance to win second balls in the midfield with the strong physical presences of Ana Tejada, Narumi Miura, and Mina Tanaka. It also allows Coenraets to deploy a higher backline, which suits his center backs. Kate Del Fava is quick and Kaleigh Riehl is an expert at defensive positioning. They’re also both aerially dominant. You’d much rather have them winning headers on long passes or beating forwards to the ball than being forced to take on an oncoming dribbler. The most obvious benefit is of course the closer to the goal you get the ball, the easier it is to score. The Royals have capitalized on this for most of their goals, with ~20 of their 31 goals coming off high press situations.

Another thing you can control on the pitch? Set pieces. The Royals have capitalized on set pieces more than any other team in the league, with 8 of their 31 goals coming from dead ball situations. No matter how stingy a team’s defense is, a well-designed set piece has the potential to create goal scoring opportunities. I mean, North Carlina hadn’t conceded a set piece goal before they played the Royals. The most important part of the Royals set plays are the commitment to winning second balls and recycling the play. Even if they don’t score off the initial ball in, the players are well-positioned to get the ball back out to the corner taker, or to a player who’s ready to rip it from the top of the box.

Both Coenraets and the players have pointed to the team using “I got you” as a motto, and their “superpower” being how much they like each other. These are, admittedly, a little saccharine for my taste. But they have translated to some on-field benefits: the aforementioned press and defensive commitment, which relies on the team moving and pressing as one, as well as the team’s offensive variety and overall resiliency. It’s made it so to beat the Royals you have to beat all 11 of them; everyone on the team knows their role and is doing it with full effort and commitment.

URFC’s offense in the Coenraets era has always been designed to be by committee, and this season that’s come into full fruition. The team has eleven unique goalscorers, and nine unique assisters. Fifteen players have at least one goal contribution. This is what makes the Royals so hard to defend; the ball isn’t being forced to one specific player, and you never know who will take the shot. Their offense is all about players finding spaces and fulfilling roles, but Coenraets (and the players) don’t care who does what. The priority is creating great goal scoring opportunities, and nobody cares who scores them.

Coenraets’ team can also concede potentially costly goals, like they did against Louisville, Denver, and Portland (twice), and still press forward and get a winner (or a goal that would’ve been the winner if not for some referee shenanigans). On a similar note, even when teams find a way to keep them from playing the way they want, the Royals still find ways to win a game. The clearest example is the Denver game- the Summit did well to clog the middle and keep the Royals midfield from creating, but with two strong moments of pressing the back line and 90 minutes of collective defending, Utah found a way to win.

The home game against Portland is a pretty clear case study of the power of this team’s collectiveness. You could see Portland relying heavily on Pietra Tordin, Sophia Wilson, and Olivia Moultrie. All their opportunities came from individual efforts from one of these players. It was Wilson making run, Moultrie dribbling the whole field, Tordin taking a shot from far out. It’s nice when it works and will certainly get the attention of the media. But that alone cannot win you games. A team does, like it did for the Royals that night. They don’t have world-breaking forwards, but by playing as a unified unit they can mute a team’s superstars and create some of the best team goals you’ll see in the NWSL this season.

You can’t talk about the 2026 Utah Royals without admitting that they have been a little lucky. I, of course, would argue that A. this team has been incredibly unlucky for most of their existence and this is the pendulum swinging the other way, and B. when you have a team this together doing this strong of a press, they probably create some of their own luck by sheer will. But I also concede they are overperforming their xG against- they’ve conceded 19 goals on 25.7 xG- and have perhaps eked out some wins that easily could’ve been draws.

But is luck not part of every team that makes the playoffs or wins a trophy? Kansas City overperformed both their xG for and against in their historic shield season. Gotham beat that historic team because Katie Stengel scored off a fortuitous bounce in the 121st minute of their quarterfinal. Orlando won their championship in no small part due to a generous no call in the buildup to Banda’s trophy-winning goal. That’s the nature of sports; sometimes things just go your way. “Luckiness” shouldn’t discredit the accomplishments of a team, its simply part of the game.

Like I’ve said online and in other posts, the “magic number” for playoffs to have in your head is 40. Based on past trends and predictive models, that’s about where the playoff line will sit. I’ve personally been shooting for 45, just to get in slightly more comfortably. The Royals currently sit in third place in the league with 33 points and a plus 12 goal difference. So four more wins (and no crazy defeats that eat their goal difference) in their final 12 games should get them in. With home games against Bay FC, Boston Legacy, Angel City, and Seattle- as well as visits to Houston and Louisville- coming down the pipe, the team has plenty of opportunities to get the last few points they need.

All that to say, the Royals will probably be playing knockout football in November (/knocks on wood). And while the prospect of watching this team make history gets me incredibly excited, there’s some stuff that needs to happen before that. Both Coenraets and the players in any number of interviews have mentioned that they don’t feel they’ve played their best game yet. I obviously don’t have insight into what they think can be improved, but I’d recommend getting to whatever it is sooner rather than later.

I also think it’s incredibly important to find ways to keep URFC’s key players fresh. Perhaps the plan is to clinch playoffs then start managing legs, but the lack of rotation really concerns me. Kate Del Fava has played every minute this season. She’s really the least of my concerns here, but still, it’d be nice to give her a well-earned rest. Cloé Lacasse has played nearly 1500 minutes. Ana Tejada, Cece Delzer, Kiana Palacios, Mina Tanaka, Kaleigh Riehl, and Narumi Miura all sit around 1200 minutes. These are all key players who you want to be fresh going into a playoff run. It is very important for Coenraets and the Royals front office to keep their team healthy, or bring in new players who can ease key players’ loads as we approach crunch time.

A lot of this came from the Utah Royals tower in my mind palace, but some general sources/my personal content recs: