The NWSL’s Struggling Teams Are Falling Behind

The 2026 NWSL season has provided some astonishingly fun soccer, and many off-field successes too: The league has boasted some record attendances, salaries, and goal-scoring this year, not to mention a few signings from at least a couple of the big European clubs it lusts after. But recently there have been too many reminders that although the NWSL has raised its ceiling, the floor is still in hell. On Sept. 13, Savannah DeMelo, the star Racing Louisville midfielder who suffered a cardiac arrest during a game in Seattle in September 2025, filed a lawsuit against the team’s medical provider, UofL Health, as well as two of her doctors, for negligence. The lawsuit states that the doctors should have caught the heart condition that was a substantial cause of her cardiac arrest—it was instead caught by doctors in Seattle after the fact. The suit stated that DeMelo "has incurred medical, hospital, and other care-related expenses, and will continue to incur such expenses in the future, has lost income, has suffered a permanent impairment in her power to labor and earn money, and has experienced severe physical and mental pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life, and will continue to so suffer into the future."

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