Sam Kerr hasn't scored for Gotham FC yet. She's still the most talked-about player in the NWSL.
Her second appearance for the reigning champions — coming off the bench with the team trailing 0-2 — ended in a 3-2 win. Teammate Midge Purce called it a "Marvel moment," likening Kerr to the Hulk. The DC Comics crowd might prefer a Batman reference given she's now playing in Gotham, but the point stands: Kerr doesn't need goals to change a game.
What she does need, apparently, is not a return to Australian football. Not while it stays the way it is.
The A-League Women problem
"If it paid enough and it was a top league, a lot of us Matildas would go back," Kerr said. That's a direct challenge to Football Australia and the clubs — and it's one they've been ducking for years.
The A-League Women currently pays the lowest wages among Australia's major women's domestic competitions. Kerr and Mackenzie Arnold are now the only regular Matildas based in the NWSL. A handful are still in Australia. Most have gone to Europe. That's not a talent drain — that's a structural failure.
Kerr remembers when it was different. When national team players and NWSL stars would come to Australia for the season, training alongside the next generation week in, week out. That era is gone, and there's no obvious plan to bring it back.
"I think the A-League probably needs a little bit more investment, a little bit more time," she said — which, reading between the lines, is a polite version of: it's behind where it needs to be.
Meanwhile, the NWSL keeps growing
While Australian women's football stagnates domestically, the NWSL is doing the opposite. It launched in 2013 with eight teams and now has 16. Trinity Rodman just signed a deal with Washington Spirit reportedly worth $2.86 million per year. Gotham FC — already champions — will move into a purpose-built stadium in Queens in 2028, sharing the ground with NYCFC.
Kerr's debut game was played in front of over 42,000 fans at the home of the New York Mets — a record for a women's sporting event in New York City. Her second drew a few thousand in a stadium ringed by an athletics track after a two-and-a-half-hour weather delay. That contrast, she said, is where the league is right now: the ceiling has risen dramatically, but the floor is still uneven.
For Gotham's title defence odds, Kerr's arrival matters beyond the marketing. A player who still holds NWSL scoring records after six and a half years away doesn't come back just to make up numbers. She left Chelsea having won almost everything she could there. She's here to win trophies — and the 2025 Women's World Cup in Brazil is twelve months away.
"Sam has been gone from the league for six and a half years, and we still see her name at the top of the NWSL scoring record," said fan Teresa from Brooklyn. "So if any NWSL fan doesn't know her, that's on them."
