It's shaping up to be a transformative summer for Gotham FC

Gotham FC last played on May 31 but the club has packed a ton of big, potentially transformative moves into a weeks-long break in NWSL action.

There are a few huge roster comings and goings, but there are also behind-the-scenes developments that will change how Gotham does its business at a pivotal point in the franchise's history.

There's still a week to go until the Bats return to competitive action when they travel to Columbus, Ohio, to play KC Current in the NWSL Challenge Cup, but before they step back on the pitch, let's run through the big changes and developments arriving this summer for the defending NWSL Champions.

Lilly Reale out, Sam Kerr (back) in

Since implementation of the 2024 collective-bargaining agreement between NWSL and its players union, player movement picks up steam in this period leading to July 1, as that's when free agency now officially opens in NWSL.

Gotham got started on summer roster shuffling in a big way this week, trading defender Lilly Reale to Boston Legacy FC in exchange for $400,000, $350,000 in allocation dollars and $50,000 in intraleague transfer funds.

Reale won the 2025 NWSL Rookie of the Year award and broke through with the United States women's national team during her one year-and-change with Gotham, so her departure comes as something of a surprise, especially since Gotham seemed so short-handed at the back due to long-term injuries to players like Bruninha, Mandy Freeman, and Kayla Duran.

Reale, from Boston originally, gets to go join her hometown team and try to help the expansion-year Legacy improve on their early-season results. Gotham, meanwhile, gets hundreds of thousands of funds that they already seem poised to reinvest in a new big-name addition: Sam Kerr.

Kerr is a superstar of women's soccer and it was major news when announced in mid-May that she'd be leaving Chelsea FC at the end of their season when her contract expired. Speculation abounded about the 32-year-old Australia national team legend's next destination, with NWSL side Denver Summit FC mentioned as a likely next stop, but The Athletic reported this week that Kerr would instead be joining Gotham.

Kerr, once officially confirmed as a new signing, will be making a comeback after playing for Gotham, then known as Sky Blue FC, from 2015-2017. That was a period in which she won NWSL MVP in 2017 following a 17-goal breakout campaign. Kerr totaled 28 goals and six assists across 40 appearances for the New Jersey-based side, though it all came during a time in which Sky Blue struggled badly, on the field and especially off it.

The current scene at Gotham is very different from what it was in the rough old days, and Kerr will now be walking into a team with a bunch of recent on-field successes and with a track record of signing players of Kerr's caliber in recent years, and without the issues that hampered Sky Blue during the mid-2010s.

Dedicated training facility secured

One good example of the changes to come to Gotham since Kerr's last stint with the club: The big announcement earlier this month that Gotham would be fully taking over and redesigning the former training facility of Red Bull New York in Whippany, New Jersey, making it their own purpose-designed space.

Gotham hasn't had a training space to call their own, instead sharing the space they'll be taking over in Whippany with the Red Bulls. But the Red Bulls just moved into their own state-of-the-art new campus, the one currently serving as base camp for Brazil during this summer's men's World Cup.

Across the NWSL and across all top-level professional women's sports, infrastructure has become a top-of-mind issue. In NWSL, a team-specific training ground was long a rarity, with clubs like Gotham instead sharing space with men's teams, or setting up makeshift training facilities at local schools or other athletics complexes.

More and more teams are now investing the many millions of dollars required to build practice facilities, or in the case of the KC Current entire soccer stadiums, that are solely for the use of women athletes. Gotham will get in on that trend by re-imaging the former Red Bulls space into a 27,000-square-foot purpose-built environment, with the club enlisting SHoP Architects to oversee the redesign, and with full project completion expected by the summer of 2027.

Locally, we're also seeing this play out in women's basketball, as the New York Liberty of the WNBA are about to open their own brand-new training facility in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, one that is 75,000 square-feet in size and costs $80 million to build, with an expected opening also slated for sometime in 2027.

Gotham and the Liberty each have been hugely successful at both winning in their respective leagues, but also at recruiting some of the top players in their sports. When recruiting international stars of the sport like Sam Kerr or like Rose Lavelle before her, things like a dedicated, single-use practice facility can make a difference, so this development in northern New Jersey is a big one as Gotham looks to continue to hold onto and expand its stature as one of the marquee teams in NWSL.

Averbuch West promoted, new club president hired

The front-office figure who built those trophy-winning Gotham squads, Yael Averbuch West, also got a promotion this summer, an indication the organization wants to reward and hold on to the architect of its recent success.

Averbuch West went from General Manager, a role held since 2021, to now being Gotham's President of Soccer Operations. Talent retention and management is Averbuch West's job when it comes to the Gotham roster, but Gotham's owners likely needed to make this move to retain Averbuch West herself, knowing how important she's been to turning Gotham into a destination and into a perennial trophy contender.

Gotham also just hired a new president of business operations, Mark Zarthar, who previously served as chief revenue officer for the NHL's Florida Panthers. Zarthar fills a role left vacant in the Gotham c-suite since 2023, and comes in at a time when off-field growth, in terms of attendance, revenue, and the like, seems to be the next big area of focus for the NWSL club.

All the many signs that pointed to Gotham FC moving to Queens

Retracing the years of statements, commitments, and tangentially-related developments that indicated Gotham’s reported move to Etihad Park was a possibility.

New York Soccer JournalAndrew Leigh

Zarthar enters at a potential crossroads for the Gotham business. There are those reports Gotham will be moving to Queens and making Etihad Park, eventual home of New York City FC, its new home venue. Zarthar might be the person now tasked with helping navigate that move, but in the nearer-term, his role likely involves finding ways to get more momentum building off-field for a club that still has ups and downs when it comes to attracting crowds to its current home, Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey.

Queens might be Gotham's next frontier, after all, they've sold somewhere around 25,000 tickets to their one-off at Citi Field against Washington Spirit to be played days before the men's World Cup final. Even if the plan is Etihad Park, there will be work aplenty to be done behind-the-scenes to make that move successful without alienating season-ticket holders that date back to the Sky Blue days, or without creating more issues that slow the franchise's progress.

When announcing Averbuch West's promotion and the hiring of Zarthar, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, Gotham's primary owner and governor, said "From day one, our ambition has been bigger than winning championships alone – we are building one of the most iconic sports brands in the world and a club that helps define the future of women’s sports. To achieve that vision, we need exceptional leadership across every part of the organization."

All the moves Gotham is making this summer seem to line up with Tisch Blodgett's stated goals. Gotham has all the ambition in the world, and their actions, on- and off-field, all point in the direction of turning that ambition into actual success.