What went right and what went wrong for the Royals in relaunch

It’s safe to say that the Utah Royals’ first season back in the NWSL didn’t go as planned.
The Royals finished 11th of 14th in the NWSL standings this season with a 7-4-15 record and will miss the playoffs. The team also ended its year with a different coach than it started with.
This spring, former Royals player and U.S. women’s national team legend Amy Rodriguez was serving as head coach. But after a 2-11-2 start, the Royals moved on from Rodriguez and promoted assistant coach Jimmy Coenraets to the role of interim head coach. He was then officially named the new head coach on Oct. 24, as the Deseret News previously reported.
Royals players and Coenraets spoke to the media this week to recap the 2024 season and reflect on where they’ll go from here.
Team captain Paige Monaghan said the team made mistakes both on and off the pitch this season. She likened the organization to a startup company.
“We had to learn through our failures more than we would like to, and that’s really hard. In sports, there’s always losses, or ties or you mess up, but I feel like there was a lot of it at the beginning,” she said.
Coenraets wouldn’t comment on the team’s mistakes prior to him taking over. But he pointed to injuries as a contributing factor for the team’s struggles in his tenure.
Three Royals players — Imani Dorsey, Lauren Flynn and Cloé Lacasse — ended up on the season-ending injury list this year. In addition to those players, 11 players were unavailable due to injury in the team’s last nine games of the season.
“What went wrong, obviously, is injury rates. I think that’s something we have to be honest about,” Coenraets said.
He added that the large amount of injuries could be attributed to the team adjusting to him taking over as head coach.
“When a coach comes in or a new coach comes in, that’s where you see injuries going very high because you adapt the style of play with that demand of the player. I think that’s something I learned myself as well,” he said. “Whenever you go to a new club and you have to change stuff, you have to be more cautious in what you do and what you envision to do.”
Looking at the team’s record, the Royals show significant improvement under Coenraets, and the players agree.
“I would say what went right is, honestly, the changes that we made halfway. I mean, it’s obvious to everyone,” Monaghan said.
The team won its Summer Cup group, going on a 5-1-1 run through four Summer Cup games and three regular season games in Coenraets’ first seven games as interim head coach.
From the end of the Summer Cup in August to Coenraets’ official hiring as head coach in October, the Royals only trailed the Orlando Pride, Gotham FC and the Washington Spirit in points earned.
“I think, obviously, with Jimmy coming in, we’ve been improving. We are not just competing, but we’re winning games and we’re here to compete and we’re here to challenge. I think if we had the start that we had the second half of the season in the beginning, I think we’d be in a different place than we are,” defender Madison Pogarch said.
Pogarch said the organization and Coenraets want “what’s best for the players,” which makes her hopeful for the team’s future.
Despite the frustrations of the season, Monaghan is proud of how the locker room handled the rollercoaster of a season.
“I’ve been a part of many different teams, and that locker room is just so special. Some girls were just going through so much individually. But at the end of the day, it was always about the team, and that’s what I think was able to propel us forward to even have the buy in and be successful in the second half of the season,” she said.
Coenraets shared a similar sentiment. The head coach has continued to see excitement from the players even after the team’s season has ended.
“I think that the thing that went the most positive of all is just the way that people are still running into this building on a daily basis, big smile, ready to work. We have four or five players that are staying for postseason training. They’re still training today,” he said.
The first-time NWSL head coach is also pleased with the development of the players over the last half of the season.
He specifically praised goalkeeper Mandy Haught, who had four clean sheets this season and a Royals record of 84 saves, and defender Kate del Fava, who was one of seven NWSL players to play every minute of the 2024 regular season.
“I think the individual development of players with a high potential the last few months was very clear. I think that’s been very, very clear. A few players of whom everyone knew that they were good, they really showed they were really good,” he said. “The combinations, the actions they were able to make, but also just the technical stuff that they were doing way better than what they were doing before.”
Expect the Royals to make some changes to the roster for the 2025 season, according to Coenraets.
“We’re still looking for three to four good pieces to make sure we have the puzzle right. What we definitely don’t want to do is end up in a situation that we were at the end of the season, a group that was not really healthy anymore. We were not really fresh, not fit anymore,” Coenraets said.
Coenraets joked that he has “a big list for Santa Claus” to bring to ownership this offseason. He then adopted a more serious tone to discuss the current roster and where he wants to improve it.
“In general, I think it’s a healthy thing to say, and I think it’s also a very difficult thing for a coach to say that in every line of the pitch we will get someone new,” Coenraets said.
Joining the Royals as an assistant coach in June, Coenraets wasn’t involved in the current roster’s construction. He feels that the first roster was assembled with a focus on physicality. But going into 2025, he wants the focus to be on a player’s technical ability.
“We want center backs that are able to handle the ball. We want an outside back that’s very comfortable receiving in wide areas, getting into 1v1s,” he said. “That’s more of the profiles we’re going out on the market for.”
An outside back is a priority for Coenraets as well as a midfielder “that takes on the competition with” Ana Tejada and Claudia Zornoza.
The head coach also wants to be unpredictable offensively and therefore believes the team needs different types of offensive players.
“You need someone that can check in, but you need also someone that can go in behind it,” Coenraets said.
He doesn’t think he’ll find a player that can do both, so they’ll have to find two to address those needs.
“If as a coach, you have those weapons, then from a technical point of view, it becomes more fun,” Coenraets said.