Source: USWNT’s Fishel in talks with NWSL clubs

United States women’s national team forward Mia Fishel is in discussions with multiple NWSL teams about a summer transfer away from Chelsea, a source told ESPN.

Fishel, 24, is in search of a summer move to become the focal point of an NWSL’s team’s forward line with an eye toward earning more USWNT caps ahead of the 2027 World Cup.

She has three caps for the USWNT and scored her lone senior international goal to date in her second match for the USWNT, in 2023.

Her time with the USWNT has been limited due to a torn ACL sustained while training with the team ahead of the 2024 Concacaf W Gold Cup.

Fishel recently returned to the field for Chelsea and spent the past international break as one of the overage players with the USWNT under-23s for a pair of games against Germany’s U-23s.

“Yes, she could come in, sit on the bench for [the senior team], but it’s much better for her to go and play in Germany and get the experiences so that these players are tracking to compete in the place that we want them to come 2027,” USWNT head coach Emma Hayes said last month.

Chelsea already has a crowded roster that includes fellow USWNT forward Catarina Macario and Colombian Mayra Ramírez, who joined Chelsea on a then-record transfer fee in early 2024.

Australian forward Sam Kerr, twice the league’s top scorer in recent years, is also due back from a long-term knee injury.

Hayes was the coach at Chelsea when the team acquired Fishel from Liga MX Femenil powerhouse Tigres in 2023 for a $250,000 transfer fee.

Tigres signed Fishel out of college in 2022 and the striker made an immediate impact. She was the league’s top scorer in the 2022 Apertura (fall) season with 17 goals as Tigres won the title, and she added another 13 goals in the 2023 Clausura (spring) before her move to Chelsea.

Fishel was initially drafted fifth overall in the 2022 NWSL Draft by the Orlando Pride after leaving UCLA a year early, but she declined to sign with Orlando, choosing instead to go to Tigres in Mexico.

Orlando had just hired former UCLA head coach Amanda Cromwell to be the Pride’s head coach, although Cromwell was suspended early in that 2022 NWSL season and eventually terminated for alleged retaliation and violations of the league’s workplace discrimination policies.

“When I got drafted, it wasn’t necessarily the choice I wanted,” Fishel told Andscape in 2023. “If I didn’t go to Tigres in Mexico, I have no doubt that I would not be at Chelsea now.

“I strongly believe in that.”