With the NWSL season over, American women’s soccer junkies need something to watch. May I recommend Chelsea Football Club Women and striker Mia Fishel?

Loyal readers will know that my endorsement comes steeped in Blues homerism, but Fishel’s Chelsea season will have legitimate U.S. women’s national team repercussions ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics. 

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Just last month, the San Diego native scored her first USWNT goal against Colombia in her home city. She clearly made a strong impression during that international break, as she earned another call-up for a pair of matches against China despite being limited to the substitutes’ bench for the last three Chelsea matches.

But a major piece of news broke between the Colombia match and the latest squad announcement: current Chelsea manager Emma Hayes will become the next USWNT head coach at the conclusion of the European club season, taking over from interim Twila Kilgore.

For the USWNT’s Olympics prospects as a whole, that’s not ideal. Working with the team for only a couple of months before a major tournament will leave Hayes on a time crunch to figure out her preferred squad. 

Fishel, however, might benefit greatly from that unorthodox timeline. 

Hayes sees Fishel every day in training over in London. By May 2024, the English coach will know Fishel’s game intimately, so surely that’ll help Hayes when she jumps from Chelsea to the USWNT with just weeks to prepare before a tournament. 

I rest my case as to why you should start watching Fishel immediately. Let’s talk about who she is as a player. 

Fishel has taken an unusual path to the USWNT and the top of women’s football. 

As a college standout for UCLA (I know, not the school you wanted me to say), Fishel was set to be a top NWSL draft pick. In the 2022 draft, the Orlando Pride did select her with the fifth overall pick, but Fishel instead chose to sign with Tigres in Mexico’s Liga MX Femenil. 

It was a risky move. American players typically stay home after their college years and Mexico’s league is much newer than the NWSL, making it less established. Foreign players were not even allowed to join the league until 2021, only one season before Fishel’s arrival. If the move had not panned out, surely Fishel would have been raked over the coals for eschewing the NWSL’s draft system and wasting her potential.

Except, she absolutely dominated Liga MX Femenil and earned herself an impressive move to one of Europe’s, and the world’s, top women’s teams. 

She scored 33 goals in 2022 for Tigres, winning the Golden Boot award for the Apertura side of the season (Mexico splits its annual league play into two seasons, the “opening” Apertura and the “closing” Clausura) and lifting the playoff title. 

That kind of performance meant that Chelsea had no qualms shelling out $250,000 for Fishel, among the highest fees paid for a women’s player in the world.

In London, however, the early returns have been minimal. The former Bruin only has one goal for Chelsea so far and has started in just three matches, two of which she was subbed out before the 60-minute mark. 

Fishel has stiff competition for playing time in London, though. Arguably the best striker in world football, the Australian Sam Kerr has been dominant for the Blues, with 77 goals and assists in the 73 Women’s Super League appearances. As long as Kerr stays in that kind of form — and she’s shown no signs of slowing down — Fishel will have to be content with the leftovers. 

But for a young striker, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. On the training ground, who could be better to learn from than Kerr? Plus, as a substitute coming off the bench, Fishel will have an opportunity to learn how to be more effective in fewer minutes. As the Premier League’s greatest-ever super sub Ole Gunnar Solskjæer once said, while on the bench he “would pay attention to what the defenders and full-backs were doing wrong.” That can be a valuable mental skill for a striker. 

If Fishel takes this opportunity to develop, Hayes will notice. And thankfully for Fishel, she’ll likely be first to come to mind when Hayes has to put together an Olympics squad this summer. 

What better time to announce yourself than with the entire world watching?

Jack Hallinan is a junior writing about the top wunderkinds in men’s and women’s soccer in his column, “Rising Ballers,” which runs every other Thursday.