WASHINGTON, D.C. — “I’m good. Great, actually. Amazing.”
Evelyn Ijeh was on top of the world as she sat down for a press conference just minutes after the North Carolina Courage held off a furious Washington Spirit comeback. The Courage won 4-3 with a go-ahead goal in stoppage time.
North Carolina got off to a fast start in Washington, scoring three goals in the first 15 minutes of play. That included two from Ijeh, the reigning NWSL Player of the Week, who was just over a week removed from her first career hat trick.
With the two goals on Saturday night, the 24-year-old striker is up to nine goals on the season, with all of them coming in the last 10 games.
On most of her goals, there is a consistent thread: she knows exactly where to be. And she moves there so subtly and so slowly that sometimes it looks like she’s hardly moving at all.
On her first goal Saturday, Courage winger Ally Schlegel drew two Spirit defenders, Esme Morgan and Kate Wiesner, toward her. As Schlegel moved toward a third Spirit defender, Tara Rudd, Ijeh slowly backpedaled, drifting out of Rudd’s eyeline and letting her focus on Schlegel.
It gave Ijeh space to call for the ball. She got the ball a half-step past Rudd and had a 1-v-1 matchup with Spirit keeper Sandy MacIver well inside the six-yard box, turning it into a close-range goal.
A few minutes later, when her fellow front-liner, Ashley Sanchez, went for a high press on Rudd, Ijeh drifted into a wide gap between the center backs. So when Sanchez made an impressive slide tackle to poke the ball behind the back line, Ijeh had a breakaway and popped one off MacIver’s glove for her second goal of the evening.
To Ijeh, it’s connections with teammates like Sanchez and Schlegel that have opened the door to her spate of goals.
“Building relationships within the team, that has been really important for me, especially, and just the team in general,” Ijeh said. “Knowing what kind of players I have around me, to be able to bring out the best out of them and also myself, that also contributes to me being in the right position at the right time to be able to contribute to scoring goals.”
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It’s a sentiment that Courage head coach Mak Lind also shared when talking about Ijeh after Saturday’s game.
“I think she has great teammates around her. She is in a team that has a good structure and system, great players, and she’s also an amazing player as well,” Lind said. “To adapt that fast in the league is, I think, pretty unique. It is a very special league, a very demanding league, so I’m very happy for Ijeh that she can show that she’s a good player, she can score goals and for us to win games.”
Lind has been adamant from his arrival before this season that he wants his team to score goals. While winger Ashley Sanchez has led the way for the team this season with 11 goals, Lind noted that Ijeh helps the team get the most out of the traditional goal-scoring role of a striker.
“You always want a No. 9 that scores goals. But to be able to score goals as a No. 9, you need teammates around you that kind of feed you and give you those opportunities.”
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The Courage provided Ijeh with several early-season opportunities, but she struggled to convert. Before scoring her first goal in the second half of the Courage’s May 16 game against the Chicago Stars, Ijeh reached three expected goals, according to stats provided by Opta to stat-tracking service FotMob. While the statistical models suggested Ijeh’s shots were good, they just were not going into the back of the net.
Since then, Ijeh has been the beneficiary of some positive regression, as now she has racked up over eight expected goals this season, much more in line with the nine she has scored on the field.
The 24-year-old has a history of scoring goals prior to her arrival in the NWSL, including a 10-goal season in 2023 for Swedish club Växjö and a 12-goal, 6-assist effort in the 2024-25 season for AC Milan in Italy’s top league, the Serie A Femminile.
For Ijeh, the path to continued success goes back to a mindset that seems to have worked for her across Europe and now stateside in the NWSL.
“I just want to contribute as much of my strengths to the team as much as possible and also make it difficult for the defenders that I play against, to be unpredictable and everything. That’s my mindset: trying to be versatile, trying to be unpredictable and just trying to keep on going regardless if it’s difficult.”
