Arya News - Andonovski, just 2 years removed from leading Kansas City to a record NWSL season, will now try to rebuild a struggling Stars franchise from the ground up.
The Chicago Stars are snapping up one of the NWSL"s biggest front office free agents, bringing on former USWNT coach and Kansas City Current sporting director Vlatko Andonovski as the club"s new chief soccer officer. The Stars announced the move on Thursday, kicking off what will hopefully be a new era for the struggling franchise.
According to a press release, Andonovski will oversee "all sporting and technical initiatives" in this role, which will include player strategy and development, scouting and roster input. The team says it will be hiring additional personnel to report to Andonovski in the sporting department amid what it calls "a structural rebuild."
The move comes just 10 days after the Current announced that Andonovski would be departing the club, with the team saying that both parties agreed that Andonovski"s move to sporting director was "not the right fit." Andonovski had spent two seasons as Kansas City"s head coach, including a dominant, record-breaking NWSL Shield finish last year, before the promotion.
In an interview with ESPN , Andonovski said that he had spoken with six different NWSL teams about roles that were similar. One of those clubs asked him to return to coaching rather than stay in the front office, but Andonovski told ESPN that he prefers building the club and its identity.
"I get excited with projects, and Chicago will very much be a project," he said.
The Stars are currently dead last in the NWSL, and are in the middle of another rebuild after a series of mediocre seasons. Chicago fired general manager Richard Feuz in May after less than three seasons; the team then let go of head coach Martin Sjögren in August, months after he took over the role.
Andonovski heads to Chicago after his time with Kansas City comes to an unexpectedly early end
Andonovski, who coached the United States women"s national team from 2019 to 2023, resigned from the role after the team"s disappointing loss at the 2023 Women"s World Cup. But the Macedonian coach recovered by joining Kansas City as head coach and building a formidable team in a short amount of time.
Just days after Kansas City"s historic 2025 season suddenly ended in the NWSL quarterfinals , the Current announced that Andonovski would step away from the sidelines and transition to become the team"s sporting director.
As part of that restructure, Kansas City then hired Chris Armas as the team"s head coach. The move to hire Armas, who had no experience coaching women"s soccer, raised some eyebrows; Current owners Chris and Angie Lo ng told ESPN that they consulted Canada men"s national team coach Jesse Marsch when picking someone to fill the vancancy, and he recommended Armas, his longtime friend and former coworker.
It took less than a year for that move to not work out as planned. Kansas City"s press release on Andonovski"s departure was shockingly short: No mention was made of the former coach"s three successful seasons or even the Shield win.
Multiple prominent Current players posted on Instagram about Andonovski leaving, with some alluding to the team"s conspicuously short release as well as mourning his departure.
"You don"t have social media so I know you won"t see this but the impact you had on this organization could never be summed up in a press release even if it were to be acknowledged," Current captain Lo"eau Lobonta wrote in a story. "You set the standard for staff and players … To be your captain was an absolute honor and I speak for the locker room when I say we are forever grateful to have had you as a coach."
In another Instagram story, Current forward and USWNT regular Michelle Cooper posted about the records broken by the team in 2025.
"Have to include his historic 2025 season since the press release missed it!" Cooper wrote alongside the lengthy bullet point list.
The departure appears to mark a final an end to Andonovski"s time in Kansas City, where he has spent most of his career coaching — first with Kansas City FC (which was later moved and became the Utah Royals) from 2013 to 2017, and then with the Current. (Andonovski"s family will remain in Kansas City for the time being, he told ESPN; he and his wife have three children.)
When speaking to ESPN, Chicago Stars president Karen Leetzow said that part of her strategy for getting Andonovski was to hire people he had previously worked with, including the team"s new interim technical consultant Kate Cohen and interim director of high performance Garga Caserta. ESPN also reports that Chicago is among the teams circling Current assistant coach Mila Ivanovic for their head coaching vacancy.
"People were leaving [Kansas City], and no one understood why. But we were gonna not let that talent go untapped if we could get them to come to Chicago," Leetzow told ESPN. "This is exactly how you do this … You build all the people that the best would want to work with, and then they want to come and work with you."
Andonovski will try to right the Stars" struggling ship
Andonovski will have his work cut out for him in Chicago: With six games left in the season, the Stars currently sit in 16th place, with just five wins. They have a goal differential of -40, which is pretty terrible, but is mostly boosted by the fact that Chicago has only scored 14 goals in 24 games this season — putting them on track for one of the lowest-scoring seasons in NWSL history.
Though some of the Stars" issues have been outside the franchise"s control — the ongoing saga to try to find a permanent home stadium , for one — the team"s on-field product has been struggling for years. A stretch of top seasons in the 2010s have given way to two last-place finishes in the past three years; another last-place finish this season is imminent.
After years of disappointing hires and results, bring on Andonovski is deeply for the Stars, as Andonovski advanced his career by building something out of nothing. While Andonovski was head coach of Seattle Reign FC in 2019, a combination of injuries and international duty left the coach with a shifting roster that contained 36 individual players across the season, per FBRef . Despite the deep inconsistency in the roster, Andonovski managed to find enough balance to lead the team to a fourth-place finish and a playoff berth.
That season, which earned Andonovski his second NWSL Coach of the Year honor, pushed him into a level of international attention and ended up helping him get the USWNT job.
Now, he will attempt to do the same in Chicago, building off some of the team"s biggest names — USWNT star Mallory Swanson , Canadian forward Jordyn Huitema , 2023 NWSL Best XI defender Sam Staab and more — and adding more pieces to lift the Stars out of their years-long rut.