Gotham FC general manager and head of soccer operations, Yael Averbuch West, looks for a common thread with every player that she brings into the dressing room.
When Averbuch West is sizing up a potential incoming transfer, free agent signing or trade acquisition, she values one characteristic above everything else. She wants to fill Gotham’s roster with a collection of players who possess a burning desire to improve.
“We don’t end up bringing every single player we talk to,” Averbuch West told South Ward Central in an exclusive interview. “We have a lot of these conversations. We try to be very intentional about who we target to try to bring in.
“At the end of the day, I think we can tell pretty easily if someone is going to be a great fit for us because the players who are going to be a great fit for us all share the mentality that I had as a player, and we have at our club, which is that they still want to get better.
“From our World Cup champions in the later stages of their career to the rookies who are going to be new professionals. Everyone who comes to Gotham who ends up loving it here and succeeding here has that same mentality.”
In case you missed it: here’s part one of our series of exclusive interviews with Averbuch West.
How Gotham FC Became a Destination Club
The 39-year-old executive is eight years removed from her playing days, which included a 2015 NWSL championship with FC Kansas City. Though she has not officially filed her retirement papers, ulcerative colitis prematurely ended the Montclair, New Jersey native’s playing career.
After making a single appearance for Seattle Reign FC in 2018, the condition forced Averbuch West to suspend her playing career.
Since August 2021, Averbuch West has served as Gotham FC’s general manager. She has crafted and remodeled an evolving roster that has captured two NWSL championships (2023, 2025) and won the inaugural 2024-25 Concacaf W Champions Cup.
Averbuch West credited the work performed by Gotham’s worldwide scouting network that constantly identifies emerging youth talent, tracks top-class players and monitors contractual statuses of potential incoming recruits.
“I have a great team around me that makes it easy,” she said. “Our scouts give me and us a lot of confidence that the players we end up talking to will be great fits for our club. I know with confidence that when I talk about what we can offer as a club and how our coaches work with our players and all the aspects of being at Gotham, I can speak with confidence about who we are.
Why Gotham FC Emphasizes a ‘People-First’ Culture
In her role as general manager, Averbuch West draws upon her personal experiences from her playing days to demonstrate to prospective signings that Gotham is a place where players can take their careers to the next level while being supported and pushed every step of the way.
“We really focus on understanding a player’s priorities and what they want, but also speaking to how we support players who want to be pushed, want to be around other great players and want to get better,” she explained.
“It comes very much from my experience as a player in what I know I’ve always wanted. I’m able to talk realistically about players who have come here and have improved their careers, their personal career trajectory, and gotten better at things. It makes it an easy job for me.”
Averbuch West’s pitch is simple – here’s where you’re at in your career, here’s where we can help you, here’s what we think you can bring to our club.
“I’m a very transparent person,” she stated. “At our club, we all have our motto: always building, never finished. Our players who are already elite and have all these accolades, they also know themselves, and they know the areas where they want to improve. As a club, I talk to them very honestly about our growth areas, the areas where we’re trying to improve at the club, the things I think that we’re doing well, all the things that we have to offer.”
Averbuch West’s Best Recruiting Tool Is Player-To-Player Word of Mouth
The best recruiting tool of all is word-of-mouth reputation. Players around the world know of Gotham’s sustained growth, their trophy success, the focus and detail that Averbuch West, head coach Juan Carlos Amorós and key staff put into developing players on the pitch and allowing them to be the best version of themselves off the pitch.
“We’re a people-first place,” Averbuch West emphasized. “We want to win, we want to have great talent, but also we want good people, and we have really good people. Juan is always the first to say in recruiting calls that we’re football players; he’s a football coach, but first and foremost, we’re people. We take that very seriously in not just what we say but in how we operate.”
Her best tool in her recruiting arsenal is for interested players to pull up their phone, talk to Gotham’s current players and ask around the league about an ex-Gotham player’s experience at the club.
“I give them a really realistic assessment or try my best to,” she said. “I always tell players you can listen to me, I’m going to tell you something that sounds favorable because I want you to come to our club, but the best thing you can do is call up your friend or your contacts who are in our locker room and ask them about us.”
Building an Environment Where Players Can Thrive
Once a new player is signed, the focus is on creating an all-business environment where everyone sets the bar high and distractions are removed.
“It’s a team effort in so many ways,” Averbuch West explained. “Juan is always the first to say that he can’t do any of this without his staff and all the hardworking people whose names aren’t always front and center. It’s definitely a team effort, and we all do share that Gotham DNA of being self-reflective and always pushing ourselves to be better, but pushing each other to be better too.
“The core of it is that we are trying to provide the players with as much support to do what they do on the field and remove as many other details as possible that they would need to think about or be distracted by – that’s the objective.”
Equipping Gotham for the New Era
Averbuch West remembered a time when the NWSL had some rocky beginnings. Toward the end of her playing career, she formed the National Women’s Soccer League Players Association and served as the NWSLPA’s first president.
Her mission as NWSLPA president was to create safer standards for players, improved working conditions, travel standards and labor protections. The NWSLPA has since successfully negotiated the elimination of the college draft, guaranteed contracts, full free agency rights, any trade needing the player’s consent, pregnancy and parental leave and several other player rights into the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
“I played in an era in the league where there were a lot of distractions and a lot of barriers for me to perform my best on the field,” she recalled. “That’s something we all fought through in my generation.”
Averbuch West is meticulous in building an ecosystem within Gotham where players are given individualized training plans, personalized attention and all the support that is needed during a demanding season that stretches across several competitions and multiple continents.
“The goal now is how do we bring in the right support for players, the right experts, the staff is really key, have the right setup so that when players show up they’re going to get everything they need to get to be their very best and they don’t have to worry about anything else,” she detailed.
“The key to that is the staff and bringing in experts and enough people that the players can have individualized attention as well. Not every player needs the same thing; not every player needs to be doing the same thing on the field, in the gym, with what they eat, how they recover every day. We’re not perfect with that, but that’s our objective.”
Part three of our multipart interview with Averbuch West will be published on Sunday and focus on Gotham FC’s 2026 rookie class.
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