NWSL 2026: which midfielders infiltrate the box?

Wingers and forwards are meant to attack crosses. We measured which NWSL midfielders actually get into the box this season.

Wingers and forwards are supposed to attack crosses. The more revealing question is which midfielders actually get into the box, and which ones stay behind the play. It is hard to measure, because it depends on where a specific player is standing at the exact moment a cross is played, not on anything in a normal stat line. So we measured it across NWSL this season.

What infiltration measures

Infiltration is the share of a team's open-play crosses where a given central or attacking midfielder is already inside the opposition box at the moment of delivery. A high share means the player consistently gets into scoring positions when the ball comes in from wide. To keep it to genuine midfielders, the pool is primary CM, CDM and CAM roles, with a minimum of 900 minutes played.

North Carolina Courage's Ashley Sanchez arrives in the box for 74.0% of her team's open-play crosses (91 of 123), the most of any midfielder in the NWSL. Seattle Reign's Madison Mercado (69.8%) and Gotham's Jaedyn Shaw (69.2%) follow. Against a midfielder league average of 27.3%, the leaders are arriving on three of every four crosses, operating almost as a second forward whenever the ball goes wide.

These are the players who turn a wide overload into a real goal threat: when the ball reaches a crossing position, they are already in the area, a body the defence has to track on top of the forwards. It is a coachable, repeatable movement, and it is also a recruitment lens, a way to find midfielders who genuinely get on the end of things rather than only circulate possession.

How we built it

We did not write any code for this. The ranking came from asking MGPT, the AI assistant inside MyGamePlan, a single tactical question. It drew on the NWSL matches this season with synced event and tracking data, filtered to midfielders with at least 900 minutes, found every open-play cross, and checked whether each midfielder was inside the box at the frame of delivery. The same question can be asked for any league we cover in one click, which matters if you scout beyond one competition.

Build it to your own principles

The leaderboard is not the point. A specific tactical question, "which of our midfielders attack the box on our crosses," became a measurable metric in minutes, on your own data, with every arrival traceable back to the video. Your definition of a good run might differ: near-post arrivals only, runs from deep central midfield, or arrivals in transition rather than settled attacks. Because the metric is built from raw event and tracking data rather than a fixed provider stat, you can define it to your own game model and see it the same day, for your own players and every opponent's.

See it for yourself

Ask MGPT your own question and get the ranking, the charts and the clips back in seconds. Or book a call, and we can set this up for you.