A year after missing playoffs, Pride and Spirit meet in NWSL Championship

After 188 games and 502 goals, the 2024 NWSL season all comes down to this. The Orlando Pride and Washington Spirit backed up their first and second-place regular season finishes by navigating a tricky playoff bracket, booking their places in Saturday’s final at CPKC Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri.

It’s a matchup between two newly-minted heavyweights who both missed the playoffs a year ago. Orlando and Washington have bolted up the standings thanks to star players and unsung heroes alike — and they’ve both managed to sustain excellence in the face of hardships and change.

Here’s how the two finalists stack up ahead of Saturday’s NWSL Championship match at 8pm ET on CBS.

Orlando Pride has a whiff of destiny about it this season. Some of that is probably confirmation bias for the NWSL Shield winners, given to the team with the best regular season point total, and some of it is high emotions running around Brazilian maestro Marta. And some of it is just good old-fashioned excitement about a worst-to-first narrative, much like Gotham FC in 2023. They also, of course, just keep winning.

However, Orlando has looked somewhat vulnerable in its last few games, including a two-loss “streak,” starting with a 2-0 defeat to the Portland Thorns on October 11 and followed by a 3-1 loss to Gotham on October 20. Head coach Seb Hines was willing to risk rotating his starting XI knowing at that point the team was locked in for the postseason. It was longer-term thinking, which allowed him to rest key players — thinking that contributed to Hines winning NWSL coach of the year earlier this week.

But there was a mental aspect as well, letting the players falter in the regular season and see if they could climb out of the hole together, which they did. Mental resilience was an important part of the Pride’s semifinal win over the Kansas City Current. Orlando isn’t used to trailing, not since the beginning of the season, and coming back against an opponent that seemed determined to try to press them into making mistakes will be an important mental boost going into a final against the Spirit who also forced its way back into its own semifinal game.

If we rewind to those early games, it’s clear the Pride was trying to build on pieces it already had from the 2023 season, when it was truly in full reboot mode. The starting defense in its season opener — Kerry Abello, Kylie Strom, Emily Sams, and Haley McCutcheon — is not terribly different from the defense that worked so hard to lock out KC’s Temwa Chawinga and the rest of the Current in the semifinal. The main difference is the switch from McCutcheon to rookie Cori Dyke, who played her way into a starting fullback role while McCutcheon was moved a little higher into midfield.

Unlike the Spirit, the Pride didn’t lean so hard on the NWSL draft this year, instead looking to international signings and trades to strengthen its core. One of those internationals, Brazilian midfielder Luana, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma just months after signing for the club. She recently completed her final round of chemotherapy and has announced that recent scans show no sign of cancer — something the team has been rallying around since the news.

But other signings like fellow Brazilian midfielder Angelina and Zambian forward Barbra Banda, who leads the team in goals, have had a huge impact alongside the team’s longer-time roleplayers like Strom, McCutcheon, and Abello. The Pride has also pulled good performances out of 2023 fourth-round draft pick Summer Yates and Ally Watt, whose late-season surge on the wing has been galvanizing. This is a team that has nurtured its roster into a cohesive unit, particularly in defense and can adapt fairly well against various strategies.

In the last few games for the Pride, that cohesion has been under some strain, albeit with admirable responses from the players. You could see their adaptability on display against KC in the semifinal; they didn’t push too hard for the transition to put Banda in behind the Current’s defense, instead willing to let KC set a higher line while also guarding against the threat Chawinga posed.

While it often looked like Sams and Dyke had to run at 110 per cent of their max speed to do it, they did contain Chawinga while the rest of the defense was able to pick up the threats from Michelle Cooper and Debinha, goal against notwithstanding. It helped that KC lost midfielder and captain Lo’eau LaBonta to a halftime substitution, which only further degraded their ability to put Chawinga into dangerous positions, resulting in just 0.23 xG (expected goals) and no shots on target for the Malawian.

In terms of vulnerability, Washington will probably take a close look at that 3-1 loss Orlando had against Gotham when Orlando wasn’t able to convert much of anything into chances on goal, nor were they able to contain midfielder Rose Lavelle. As much as the Pride has a strong group of non-superstar players, they still rely heavily on Banda and Marta for goals. But Gotham cut Banda out of the equation, and the Pride struggled. Banda has been on form in her past couple of games, racking up a strong playoff account with three goals in two playoff games. It sounds extremely obvious, but job No. 1 for the Spirit will be keeping Banda out.

The Washington Spirit’s road to the final wasn’t smooth or direct. Despite Michele Kang’s fortune-altering full takeover of the club in March 2022, the club hadn’t made the NWSL playoffs since winning it all in 2021. Arguably, no night under Kang’s governance proved to be more transformative than that of the 2024 NWSL draft.

The Spirit traded away two vital figures from that championship-winning core on Jan. 12, sending defender Sam Staab to the Chicago Red Stars and midfield orchestrator Ashley Sanchez to the North Carolina Courage. For Staab, Washington obtained Chicago’s first-round pick, third overall; for Sanchez, the Courage sent the fifth overall pick and $250,000 (£198,000) of allocation money.

The payoff to these contentious transactions came swiftly. The third pick was used to select Croix Bethune, who was named NWSL rookie of the year on Tuesday having tied the league’s single-season assist record (10) despite suffering a season-ending injury in August. The Spirit used the fifth pick on Hal Hershfelt, whose header in second-half stoppage time gave Washington the equalizer that led to their penalty shootout triumph against Gotham FC in the semifinal. Both players were selected as alternates to head coach Emma Hayes’ squad for the Olympics, the only NWSL rookies to land on the roster.

It’s rare for a team to turn two vital veterans into a pair of young players who can be equally impactful immediately. All six of the Spirit’s rookies made it on the scoresheet this season. The moves may not have sat well with Sanchez and Staab, but the ruthless approach put the roster in as good of a position to contend, if not outright improved.

The Spirit also had a choreographed midseason coaching change. Washington surprised many by prying UEFA W Champions League winner Jonatan Giraldez from FC Barcelona Femeni, allowing him to finish the Spanish club’s season before joining in the summer. They remained competitive at the top of the table under interim boss Adrian Gonzalez, raising concerns that a change of voice could derail an already strong season.

It did not. The Spirit kept stride with Orlando, Gotham and KC to make the hunt for the title a true four-team competition.

The hurdles kept coming once Giraldez was manning the technical area. In August, Bethune’s record-setting rookie season came to a crashing halt, suffering a torn meniscus while throwing a first pitch at a Washington Nationals baseball game. The moment was meant to celebrate the return of the four Spirit players who won gold with the USWNT at the Paris Olympics. In September, fellow United States international Andi Sullivan — a vital voice on and off the field — suffered an ACL tear, taking the Spirit’s key defensive midfielder out of the picture.

The injuries showcased the depth at Giraldez’s disposal, with several players taking on elevated roles heading into the playoffs. Another pair of rookies — Heather Stainbrook and Makenna Morris — became set-piece specialists, with Morris providing the assist on Hershfelt’s last-gasp equalizer on Saturday. One of last year’s breakout midfielders, Paige Metayer, returned to the lineup in more of a wing back role beneath Trinity Rodman on the right. Hershfelt dropped to the base of the midfield, looking like a capable ball-winner and tempo-setter in Sullivan’s stead.

While its semifinal win at a sold-out Audi Field will be remembered for the late exploits of Hershfelt and goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury, the preceding 90 minutes showed more of the Spirit’s best on and off the ball.

Across 120 minutes, the Spirit outshot Gotham 27-14. Ten of those 27 attempts landed on goal, with nine resulting in saves for opposing goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger. Even after Gotham opened the scoring early in the second half, Washington kept its resolve. Rodman alternated between the left and right wings as the game progressed, forcing Gotham’s defense to switch assignments and be further unsettled with each rotation.

Washington recognized that Gotham substitute Bruninha entered the game with plenty of aggression and seemed willing to embrace contact. After drawing a 72nd-minute yellow card for a needless off-ball shove on Rosemonde Kouassi, Rodman baited the Brazilian into a pair of fouls, with the second resulting in a red card in extra time.

The Pride won both of its regular season matchups with Washington, a 3-2 win at Audi Field during Gonzalez’s interim tenure and a 2-0 victory at home in early October. The gamesmanship that the Spirit tapped into in the semifinal may be vital to unsettle an increasingly vulnerable Orlando side.

While neither scoreline looks outright lopsided, the more recent result flattered the higher seed. Orlando had a 1.52 to 1.13 edge in terms of expected goals while outshooting the Spirit 17-11. They racked up a higher volume of chances, albeit in less dangerous areas (on average) per attempt. Their two goals were far from emphatic, too, with Marta opening with a penalty kick and Tara McKeown gifting Orlando an own goal.

It was enough to cap off the Pride’s quest to win the NWSL Shield, which they clinched in the process. Nevertheless, it was a performance from which Washington can take more encouraging cues ahead of this one-off clash.

As the tables of each team’s performance metrics drive home, these are two very evenly matched opponents. Both have overcome hardships to get to the final. Both have game-breaking star attackers and a deep roster of players doing more thankless tasks behind them. Whichever side comes out on top this weekend will be a worthy champion, whether it’s the Spirit taking home its second NWSL title or the Pride securing its first.

This article originally appeared in The Athletic.

Orlando Pride, Washington Spirit, Soccer, NWSL

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