Gotham FC dumps KC Current; Spirit advance

The NWSL's quarterfinals blitz is over. Have you caught your breath? In less than 48 hours this weekend, the league that practically trademarked chaos outdid itself with two stoppage-time equalizers, three extra-time matches -- and one that progressed to a penalty shootout -- and an upset of arguably the best team in league history.

It was like the telenovela that is the NWSL crammed a marathon of new episodes into one binge-worthy weekend.

Who's left standing? Not the No. 1 seed Kansas City Current, who smashed NWSL records for points (65), wins (21) and goals allowed (just 13). Instead, the semifinalists are the last four league champions: the Orlando Pride, NJ/NY Gotham FC, Portland Thorns and Washington Spirit.

NWSL SEMIFINALS:
- (2) Washington Spirit vs. (5) Portland Thorns, Nov. 15, noon ET
- (4) Orlando Pride vs. (8) Gotham FC, Nov. 16, 3 p.m. ET

Here's how we got here.

Down go the favorites

(1) Kansas City Current 1, (8) NJ/NY Gotham FC 2 (AET)

The Kansas City Current are the deepest team in the NWSL, but as head coach Vlatko Andonovski lamented after his team's loss on Sunday, "the game is totally different" when they're missing MVP and two-time Golden Boot winner Temwa Chawinga and breakout forward Michelle Cooper, and they only have "half of Bia" Zaneratto due to a sprained MCL.

The weight of Chawinga's absence specifically was best illustrated in the 29th minute, when the Current enjoyed one of the few transition moments on which they typically feast.

Debinha beat two defenders and played Nichelle Prince in behind for a 1-v-1 with Gotham goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger, but Prince shot at a savable height for Berger and then fired the rebound off the German goalkeeper. Chawinga has been automatic and inevitable in those situations, and her very presence creates those opportunities. However, those opportunities were few and far between on Sunday.

Gotham, led at the back by veteran Emily Sonnett, was compact defensively and controlled the ball. Kansas City is always happy to concede possession and strike on the counterattack, but Gotham kept the game in front of them and benefitted from their opponent's absence. The threat behind never materialized for Kansas City.

Andonovski said "it was a game of margins," while Gotham head coach Juan Carlos Amoros said they "showed the best version of ourselves." Both of those things are true. Gotham has been hot and cold this season, but they were never going to repeat their pedestrian performance of the week prior in North Carolina that cursed them with the No. 8 seed.

Kansas City was a shadow of itself on Sunday. Their defense, which was practically impenetrable in the regular season, made some rare but costly mistakes, including when center-back and potential NWSL Defender of the Year Kayla Sharples stepped too aggressively to a ball and got beat by Jaedyn Shaw for Gotham's opening goal in the 68th minute.

Kansas City's attack too often sputtered in the windchill and temperatures below freezing. Current winger Ellie Wheeler's stoppage-time equalizer to extend the game was surprising given how Kansas City struggled to create opportunities. Ultimately, Gotham forward Katie Stengel struck a 121st-minute winner nearly perfectly, and Gotham is moving on. Gotham also advanced without Esther González (hip), who scored 13 goals this season, two fewer than Chawinga.

This wasn't quite David beating Goliath -- Gotham is only two years removed from a championship, had one of the best teams last year, and won the first Concacaf title earlier this year -- but there is no getting around that this is a major disappointment and a failure for Kansas City.

The champs are still here

(4) Orlando Pride 2, (5) Seattle Reign FC 0

Any other savvy veteran player would have done the thing they are told to do when leading in the final moments of a game: Run to the corner, keep the ball and kill the clock. But Marta, the six-time world player of the year and greatest ever, isn't just any player.

So, when the Orlando Pride captain picked up the ball in her own half with her team leading the Seattle Reign 1-0 and the allotted five minutes of stoppage time already passed, she ran, and ran ... and some 75 yards later, after she beat two defenders her junior and drifted near the corner, she defied conventional wisdom and turned her body inward to run toward goal.

Marta hates kicking the ball to nobody, she later admitted. Instead, the Brazil star went for the step-over and Sam Meza, the third recovering defender, fouled her in the box. Luana, stepped up and buried the penalty, and the defending NWSL champions sealed arguably their best performance of the year to advance to the semifinal.

As if Marta hadn't entertained us enough with the encore to last year's tantalizing semifinal goal -- or with her dramatic protests caught in up-close, dizzying fashion by the new referee body camera -- she followed up after the game with a soulful rant about how people "talk so much s---" about the champions, and it motivates her.

Who disrespected them, and how? Or, more likely, do the Pride feel forgotten in the shadow of the Kansas City Current's historic season? Pay no mind. The Pride looked like their 2024 selves, the team that started last season unbeaten through 23 games and won the double.

Marta's Benjamin Button-esque season was one of the many catalysts of that run last year, but the Pride won the Shield and Championship last year behind peak performances across the roster from several role players. Those performances have returned in this recent run of success, including in Friday's quarterfinal win over Seattle. Haley McCutcheon, hereby known as "McClutcheon" for her playoff goals, scored the game-winning goal for Orlando on Friday. Emily Sams played shutdown 1-v-1 defense. Jacqueline Ovalle, new to this whole NWSL playoff drama as a then-world-record transfer in August, applied the sauce and served crosses into dangerous areas.

Missing still is injured star Barbra Banda, but the Pride might have momentum on their side.

Spirit bent, not (totally) broken

(2) Washington Spirit 1, (7) Racing Louisville FC 1
(AET; Spirit advance 3-1 in penalty shootout)

Is the very sight of Washington Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury intimidating to opponents in a penalty shootout? "What do you think?" Spirit head coach Adrian Gonzalez asked after his team survived and advanced against a plucky Louisville team, drawing a laugh from the crowded press room.

Kingsbury saved two penalties and Racing Louisville missed another on Saturday in the shootout. Racing's penalties were collectively poor, perhaps a sign of the pressure finally getting to a team playing its first playoff game in front of a raucous, partisan crowd after taking the game to the brink.

But this wasn't Kingsbury's first rodeo. She saved all three penalties she faced in last year's semifinal shootout to help the Spirit advance.

Washington needed her, too, on Saturday as star forward Trinity Rodman watched from the bench due to a recent MCL sprain, fullback Gabby Carle left the game with a hamstring injury, and emerging USWNT center-back Tara McKeown exited in extra time with an ankle injury that had her on crutches in the tunnel afterward.

Rosemonde Kouassi and Gift Monday carried the offensive load for Washington, and the Spirit did just about everything right -- staying compact, winning second balls, limiting transition moments to hopeful long balls -- until they didn't. Louisville forward Kayla Fischer scored a scrappy, deflating stoppage-time equalizer on a long ball over the top, and teammate Emma Sears within a whisker of a game-winner a few moments later.

There was palpable relief in the briefly subdued crowd after that miss, but the noise quickly returned, and the Spirit eventually prevailed. As cliché as it may sound, Washington's experience shone through on Saturday as a team that came within arm's reach of a championship last year. The Spirit managed the game even as fate turned its back on them ever so briefly.

"If I'm honest with you, I think that [mental aspect] is more important than the tactics for me," Gonzalez said, adding that he and the players all work with sports psychologists. Their work includes mental preparation for penalties.

Center-back and England international Esme Morgan embodied the Spirit's joyful resolve. She buried her spot kick, the Spirit's second of the shootout, and emphatically pumped her fists to the crowd. A few moments later, after Kingsbury's second save clinched a semifinal berth, Morgan was in the stands leading a chant and waving a supporter's flag.

The Spirit continue to do things the hard way in the playoffs: They needed extra time or penalty kicks twice last year and twice in their run to a 2021 NWSL Championship. "It's a crazy league," Morgan said after Saturday's match. "You can't switch off for one second, so we'll learn from it."

Is Washington healthy enough to win it all? That same question looms this week.

Here come the Thorns!

(3) Portland Thorns FC 1, (6) San Diego Wave FC 0 (AET)

The Thorns were the third of four quarterfinal winners to state that they were counted out and written off by the wider public. And while the trend is odd and borderline ludicrous at a macro level, Portland makes the most valid point.

They began this season in eerily similar fashion to 2024: with a humbling loss in Kansas City followed by unsteady results. The Thorns' only win in their first five games was a 1-0 result over the (especially at the time) lowly Utah Royals. But things began to click when the calendar flipped to September, and Portland has lost only twice in nine games since including Sunday's quarterfinal victory over San Diego. The midfield triangle of Sam Coffey, Olivia Moultrie and Jessie Fleming has driven that success, and perhaps eased the sting of the team trading fan-favorite Hina Sugita in October.

Guess who combined to create their lone goal on Sunday? That's right -- and Moultrie started the play by forcing the turnover before delivering the cross to the back post on a platter for Reilyn Turner.

What is so different about this Thorns team now? Eight of the 11 starters on Sunday were the same as that opening day loss in Kansas City. How has a Thorns team that lost multiple starters to injury in preseason, played without star Sophia Wilson (maternity leave), and wobbled into the summer break, outlasted that steamrolling Current team?

"That takes time to build," said Thorns head coach Rob Gale on Sunday. "You don't wave a magic wand from the stands and suddenly it all comes together. It's a turnover of the group dealing with adversity. All of that, it takes time. But they've stuck together throughout, and any time it got a little dicey or we had a bad result, we rebounded.

"The bounceback-ability of this team has been absolutely outstanding all season long. But it takes time. No big cellies; we ain't done yet."

Portland has the most championships (three) in NWSL history, the most recent coming in 2022. It is the NWSL's most storied franchise, a place that World Cup champions and world-leading goal-scorers have called home. This rendition of the Thorns lacks the relative star power and dominance of those yesteryear teams, but Coffey and Moultrie are two of the holdovers from that 2022 squad.

Maybe this Thorns team was written off in the summer. Maybe we've all been too distracted by Kansas City, and we have failed to recognize other brewing successes.

Portland will be the underdog again in the semifinals, but with so many health questions surrounding Washington, and the playoffs blown open, what would be the Thorns' most unlikely title to date is within reach.