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Jeff Kassoff
San Jose, California — Week Starting Saturday nwsl The future of the Championship was in crisis washington spirit Ahead trinity rodmanAnd the league is unable to retain its biggest stars due to salary cap limitations.
But as the final minutes ticked away at PayPal Park on Saturday, Gotham FC midfielder Rose Lavelle He was the star of the moment, the player who found that “magic”, as head coach Juan Carlos Amoros had said the day before, 1-0 Victory over Washington.
The brilliance in those moments led Gotham to its second championship in three seasons via another unexpected playoff run.
Lavelle’s trademark left foot fired a shot into the net in the 80th minute in one of the rare moments of transition in a match that was mostly a midfield stalemate. Gotham’s win completed a storybook playoff run and left the steady, consistent Spirit as runners-up for the second consecutive year.
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Gotham’s championship win symbolizes knockout football and the right time to survive and advance. Gotham did just that during these playoffs, defeating them a record-setting number of times. kansas city current in the final seconds of extra time before defeating the defending champions orlando pride In stoppage time of his only shot on goal in that semi-final.
On Saturday, a series of unfortunate events affect the soul and benefit of Gotham. Moments before Lavelle’s goal, the Spirit midfielder Hal Hershfeldt He went down with an injury and Washington played with one player for several minutes while Hershfeldt received treatment on the sideline. He eventually returned to the field after limping back to the 11 as head coach Adrián González prepared a substitute, but the match continued and Gotham became the fullback. bruninha Broke down the left and delivered a cutback cross to Lavelle 18 yards into midfield, which Hershfeldt had otherwise commanded throughout the match.
Hershfeldt and Croix Bethune Patrolled the midfield for Washington, but Lavelle, Jadyn ShawAnd Jailyn Howell Canceled the Spirit’s attempt to control the central areas. Gotham was neither flashy nor spectacular, but once again they were successful. It wasn’t luck, and in fact it wasn’t really magic – not in the abstract way like Hocus Pocus.
The “underdog” label was always superficial for this Gotham team. This is a team that won the CONCACAF title earlier this year, a team that finished top of the league a year ago, a team loaded with stars, from Lavelle to Shaw and esther gonzalez,
But this is also a team that has performed very poorly throughout the year, which is why it had to work hard for this title.
Gotham’s success is also ironic: a team that Amoros built to be interchangeable and fluid was dragged down in the playoffs largely by its stars.
Shaw recorded a goal and an assist in the quarterfinal win over top-seeded Current, followed by the game winner over 2024 champion Orlando Pride in the semifinals. It was Lavelle’s left foot that made the difference on Saturday.
With two championships and a CONCACAF crown in three years, Gotham have mastered the art of knockout football.
And that’s the beauty of the NWSL and the playoff system, the unexpected “superpower” that commissioner Jessica Berman and officials rave about. No one can be fooled into thinking that Gotham was the best team during the NWSL season. Kansas City set a record for points and wins, capturing the Shield with 21 points.
But Gotham earned their trophy by defeating a Kansas City team that was the previous year’s champion team.
The biggest story in the NWSL was and still is Rodman and her future. However, Rodman was mostly a non-factor for the more than 30 minutes he played off the bench on Saturday due to limitations from an MCL sprain suffered last month. For the second year in a row, the USWNT star played through pain in the NWSL Championship loss.
After the match, she sat on the bench briefly before slowly walking onto the court to hug her boyfriend, tennis star Ben Shelton. It is unknown whether this was Rodman’s last outing in an NWSL stadium in the near future.
However, Saturday was all about the Gotham team that continued to find a way to win throughout November, even if it lost. This is the uncertainty of sports and especially the NWSL at its finest.
Sports – and championships – are about moments. They are moments of greatness for one team and moments of bad luck for the other team. Gotham spent its time going through “high highs and low lows,” as Lavelle described it on Friday.
A day later, a moment of genius from Lavelle provided the ultimate climax.
