After a wide-ranging weekend of NWSL quarterfinals, the focus should be on who will book a place in the championship match on Nov. 21 in Washington, D.C.
Will the Utah Royals’ tactical precision give them an edge over the domineering Washington Spirit? After suffering an upset in last year’s quarterfinal against Gotham FC, can the Kansas City Current rewrite their story?
Advertisement
Questions like that should be driving the NWSL buzz as another year of expansion, broken records and a peculiar number of red cards bounds toward its climax. These discussions should light up group chats and warrant another round of something mulled and spiced, interspersed with watch party planning and prediction tinkering.
Instead, the presiding topics have been about poor field quality, small stadiums, unfair compromises and the logistical labyrinth that has been the NWSL’s efforts to secure suitable venues for two of its biggest teams ahead of their semifinal matches.
Thanks to favorable negotiations and a willing sponsor, the No. 3 Spirit get to play the Royals at Audi Field. Their home stadium (which is owned by D.C. United in Major League Soccer) was initially scheduled to host an NCAA Division III college football game, which would have required the Spirit to relocate their playoff match to Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., home of the Washington Commanders.
Not ideal for a fanbase behind the nickname “Rowdy Audi”.
Advertisement
Still, no team is more hard done by this ordeal than Gotham FC, the No. 1 team in the league. They have already endured two matches on a home field so gnarled that they incurred a $10,000 fine for poor conditions. Like the Spirit, Gotham are not primary tenants at Sports Illustrated Stadium and are thus not in control of maintaining the pitch. On Monday, the league announced Gotham’s semifinal would kick off at the 5,000-capacity Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island in Manhattan, 25 miles, an hour and 13 minutes away from Harrison on public transit and one-fifth the size of their New Jersey home.
Last week, the excitement of the NWSL playoffs were sullied by the early kickoff times. This week, it’s the location of the games. At the heart of both issues is a harsh reality that defines the relationship between most NWSL teams and their home venues, and that of women’s relationship to male counterparts historically across many cultures: mercy.
Gotham deserves better
Gotham has accomplished a lot this year.
Advertisement
They are defending champions and won their first NWSL Shield this season. They edged out tennis star Coco Gauff’s 2023 U.S. Open campaign to break an attendance record for women’s sporting events in NYC in the middle of the men’s World Cup this summer. They kept 15 clean sheets and conceded the fewest goals of any other team in the NWSL, despite dealing with a slew of injuries to their backline. Gotham’s system is so well-oiled that head coach Juan Carlos Amorós was able to take five weeks’ parental leave, placing assistant-turned-interim head coach Shaun Harris in charge. The team remained unbeaten when Amorós returned to the office. On Monday, he earned his third Coach of the Year nomination in the last four years.
Gotham’s roster is a spoil of world-class talent. Some of those same decorated players have been able to indulge in the cauldron of culture that is NYC, making cameos on Broadway and attending New York Fashion Week shows.
Two of the last three NWSL Rookie of the Year awards have been awarded to Gotham players, in line with the number of championships they have won in the same period.
Those are just the team’s accolades over the past few years. Zoom further out and consider how far they have come from their days as Sky Blue FC. Their growth as a club becomes even more impressive. The team had won only a single game in its entire season nine years ago, and now many would argue that they are in dynastic territory.
Advertisement
But we shouldn’t get too hung up on meritocracy; any team that reaches the postseason in one of the most competitive leagues in the world should be able to play in the venue their seed dictates. Gotham FC’s accomplishments — not to mention their ambitions — are so much bigger than a 5,000-capacity stadium. Their supporters deserve the chance to turn their stadium into a fortress that sends chills down the spines of their opponents.
Perhaps the worst part of all of this is that the owners and primary tenants of Sports Illustrated Stadium, New York Red Bulls, could have made this right. Their season ended on Oct. 17, a 10th-place finish in the league’s eastern conference. They scheduled a home friendly for Saturday, Nov. 14 against Mexican side Club América.
That should have allowed Gotham to play at Sports Illustrated on Sunday, one of two broadcast windows the NWSL had for its semifinal, but as Sunday proved, the field conditions needed to be improved first. Only the Red Bulls could approve Gotham’s proposals, but the two could not reach an accord.
Advertisement
Gotham lead owner Carolyn Tisch Blodgett said in a statement Monday that the club had “exhausted every possible avenue before making this decision.” She reiterated that “players deserve a playing surface that meets the standards of a professional semifinal, and our fans deserve the opportunity to support them.”
Red Bulls responded with their own statement saying the field is consistently quality-checked and has passed each of those. The MLS team, which will still play its friendly on Nov. 14, wished the NWSL team good luck.
The veil of disrespect is so thin that it will only motivate Gotham and its fanbase, but the source of that passion should be coming from a sporting place, not a systemic one. Women’s sports hasn’t fully emerged from the shadow of the WNBA Finals debacle in Atlanta — and until teams’ successes are no longer treated as extraordinary events but events to respect and plan around, these shadows will continue to loom.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Gotham FC, NWSL, Women’s Soccer
2026 The Athletic Media Company
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: Sports.yahoo.com
