2023 NWSL Final: A Storybook Ending
A storybook ending for Gotham rewrites the expected script
A match that was a storybook ending for one soccer legend ended with the cruelest of plot twists for another.
For both Gotham defender Ali Krieger and Reign forward Megan Rapinoe, Saturday’s National Women’s Soccer League championship was built up as a chance to celebrate their legacies in a league they’d helped grow.
There was plenty of talk of “scripts” and storybook endings leading up to the final in San Diego.
Though they’ve been World Cup champions with the United States, both Krieger and Rapinoe had yet to earn an NWSL title in their 11 seasons in the league. Having both announced their pending retirements, they entered Saturday’s match knowing only one could retire as an NWSL champion.
“(Rapinoe and I) were joking around. We're like, ‘We are really dragging out our NWSL experience to the max, like the very last moment,’” Krieger said ahead of Saturday’s match. “I think we're just really proud of each other, to be honest. So what it boils down to is that — and obviously we both want to win.”
Yet, the story took an unexpected turn. Two minutes into the final, Rapinoe went down with a non-contact injury, holding her leg. As she stood up and gingerly limped off the field with the help of training staff, the crowd offered a standing ovation, and Krieger offered a hug.
“I was gutted,” Krieger said. “You want the best for your best friends, and there was such a build-up to this game. You wanted both of us to end with the final whistle.”
Yet, Rapinoe still delivered an all-time quote to cap off her club career.
“I mean, f—ing yeeted my Achilles in the sixth minute in my last game ever in the literal championship game,” said Rapinoe, wearing a walking boot after the match. “I guess I just rode it until the wheels came right off.”
It’s the cruelty of sports: that Krieger and Rapinoe couldn’t both lift an NWSL trophy in their final season. With two first-half goals assisted by championship MVP Midge Purce, NY/NJ Gotham FC would jump ahead early and defend its 2-1 lead — despite a hectic second-half stoppage time.
Gotham goalkeeper Mandy Haught was sent off with a 97th-minute red card after she handled the ball outside the box. Midfielder Nealy Martin stepped into goal since Gotham had no subs remaining.
“You write a script of a movie and it doesn't happen,” Gotham head coach Juan Carlos Amorós said. “It was unbelievable. I saw Nealy go in goal and (thought), you know what, they are not scoring.”
Storybook, or unscriptable — There was plenty of both in Saturday’s action in front of a championship-record crowd of 25,011 fans.
Storybook: A team of champions goes “worst to first,” wins one for the title-less club
As the playoffs’ sixth and final seed, Gotham completed its historic “worst to first” transformation, having finished at the bottom of the table in 2022 with an NWSL-record 12-game losing streak.
“You really have to have those tough conversations, to listen, like ‘This is what needs to improve,’ and then (the club has) to be willing to, you know, spend the money and and time and the energy to make it right,” said Krieger.
This title was the first for the club that spent most of its NWSL history as “Sky Blue FC” before a rebrand. Sky Blue spent a nine-year stretch only making the playoffs once and, instead, making headlines for the wrong reasons: poor facilities and player treatment.
In 2021, former Sky Blue player Yael Averbuch stepped into the general manager role at Gotham, then brought on Amorós as head coach in 2022. Amorós — formerly coaching at the Houston Dash, Real Betis Féminas and Tottenham — earned Coach of the Year for leading Gotham’s turnaround.
With a roster of former NWSL champions and young talent — like Rookie of the Year outside back Jenna Nighswonger — the club built a culture of “team comes first” and “we have each other's backs,” said veteran goalkeeper Michelle Betos. The players are “manically competitive” but also “good people,” Betos said.
“Juan and the coaching staff came in and just created a culture and an identity for us to buy into,” Williams said. With a Spanish coaching staff and players from Spain, Brazil and Japan, “we used to go into meetings and there would be closed captions on on the video presentations.”
“It might seem small,” said Williams, “but that is so accommodating for every single person. That is creating an environment of learning, and having that, it allows everybody to be a little bit more comfortable into buying into that identity.”
Spanish World-Cup-winning striker Esther González headed in the game-winning goal off a first-half stoppage-time corner delivered by Purce. Purce, with another assist on Williams’ 24th-minute goal to open the scoring, earned championship MVP honors after battling through a season limited by a quad injury.
She beat three players 1v1 — one with a nutmeg — to serve up the cross to Williams.
“Everyone (on the team) went through something that made them have self-doubt, that knocked them down, knocked them off,” Purce said. “It was honestly beautiful to see the way that our locker room picked everyone back up, and people just grabbed each other by their bootstraps.”
Unscripted: Unexpected heroics save Gotham’s championship hopes
Twenty-five-year-old goalkeeper Mandy Haught had one NWSL appearance prior to this season. She wasn’t Gotham’s starting keeper in March. That was veteran keeper Abby Smith, who conceeded just 15 goals in 15 games to start the season for Gotham.
But a lower leg injury sidelined Smith for the remainder of the year. Haught earned the starting position, posting four shutouts in the remaining 10 games of Gotham’s season and making a game-saving breakaway stop on NWSL Golden Boot winner Sophia Smith in Gotham’s 1-0 extratime semifinal win in Portland.
In Saturday’s championship, Haught came up clutch again with a close-range 60th-minute save on OL Reign’s Veronica Latsko to preserve Gotham’s 2-1 lead. Haught dove to her left, parrying the ball wide on a near-post shot from the forward who had scored game winners in both the OL Reign’s quarter and semifinals.
“I had a feeling she was going to open up her hips, and I felt right,” Haught said.
An unexpected goalkeeper saw out the final minutes of the match for Gotham. As Reign forward Elyse Bennett ran onto a ball sent over the Gotham backline, Haught stepped to the edge of the eighteen to knock the bouncing ball away. VAR ruled Haught’s action a handball outside the box — and a red card, for denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity.
Midfielder Nealy Martin donned gloves and a keeper kit for Gotham since the eventual champions were out of substitutions. Oddly enough, that actually Martin’s second time in goal for Gotham this season. She stepped between the pipes after Smith’s late game injury, also at Snapdragon Stadium.
“Duty calls. I'm ready at any time to play whatever the team asks me to do,” Martin said. “I actually get excited when I'm in there. I'm like, ‘I'm going to make a sick save, and it's going to be awesome.”
Rose Lavelle — who scored the Reign’s only goal of the match in the 29th minute— had her ensuing free kick deflected.
“(Haught) made a good decision in a key moment,” Amorós said. He added that Haught, after the foul, apologized. “Mandy, I think you won us the game,” he replied.
Storybook: Shim, Farrelly earn their comeback championship
Mana Shim and Sinnead Farrelly changed the NWSL forever, and on Saturday, they won a league title reunited as teammates.
Shim and Farrelly both spoke out about alleged emotional abuse and sexual misconduct in the Thorns organization, which in part led to 2021’s league-wide reckoning about protecting players from abusive coaches.
Farrelly, who had been retired since 2016, signed a one-year deal with Gotham at the start of the 2023 season. Shim had originally retired in 2018 and was now the chairperson of U.S. Soccer’s Participant Safety Taskforce. She signed in June as a short-term injury replacement player, then stayed on with the squad.
“After all the national team players came back (from the World Cup), I had a talk with the coaches, and they asked me I wanted to stay on,” Shim said. “I called my family and my partner and they're like, ‘It's going to be hard doing two jobs, do you think you can do it?’ and I was already really drained. But I was like, ‘I think this team is going to win the championship, and I'll be so sad if I'm not on the team. They're going to win, so I have to stay.’”
Alongside several former Thorns teammates — Long, Zerboni, goalkeeper Michelle Betos — Shim and Farrelly upset Portland in the semifinals and earned an NWSL title with a new club.
“I tried to be really chill last week leading up to the game, but I can't say I wanted anything more than to beat Portland in that game,” Shim said. “As soon as the whistle blew to start the game… I just had so much energy and emotion running through me.”
Unscripted: A loss and early exit for Rapinoe doesn’t dash her NWSL legacy
“You don’t always get perfect endings, but I’ve also had so many perfect endings. Even just thinking back to (the World Cup win in) 2019, that was the most perfect whole script you could ever write, personally,” Rapinoe said.
The 38-year-old U.S. winger retires as a two-time world champion, Olympic gold medalist and Ball d’Or winner. Off the field, Rapinoe has been a vocal advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, racial equality, and gender pay equity.
“For someone to commit 11 seasons of their career — with the career that she's had — to this club that started with nothing, I think says a lot about who she is,” OL Reign head coach Laura Harvey said. “Throughout the years, (it’s) been a consistent pattern that she has stepped up in the biggest moment for this club.”
Rapinoe played all 11 years of her NWSL career with the OL Reign, alongside defender Lauren Barnes and midfielder Jess Fishlock. Besides Portland’s Christine Sinclair, the trio are the only players who have played for the same club in all eleven NWSL seasons.
“For the ‘OGs’ that have played with her for eleven years… I think it's the memories of friendship and family that we've created as well. It's been most important for me and something I'll take away and cherish for the rest of my life,” Barnes said.
Rapinoe and the Reign have won three NWSL shields and now been championship finalists three times. “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride,” has been a recurring motif paired with the Reign. It’s one that, unfortunately, the club won’t shake quite yet.
It’s a not-quite-storybook club ending for Rapinoe, just like her and the United States’ round of 16 exit in the Women’s World Cup this summer.
“(Her injury) seems like a sick joke, but it has just been like such an honor to be able to share the field with her. I wish we could have gotten it done today,” Lavelle said. “But as with everything, she just takes it on the chin and still was our biggest fan out there.”
In 2013, Rapinoe and the Reign played their inaugrual season’s finale in front of 3,855 fans — then, a sold out crowd. For Rapinoe’s final home match, an NWSL-record 34,130 fans attended.
And don’t worry — Rapinoe said she might be hanging up her cleats, but, “You’ll definitely be seeing a lot of me.” She finished her career in typical fashion, with a witty postgame press conference. When asked why she didn’t use a stretcher to get off the field, she said, “I ain’t no punk,” to laughter across the room.
Storybook: Krieger’s final sendoff — with a trophy in hand
At age 39, Krieger played one of her best statistical seasons of professional soccer, earning NWSL Best XI accolades and a nomination for Defender of the Year. As captain, she led Gotham during its ascent up the league standings.
“I’m just so proud of our team, first and foremost, all of the work that we put in, and the coaching staff to set us up for success. And then — I’m proud of myself. Like honestly, I have been through so much this year, and I put everything into obviously my kids, and then my work,” said Krieger. “I am so happy that I could just finish out on top. This is a dream.”
After Krieger hoisted the newly-designed NWSL championship trophy, her teammates hoisted her in a basket catch, tossing her up in the air with a medal around her neck. Number 11 won her first — and last — championship on the 11th day of the 11th month in her 11th season.
“When I think of Krieger, I think of somebody who fully pours her heart and gives to everybody,” Williams said. “If she has 90 percent of her to give, she gives all 90 percent of it. If it's 100 percent, she gives a whole 100 percent effort.”
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More NWSL stories — the almost-too-good-to-be-true and the wholly unexpected — are yet to be written. With two new teams set to enter the league next season and a new record-breaking media rights deal worth $60 million per year, the attention toward the league will only grow as new players become legends in their own right.
“I've been saying it all week, but I'm just like so excited for where the league is,” Rapinoe said. “In so many ways I wish I was coming into the league now, and just the opportunity, where the teams are going and funding and resources and excitement, fanfare all of it.”
With veterans retiring, free agency and an expansion draft, teams might look different next season. But as a whole, the league will be better. That’s the goal, at least.
“This is, you know, part of our legacy and what we've left behind and what is now here for the kids to take and do with it what, what they want,” Rapinoe added. “To not only grow the game and you know, make it the sort of premier league in the world, but also to affect change off the field.”
Photography by Josue Silva
