The San Diego Wave beat Bay FC 1-0 in the regular-season finale Sunday afternoon to secure second place in the NWSL, the No. 2 seed in the eight-team playoffs and a spot in the Concacaf W Champions Cup next year.<\/p>\n
What it might not guarantee, however, is a semifinal at Snapdragon Stadium should they beat the Utah Royals there in Friday night\u2019s quarterfinal (7 p.m., Prime Video) because of pre-determined TV slots and a San Diego State football game.<\/p>\n
Coach Jonas Eidevall didn\u2019t want to discuss the scheduling situation after a ninth-minute goal by rookie defender Mimi Van Zanten was enough for the club\u2019s record 18th win of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t paid any attention to that,\u201d Eidevall said. \u201cMy focus and the team\u2019s focus is to perform and do the best at that. We know that this top two placement gives us the possibility of playing two (playoff) games at home if we qualify for the semifinals, but first of all we need to qualify for the semifinals and put all our focus on Friday night\u2019s game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked when a semifinal site and date might be announced, Eidevall said: \u201cI have a headache to prepare for the game here on Friday. It seems like someone else needs to figure out the other parts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked for further clarification via email, a club spokesperson said they would reply Monday \u201cwith any updates we\u2019re able to share.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem is this: While many NWSL games are available on streaming sites that aren\u2019t wed to specific time slots, both semifinals are on network TV at pre-set dates and times because of other programming obligations.<\/p>\n
One semifinal is Saturday, Nov. 14, on CBS at 9 a.m. PST. The other is Sunday on ABC at noon PST.<\/p>\n
The higher seeds earn the right to host the semis, but both have scheduling conflicts in their home stadiums on Nov. 14.<\/p>\n
Top-seeded NJ\/NY Gotham FC plays at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, N.J., where MLS club New York Red Bulls have an international friendly scheduled that night against Mexico\u2019s Club Am\u00e9rica. And Snapdragon Stadium has a San Diego State football game against Utah State at 6:30 p.m. (and playing earlier that day likely doesn\u2019t provide enough time to re-line the field for football).<\/p>\n
Only one of them can play Sunday, and typically the top seed would get preference.<\/p>\n
That could force the Wave to seek another venue or grant the home semifinal to the worse seed. USD\u2019s Torero Stadium, where they played their inaugural season in 2022, seats only about 5,000 and may not be suitable for a CBS national telecast.<\/p>\n
The NWSL posted quarterfinal matchups on its website but merely said: \u201cThe semifinals, set for November 14-15, will air across CBS and ABC, with each partner carrying one contest.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NWSL final will be played Nov. 21 at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., on CBS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Diego Wave beat Bay FC 1-0 in the regular-season finale Sunday afternoon to secure second place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,74,76,75,1083,127,98683],"class_list":["post-515644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-wave-fc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}