SAN JOS\u00c9\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Rose Lavelle scored in the 80th minute and eighth-seeded Gotham FC beat the Washington Spirit 1-0 on Saturday night to win their second National Women\u2019s Soccer League championship.<\/p>\n
Second-half substitute Bruninha drove into the box on the left wing and sent the ball across to Lavelle, whose left-footed shot sailed past Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury into the bottom corner of the net.<\/p>\n
It is the first NWSL championship for Lavelle, who scored in the 2023 final playing for the Seattle Reign against Gotham in a 2-1 loss.<\/p>\n
After a strong opening 10 minutes of the match for Gotham, with three shots from Jaedyn Shaw, the final began to mature into a tense affair.<\/p>\n
There were few chances and the best of the first half came when Spirit midfielder Hal Hershfelt perfectly timed a slide tackle and cleaned out Midge Purce with the follow-through.<\/p>\n
Early in the second half, Trinity Rodman was brought off the Spirit bench for Sofia Cantore, bringing the crowd to its feet. The U.S. women\u2019s team star was on a minutes restriction after suffering a knee sprain in October.<\/p>\n
Even with Rodman, the Spirit continued to struggle to create chances. They had marginally more control of the ball, 53%, but were outshot by Gotham 12-6 and finished the game without a shot on target. Rodman had zero chances created.<\/p>\n
The second-seeded Spirit (14-6-8) suffered a second consecutive defeat in the NWSL final, having lost last year to the Orlando Pride. The Spirit reached this final by overcoming Racing Louisville 3-1 in a penalty shootout in the quarterfinals and then beating the Portland Thorns 2-0 in the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Gotham (11-8-9) defied the odds to make the final, going on the road twice to defeat the top-seeded Kansas City Current 2-1 in the quarterfinals and the defending champion Pride 1-0.<\/p>\n
Gotham are the first eighth seed to win the championship. In 2023, when there were only six playoff spots, Gotham became the first sixth seed to lift the trophy.<\/p>\n
Coach Juan Carlos Amoros has seven playoff wins in his career and two championships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOS\u00c9\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Rose Lavelle scored in the 80th minute and eighth-seeded Gotham FC beat the Washington Spirit 1-0 on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[39619,4472,39618,4794,11153,39615,35908,48,52,51,7036,39617,47,50,49,39620,39363,39621,29012,39616,558],"class_list":["post-66526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-80th-minute","tag-ball","tag-few-chance","tag-final","tag-first-half","tag-gotham","tag-gotham-fc","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-last-year","tag-left-footed-shot","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-orlando-pride","tag-rose-lavelle","tag-second-nwsl-championship","tag-spirit","tag-trinity-rodman","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66526","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=66526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}