Soccer

Third place and some records are up for grabs in the final week of the NWSL season

With the Shield locked up and the four playoff teams already decided, the final weekend of the regular season is one of possible postseason previews and a last chance for some NWSL records.

by Lauren Barker

Sep 29, 2017, 4:32 PM UTC

2017 Tournament Of Nations - Brazil v Australia

Photo by Harry How/Getty Images

On Wednesday, North Carolina officially clinched the 2017 NWSL Shield. The win, a 4-0 trouncing of Houston, maybe gave some small comfort to North Carolina to be able to lock the thing up and know that going into the final weekend, at least one piece of hardware was already secured.

But it also took away a huge chunk of the drama that would have otherwise played out this weekend. And who doesn’t love some final-day-of-the-season stuff? Paul Riley, and Lynn Williams, and Sam Mewis, and the whole of Houston’s defense, apparently.

The Courage’s midweek win, in addition to securing the top spot on the table for the team formerly known as the Flash, also cemented Portland’s place as the season’s second-place team. For North Carolina, it’s the best season the team has had since it last won the Shield, as Western NY, in 2013.

That year, the Thorns beat the Flash in the championship game to claim the NWSL’s inaugural title. From 2013 until last season, Western NY failed to even make it to the playoffs, finishing seventh in both 2014 and 2015. And though last year’s playoff run may have ended with a trophy, it started with the team finally making its return to the postseason, but as the fourth-place team.

Portland’s trip to the postseason is the team’s second in as many seasons. The Thorns, in fact, have failed to qualify for the playoffs just once in their five-year history, and that was in 2015, and just all part of Paul Riley’s five-year plan for the team, man. Otherwise, Portland has consistently been one of the league’s best teams, and though finishing second on the table is a step down from last year’s Shield win, it still means a home playoff game and maybe a chance to become only the second team to win two NWSL titles.

With North Carolina and Portland having already been determined as playoff hosts, and now with each of their places on the table officially secured, this weekend’s games have mostly become sort-of-accidental possible postseason previews.

Thanks to the NWSL’s 1 vs. 4, 2 vs. 3 playoff format, if the season ended today, or if there’s pretty much any scenario that’s not Orlando winning and Chicago losing on Saturday, the semifinals would be North Carolina vs. Orlando, in North Carolina, and Portland vs. Chicago, in Portland, next weekend. And both of these also happen to be the exact games that are taking place this weekend. Kind of like a practice run, except that for one half of each of those matchups, it still kind of counts for something.

Officially, Chicago and Orlando could still swap places on the table. The third-place Red Stars have a two-point lead on the fourth-place Pride though, so it would take a Chicago loss and an Orlando win to make that happen. Which, given that the Red Stars have already lost to Portland twice this season and Orlando did beat North Carolina in the two meetings between the two, isn’t entirely impossible.

Still, almost everything playoff-wise has already been determined, and with all the top four teams playing each other, there’s not even a chance for someone further down the table to play spoiler and go out on a high in the season finale. Mostly, for the six teams not going to the postseason, the storylines now are about small victories.

Washington and Boston, for example, head into this weekend tied on points. The Spirit has had, from the very beginning, a completely miserable season, doing little to replace all the players lost in the offseason and then touting the arrival of Mallory Pugh as some kind of victory that in real life was like whatever that Band-Aid on a bullet hole saying is.

Now Washington is at the bottom of the table, and between the Spirit and a Breakers team for which the season wasn’t supposed to go this way, all that’s left is deciding who will finish as the league’s worst team and who was just terrible and then also messed up even getting the No. 1 pick next season.

Beyond Boston and Washington, there’s Houston, a team that will, no matter what happens against Kansas City on Sunday, finish in eighth, capping off another season in which the Dash — now in its fourth year in the NWSL — spent large chunks of time playing like they were still an expansion team in its first season.

The next three teams — Kansas City, Sky Blue, and Seattle — are separated by only a point, meaning fifth through seventh places are still up for grabs, which is disappointing for everyone, because wherever any of them finish, each will still be without a postseason berth.

Kansas City, once one of the league’s great teams, looked like it was on its way back to at least some of that former glory. That only lasted for approximately the first 90 minutes of this season, though, and then it all fell apart, and like when Humpty Dumpty went off that wall, Vlatko and Becky and Sydney Leroux couldn’t put A-Rod or Kansas City’s season back together again.

Seattle’s mid-table finish is perhaps the most mysterious, because even without Kim Little, the Reign were never particularly bad. Seattle, in fact, started the season strong, but then the second half happened, and since July 22, when the Reign used up most of the rest of their allotment of goals for the season in a wild 5-4 win over Sky Blue, they’ve won just twice.

Sky Blue’s story is perhaps the most interesting of the three, because the final week still brings a chance for Sam Kerr to break Little’s single-season scoring record. Kerr’s been stuck on 16 goals for a few weeks now, but with Sky Blue playing the Breakers on Saturday and without much else to play for, why not play the “get the ball to Sam” game — I’m thinking the way the U.S. did against South Korea when Abby Wambach was breaking Mia Hamm’s international goals record — to at least finish the season on a high note.

Beyond figuring out where Chicago and Orlando will finish, there is one other relatively small piece of business for the top four, and it’s that North Carolina has a chance to set the record for wins in a season. Seattle currently holds the record, with 16 wins in the 2014 season, and with a game to play, North Carolina’s already equaled that.

Otherwise, this weekend’s games will either serve as an opportunity for fans to get one last chance to watch their teams play, to say goodbye to seasons that started off hopeful and then went wrong, or to strategize and lament and armchair quarterback about what worked and what didn’t when we do this all again next weekend.

All times Eastern