r/AngelCityFC • u/TiredPanini • 12h ago
NWSL League Watch 10/16-18
Match Week 28 10/16-18 (all times Pacific)
What an international break we got! CAF 2028 Olympic qualifiers continued, UEFA 2027 World Cup qualifiers began, while AFC, CONMEBOL, CONCACAF, and the already-qualified UEFA teams had friendlies amongst themselves.
See my international Angels recap to catch up with how our players performed! And now NWSL is soooo back :)
Recap of the previous NWSL match week’s scorelines:
Fri
Orlando 1-2 San Diego
Seattle 0-1 NC
Sat
Louisville 1-1 Utah
KC 5-1 Bay
Portland 2-4 Boston (remember that Wilson hair-pull red card? Feels like a million years ago now)
Sun
Gotham 1-1 ACFC (thank you Taylor Suarez)
Chicago 0-3 Denver
Houston 2-3 Washington (chaos game)
Which games will you be tuning in for? What are your predictions? Starting lineups? Scores, reds, yellows, which players get G+A?
Overall record is W-L-D, y’all know who’s good and who’s in form at this point in the season and you can find the table for standings.
| Home | Away | Field | Date/ Time | Where to watch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston 8-14-5 | Louisville 7-17-3 | Gillette | Fri 5p | Prime | If I were coaching this I would simply start everyone who might be out of contract and everyone who isn’t getting minutes (not Guti tho) just to see what happens. I’m getting Ultimate Chaos Championship vibes from this matchup, especially with Casey Murphy out. |
| Washington 15-8-4 | Gotham 16-4-7 | Audi | Sat 9:30a | CBS / P+ | Washington are bad at home now and Gotham are seriously injured (Bru Shaw Dudley all hurt). So I’m mainly rooting for no more injuries. Secondarily, Gotham is uncatchable for us and I don’t want to play them early in playoffs so I guess I root for them to win. They can clinch the Shield this weekend, while Washington can clinch a playoff spot and home field/top 4 spot. Both would require other results besides this game though. |
| Utah 14-9-4 | KC 13-9-5 | America First 🤢 | Sat 3:30p | ION | Kate del Fava returns from her first senior camp, but Mina Tanaka and Miyabi Moriya were injured and unable to appear for Japan. Utah have been good at home and KC not so good on the road, I’m taking Utah for this one even with the injuries. This is actually a (potentially) playoff-clinching game, as one team can clinch this weekend (pending other results) but NOT both teams. Could be intense! |
| NC 13-11-3 | San Diego 16-8-3 | WakeMed | Sat 4p | NWSL+ | Good matchup! San Diego haven’t clinched home field advantage so they still have something to play for, while NC are still in the hunt for their playoff spot. Ashley Sanchez vs Mimi van Zanten is the 1v1 matchup to watch in this one! |
| Denver 10-9-8 | ACFC 12-8-7 | Centennial | Sat 5:45p | ION | This matchup felt very high stakes the last time the two teams met - it was midweek, they were both hovering right around the playoff line. Now, Denver is playing for their lives with home field, and altitude, advantage. LA had 10 players out for intl break (almost all starters) while Denver had 6 (3 of whom could be rested or play a partial game based on their previous starting lineups). This is not a gimme for LA, but it is a winnable game. Our fate is in our own hands for once, and I think that’s neat. |
| Houston 8-13-6 | Orlando 10-14-3 | Shell Energy | Sun 10a | CBSSN | While Houston were eliminated last time around, Orlando weren’t technically out. However, there are 4 different single-game results that could each eliminate Orlando this weekend, including a loss or draw here. So this is another match just for pride (haha). Let’s see who takes home the moral high ground! Kiki van Zanten had a banger for Jamaica by the way, definitely check it out. |
| Bay 7-15-5 | Portland 12-8-7 | PayPal | Sun 2p | ESPN / ESPN Deportes / ESPN App | Portland can’t clinch or be eliminated this weekend, while Bay is already out. Will they try to play spoiler, or will they experiment in preparation for 2027? Sophia Wilson is suspended for this game, but with Portland’s depth in attack I’m not all that concerned - they still have Hanks, Turner, Weaver, Tordin, Lyles, and Muller which seems more than adequate even with Moultrie’s SEI. However, Thorns’ defense has been regressing (to what the statheads always told me were bad underlying numbers) since basically the summer break. Bay could sneak a few goals in and make this a barn burner! |
| Chicago 5-20-2 | Seattle 12-11-4 | Northwestern Medicine | Sun 4p | Roku Channel | Chicago are legendarily bad, but if they could take some points off Seattle it would help out a bunch of teams above Seattle in the standings. Alozie and Swanson had strong international outings on the Chicago side, as did Fishel and Bugg for Seattle. Let’s see if we get some After Dark energy from our final game of the week. |
Here are this weekend’s clinching/elimination scenarios and a playoff scenario tool from Alison Gale. If you don’t want to input scores, you can do match-outcome-only scenarios here. I also have a database of NWSL players called up for the international window, including some basic counting stats, here. Enjoy, NWSLheads!
Did anyone else notice that the Bay FC logo is now their red color on their blue color instead of white on blue on official NWSL sources but not everywhere? Media/comms/graphics/marketing team should be more insistent about matching it up/rolling it out all at once imo. Also please laugh with me at the resolution of these team logos in the availability report... why is Chicago’s so bad, Bay/Denver/Boston mediocre but fine, and everyone else CRISPY, I’m talking 8K high res?? Whose job is it to maintain this page and why didn’t they ask for better logo assets I’m crying. Zoom in to compare them & it's not even close.
