KC Current completes best regular season in league history

By Brad Ziegler

Kansas City’s hottest sports team doesn’t wear red or blue, they wear teal and they are coming off the best regular season in the history of their league.

The Kansas City Current women’s soccer team, led by second year coach Vlatko Andonovski, completed their record-breaking regular season on Sunday with a 2-1 win over the San Diego Wave FC at CPKC Stadium. The team captured their first NWSL Shield, awarded to the team with the most points during the regular season. Their 65-point total, a sum of three points for every regular season win and one point for every draw, set a new league record, eclipsing the previous record of 60 points set by the Orlando Pride last season.

The Current also set new league records for wins in a season, with a 21-2-3 record, breaking the previous record of 20 wins. During their 2340 minutes of play this season, the team only trailed their opponents for a total of 120 minutes. Their 49 goals scored led the league and their total of only 13 goals allowed was less than half of the number of goals allowed by the second stingiest team.

Kansas City opens the playoffs on Sunday with a quarterfinal match against New York’s Gotham FC, the number eight seed in the playoffs, who finished the regular season with a 9-8-9 record. The Current defeated Gotham FC 2-1 in June in New York but will host them this time at home, where they are undefeated this season. Gotham FC, the 2023 NWSL champion, enters this year’s playoffs with just one win in their last five matches.

After their record-breaking regular season, the Current are the favorite to win the NWSL Championship, but as is the case with several of the playoff teams, they enter the postseason with a few key injuries. Bia Zaneratto had to leave Sunday’s match due to a knee injury, and top scorer Temwa Chawinga hasn’t played for the last couple of weeks due to a right leg injury.

Despite missing the last two matches, Chawinga once again captured the Golden Boot award for scoring the most goals in the league this season. A native of Malawi, Chawinga also won the Golden Boot last season and is a key component to the team’s success. Her status for Sunday’s match has not yet been announced.

Kansas City’s first year goalkeeper Lorena da Silva Liete, a Brazilian who is simply known as Lorena, also captured individual honors for the season, giving up just 13 goals. Lorena led the team’s league-best defense that recorded 16 clean sheets, the sport’s term for shutouts. The Current’s Izzy Rodriguez, a native of Michigan who was drafted by the Current in 2022, tied with San Diego’s Delphine Cascarino to lead the league in assists with six assists each.

As the tournament’s top seed, if the Current wins their quarterfinal match against Gotham FC on Sunday, they will host their semifinal match on November 16 against the winner of the quarterfinal match between last season’s champion, the third seeded Orlando Pride, and the tournament’s fourth seed, the Seattle Reign. The two teams battled to a draw last Sunday in their season finale.

Orlando defeated the Current in the championship semifinals last season 3-2 but finished just 11-7-8 this season. Barbra Banda, the Pride’s top scorer and last season’s Championship MVP, suffered a season-ending hip injury earlier this season, but the Pride were still able to close the season undefeated over their final five matches.

The league championship match is scheduled for November 22 at PayPal Park in San Jose, California. The Current previously played in the championship match in 2022, in just their second season, but fell to the Portland Thorn 2-0.