So close, yet so far for NWSL runners-up Washington Spirit

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A few feet from the field where they’d just suffered a bitter defeat, Washington Spirit players filed through a narrow hallway at CPKC Stadium and tried to process their feelings.

They had just lost 1-0 to the Orlando Pride in the 2024 NWSL Championship, an anticlimactic ending to an otherwise remarkable season for the second-best team in the league. Spirit players were mostly resigned to the result, though there was a hint of incredulous feelings among some — and a natural undertone of frustration.

“I mean, like s—,” Spirit rookie midfielder Hal Hershfelt said, describing her emotional feeling before letting out an ironic laugh. “I think we created an overwhelming amount of chances; we just couldn’t finish.”

One by one, Spirit players — from forward Trinity Rodman to defender Casey Krueger — echoed similar thoughts. They created plenty of looks — 26 shots total, to Orlando’s nine — and mostly contained Barbra Banda, one of the best forwards in the world. But Banda finished the one clear opportunity she had for the game’s lone goal in the 37th minute, and Orlando’s league-best defense locked down the result from there.

“Honestly, I think we made one error and we got punished for it,” Krueger said. “Again, they have world-class players, and they finished, and they deserved to win.”

The paradox of the NWSL Championship was a microcosm of a season in which the margins between the top four teams were paper-thin — and the gap between them and the rest of the league was wider than ever.

Orlando’s historic season consumed most of the league’s attention this year as the Pride turned around their history of futility into arguably the greatest season in league history. They set records for points (60), wins (18) and an unbeaten streak to start the season (23 games).

But the Spirit almost quietly compiled a campaign that would have been good enough to win the NWSL Shield any other season bar one, even matching Orlando’s record of 18 wins. The difference between the teams was only four points, three of which went to the Pride at the end of the season when Orlando clinched the Shield against a Spirit team missing several injured stars.

Washington leaned heavily into the best rookie class since the Western New York Flash drafted a rising crop of USWNT stars in 2015, with NWSL Rookie and Midfielder of the Year Croix Bethune tying the single-season assists record (10) in only 17 games before her season-ending knee injury in August. The Spirit also lost midfielder and captain Andi Sullivan to a torn ACL in that October loss in Orlando, and played most of the fall without starting forward and co-leading scorer Ouleye Sarr. Rodman labored through an ongoing back injury that affected her in Saturday’s final.

Spirit players also only had half a year with their head coach as the club waited for Jonathan Giraldez to finish another European title-winning season at Barcelona.

If Washington could play that well all season and narrowly lose a final under those circumstances, this team’s ceiling is higher yet. Giraldez, a 32-year-old rising star in the coaching game, is still molding the Spirit into a dominant team and will now enter his first offseason to build the roster to his exact liking. Hershfelt and Bethune have already debuted for the United States and were in France for the team’s Olympic gold-medal triumph. Rodman is just coming into her prime as one of the world’s best players.

All of that only speaks to the on-field product being fueled by historic investment. The fact that Washington pried Giraldez away from the world’s best team in the first place is a testament to Spirit owner Michele Kang’s ambition and willingness to spend.

Kang took over as controlling owner of the Spirit in early 2022 for a $35 million valuation — 10 times more than any previous NWSL team sale — with the transaction serving as the catalyst to the rapid investment now sweeping across the league. Angel City FC sold for a valuation of $250m earlier this year. Kang has since invested in infrastructure at the Spirit, in addition to gifting $30m to U.S. Soccer for the organization’s girls and women’s programs.

Speaking to ESPN last week, Kang said she initially thought the Spirit would reach this championship moment sooner, but she conceded that such impatience was the businessperson inside of her still learning the realities of sports. Kang has said numerous times that even a few years ago, she wasn’t even thinking about owning a sports team. Now, she’s hungry for championships.

“I’m a businessperson, so I want quick results,” Kang said last week as she walked the floor between her players at NWSL Championship Media Day. “I must say, it took a little longer than I thought, but I think in the end that’s probably not fair. I think that it takes time to put a roster together, but also the coaching staff and the performance staff, and you just can’t do that overnight. It takes time, and then when they get together there has to be chemistry.”

In the hours after their loss, Spirit players and coaches tried to come to grips with how they could do so much right — both throughout the year and on the night — but walk away empty-handed. Giraldez, normally talkative and detailed despite developing his English in real time since arriving in the U.S., gave his shortest press conference of the year after the loss. He said that it was not the time to discuss the game plan that almost worked, the physicality of the final, nor the success of the Spirit’s season.

Washington’s season was so often marked by an ability to always find a way back late in games. The Spirit equalized late in regulation of their quarterfinal against Bay FC, then won in extra time. They scored in second-half stoppage time of their semifinal against NJ/NY Gotham FC and prevailed in a penalty shootout thanks to three saves by goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury.

Another universal feeling from the Spirit after Saturday’s championship loss was one of self-ownership. Rodman admitted that Orlando’s defense kept her in check. Goalkeeper Kingsbury said she let her team down by failing to make what should have been “a routine save” on Banda’s winning goal, which crept in at her near post. Moments later, defender Esme Morgan, sitting next to Kingsbury in the press conference, refuted her goalkeeper, saying she should have been stronger in her defending against Banda.

“I think we’re such a close unit,” Morgan said. “As a group, we all love each other to absolute pieces and I think that’s probably why it hurts so much more, because we care so much and we want the girls who are moving on next year to have had this moment and been able to win today.

“It hurts that although we can say, well, we’ll go again next year — and I really do believe that we’ll go one better next year — that’s not going to be the case for everyone and that hurts.”

Morgan was alluding to the yearly turnover that is a reality of professional sports, particularly in the NWSL, a league in which, historically, the player and coaching carousels turn quickly. Free agency is open and the winter transfer window looms. Still, the Spirit look like they are built to last as much as any team can be in such a volatile league. Kang keeps throwing money at every aspect of the women’s soccer ecosystem to help it develop, and growing the Spirit is her daily priority. Giraldez is the biggest coaching hire in league history, and his quick success in the NWSL was validation for both him and the league. He has plenty of talent on his roster already and will likely attract top international players to join the developing project.

A championship wasn’t in the cards for Washington this year, despite a feeling of destiny that Kingsbury spoke about earlier in the playoffs. On Saturday, another team of destiny had its own conclusion to write, one it had been working toward for the past two years. The night, just like the season, belonged to the Orlando Pride. Washington’s payoff would have to wait.

As Kingsbury said: “That’s just how finals go sometimes.”