A thirty-game regular season and weird quarterfinal round has come down to this. Only four teams remain, and they tussle this weekend to find out who will play for the championship.

Despite the NWSL and hostile MLS owners leading to both matches being heavily impacted—Gotham had to move to a 5,000 seat stadium, and the Spirit will play with American football lines on Audi Field—I’m desperately hoping the soccer can win out.

As such, I’ve eaten my healthy portions of crow from the quarterfinal round, brushed my teeth, and decided to risk an even larger helping come Monday. Here are two previews, with predictions, for the semifinal round.

After that I have a bit of news (including a further ranting about the Audi Field situation), a pod, and your woso watchlist for the week, including the NSL Championship, Wolfsburg v. Bayern, Chelsea v. Manchester City, a reason to watch Birmingham City, and midweek UWCL.

Onward to more woso…

If you’ve been broadly aware of college woso but not tuning in, now is a terrific time to lock tf in. This weekend will feature several conference championship games (all mostly on espn+), which will roll right into Selection Monday to set the field for the College Cup.

The conference championships have been fun as hell too. Vanderbilt rose to #1 and had an unbeaten regular season, then yeeted in the quarterfinal round of the SEC tournament by unranked Texas and Ava McDonald (who might not be a Longhorn very long). We’ve had late equalizers, golden goals, pk heroics, and marquee matchups.

We’re living over here. Join us.

by Emma Baccellieri

This whole ordeal enrages me to no end, and is connected to why I wrote this in January. NWSL leadership frequently places their primary product—the soccer that’s played on the pitch—as an afterthought. Because of that, we get situations like commissioner Jessica Berman using the whole entire league to promote a podcaster’s now defunct hydration drink, and now this stadium traveshamockery.

This one has the additional ingredient of DC United ownership combining with poor NWSL leadership to make a turducken of bad decisions. The Spirit themselves are the only reason the team isn’t being completely kicked out of the venue that’s been their permanent home since 2023.

The mess all stems from a lack of foresight leading to inflexibility in the NWSL’s broadcast deal. They are stuck with a 12pm kickoff Saturday, and 3pm Sunday. That’s it and that’s final. If there’s a conflict of any sort, those windows aren’t moving, so it’s up to the team(s) and venue(s) to figure it out—and clearly without assistant from the league.

Then, DC United ownership agreed to schedule a Division III college football game on a date of a semifinal there was a very good chance the Spirit would be in. Even beyond the potential for it to conflict with a Spirit semifinal, it’s a DIII college football game on a soccer pitch one week before the venue will host the NWSL championship. There’s almost no way remnants of lines for American football won’t be visible for the NWSL’s premiere event, and there’s also no way the pitch will be in top shape. It’s all so supremely stupid.

Players and fans deserve so much better.

by Tamerra Griffin

Ok now that that’s done let’s close this segment with some good shit. Well, kinda. This is the correct hire for Orlando and I am ecstatic to see what Yolanda Thomas does with a full offseason and preseason. She had an instant impact once she took over, making Orlando’s attack shine again, somehow even without Barbra Banda.

The ‘well, kinda’ refers to the NWSL beginning in 2013 and it taking until the first regular season kick of the ball with Thomas on the sideline in 2027 for the league to have a Black woman as permanent head coach. We should not still be doing ‘firsts’ when it comes to Black coaches, but here we are.

Despite that though (and tbh it’s, again, league leadership and owners who have to look themselves in the mirror about this), it’s dope to see and beyond deserved.

Once more, with gusto: NAEHER SAVED THAT SHIT

🍎 Apple | 🟢 Spotify | 📺Youtube

Annie, Ella & I react to a performance that’s been thirty games in the making. We discuss the keys to the performance and player spotlights, then try to calm down enough to preview the semifinal.

Been laughing at this for hours. These are now the official pronunciations of ‘Illinois’ and ‘Amanda’.