The 2025 NWSL season kicked off the same it ended, with the Washington Spirit and the Orlando Pride playing for the first piece of silverware of the season as both finalists last year’s the NWSL Championship faced off in the Challenge Cup Friday night in Orlando’s Inter&Co Stadium.
After a hard-fought game both teams were evenly matched and could not break the deadlock during 90 minutes with the game finishing in a 1-1 draw going to penalty kicks. The Spirit would come out victorious winning 4-2 in the penalty kick shoot and hoisting their second title in club history.
“Obviously, it’s crazy to win a championship with one match, but we’ll take it,” said Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury. “As soon as we got together in January, we’ve been circling the date and knowing that this is our first match. It’s not a warm-up to the regular season — this is the first opportunity for a trophy.”
Meanwhile Orlando head coach Seb Hines had this to say after the match about his team losing the match in penalties.
“Football is a cruel game, losing to penalties is never nice.” said the Pride’s head coach “We have to take into consideration this is the first game of the year. And it's a final and it all, obviously you want to win every game, but I think it's, it's always hard losing a final, losing a trophy.” He concluded “I think it's; it's always hard losing a final, losing a trophy. But I think it's going to help us. Have that hunger to continue to start where we left off from last year."
Penalty kicks
After finishing the game tied at one all both teams went into a penalty shootout to decide the winner of the Challenge Cup. Both teams converted their first two penalty kicks, it would be up to Orlando forward Summer Yates to give them the lead in the shootout. However, her shot went wide to the right post of Kingsbury and out, giving the Spirit an opportunity to take control of the shootout.
The Spirit would take advantage of that after newcomer Narumi Miura took a hard shot towards the right-hand side. Orlando’s goalkeeper Anna Moorehouse was able to get a hand to the ball, however she was not able to keep the ball from going into the back of the net and give the Spirit the advantage.
“We never beat Orlando last year. So nice to finally get a win over them.” said Kingsbury “it wasn't necessarily a revenge match because it's not like anything can change what happened in the final last year.”
After Kingsbury stopped Ally Lemos' penalty shot, it was up to Spirit center back Tara McKeown to seal the victory for the Spirit. McKeown hit her perfectly placed shot to the top of the net, giving the Spirit the win and the Challenge Cup title.
“I haven’t taken a penalty since last year when I scored in the semifinal [shootout],” McKeown said. “So, I was like, ‘I probably should have been practicing a little bit, but if it comes down to it, I’m going to just try and score.’ And it did, and I scored.”
The Game
Coming into this game the Spirit had several players missing due to injury, thus reducing the availability of players significantly for this match. Some of the key players that missed the match included Andi Sullivan, Croix Bethune both out with knee injuries and Ouleymata Sarr who was out with a back injury. All the injuries were sustained at the end of last season. Other key absences for the Spirit in this match were Paige Metayer, Cortney Brown, Kysha Sylla, Rosemunde Kouassi, Heather Stainbrook and Kate Wiesner.
The Spirit did gain one key player back from injury and that was US Women’s National team stalwart Trinity Rodman. Rodman was on the bench for this game; however, she did not play during the game. The club had been managing her workload during the preseason to recover from a lingering back issue, which had her sit out during the last women’s national team camps.
“Just in case, she was on the bench — we needed the numbers,” said Spirit Coach Jonatan Giráldez. “We had to ask her how she feels, and she didn’t feel comfortable to play today, so that was the right decision. But for sure, she’s close.”
Orlando would have the first opportunity to open up the scoring in the 13th minute when Ally Watt ran the ball from the right-hand side taking on Esme Morgan. Watt was able to get a shot off, which Kingsbury parried off the crossbar and out for a corner kick. A few minutes later the Spirit would answer back with an attack of their own, with a long play to Brittany Ratcliffe, who sent a cross to a waiting Chloe Ricketts at the top of the box, however her attempt was easily saved by Moorehouse.
“That obviously wasn't the prettiest game for us,” defender Casey Krueger said. “But just being able to find a way was huge.”
In the 35th minute Watt stole the ball off the feet of Miura and charged straight for goal. The Japanese international brought Watt down and the referee awarded the Pride a penalty at first, but after a VAR check determined the foul was outside the box and awarded them a free kick and a yellow for Miura. Marta stepped up to take the free kick, the attempted shot from the six-time FIFA Player of the Award winner hit the wall, however the rebound landed at the feet of Rafaelle Souza who with a onetime shot pierced the back of the net to give the Pride the lead close to half time.
This was Souza's first game back for the Pride since suffering a partial tear in her quadricep that kept out her out for the remainder of the 2024 season. The defender had this to say about her goal.
"It's always a great pleasure to score, especially with like my whole team, supporting me and happy for me to be back." Said Souza "I know scoring a goal is a big moment in the game, but for me, just playing a few minutes and be with the team at like that's, that's the best like feeling ever."
As was the case last season, the Spirit always found a way to bounce back, and this would not be the exception as they found a way to bounce back and get back into the game.
“We know these types of games are very tight as what happened today, not having a lot of players available.” Said Giráldez “I am very proud of the player because only today 13 players available to play were very, very difficult to manage, especially in the first half, because they were the better team. In the second half, I think we played better and created more chances.”
In the 71st minute the Spirit were awarded a free kick. Leicy Santos stepped up to take the ensuing free kick, and with a powerful shot the Colombian International was able to clear the ball past the Orlando wall and into the back of the net, despite Moorehouse getting a hand to the ball, she could not keep the ball from crossing the line and leveling things up.
It’s not the first time Giráldez has seen Santos score this kind of free kick goals as he had seen her do this during scrimmages during the preseason.
"Yes, we have a scrimmage in this preseason, and she has scored, also in the last minute," said Giráldez, who also praised his playmaker's defensive efforts. "It's not the first time that I see Leicy Santos doing that. We know that she has a high quality to finish, and today I'm very happy."
Orlando thought they had the game winner late in the game after an Angelina free kick found Kylie Nadaner, but the referee called the goal back for an offside.
“Missing a lot of players. Obviously, that's not ideal, but we were more focused on who we did have available.” Kingsbury said, “We're looking forward to hopefully getting some players back in the coming weeks, but we didn't want to make any excuses for ourselves. And just do that, you know, we had a little less depth than usual, but again, we've got a strong squad and focused on ourselves and just grinding out the ninety.”
The Spirit will kick off the 2025 NWSL regular season on the road on March 14th when they visit the Houston Dash, while Orlando will kick off their season at home when they host the Chicago Red Stars.
