NWSL’s playoff teams are nearly set 2 weeks early

Every team had reason to hope, but this season went wrong quickly for most of them.

April. It seems like so long ago now. Then, as this, the NWSL’s fifth season kicked off, everything felt possible. First, it was that this league, the third try at such a thing, was still here, and still had all its teams intact. And that alone felt like some impossible accomplishment, a defiant nod to those leagues past and the seemingly unbreakable three-year barrier finally, fully, smashed.

For the teams, too, there was that same sense of hope. The perpetually basement-dwelling Breakers, now reinvigorated and firmly on the road to rebuilding, with Rose Lavelle and Morgan Andrews and bunch more young talent steering the ship towards, finally, something better in Boston. Houston, always hopeful, and always falling short, now coming into a season with the league’s hottest goalscorer in Kealia Ohai and the prospect of Carli Lloyd’s return on the horizon. Kansas City, after a disappointing season, getting Amy Rodriguez and Sydney Leroux back, and both, like the team they play for, out to prove they could still do this thing. The Flash, with a new name and a move south to North Carolina, now taking the field as the Courage to make a statement that last season’s run to the title was more than a fluke.

Up and down the table, every team had at least one of these things they could cling to. The why this year would be different and better and surely the one where they’d be lifting that trophy in early October, or, at the very least, a shiny plate in late September. A first playoff game, a repeat, a best-ever season, just finally not being the worst. All of it beyond possible. In April, it was certain.

And now. Now it is mid-September. The season’s penultimate games will (mostly) be played this weekend. Two of the playoff spots are already claimed. The Shield and the remaining two will also likely be worked out by Sunday night.

There are four teams — North Carolina, Portland, and barring something crazy this weekend, Chicago and Orlando — still with a chance to make April’s possibilities a reality in October. But because math and playoff formats and the soccer gods are cruel, there are also six teams for which those hopes and dreams are already dead or nearly there.

Boston, for whatever Lavelle and Andrews and the return of Abby Smith brought in the early part of the season, will again spend the winter wondering where it all went wrong. Heading into this weekend, Boston is at the bottom of the table. Even if the Breakers win their final two games, the best they can do is climb into ninth. So much of the hope the Breakers had — and Boston did look good, or at least better, in the early part of the season — came from Lavelle. The rookie midfielder looked like the missing piece Boston needed, and with her, results started to come. After losing to Kansas City on opening day, the Breakers won two straight.

Take that sentence in for a minute, because it’s one that didn’t get repeated for the rest of the season. Even the first part, “the Breakers won,” occurred just once more before disappearing from our collective vocabulary, like floppy disks and putting e’s at the end of town and old in a situation that isn’t a gift shop in Colonial Williamsburg. In mid-June, with the Breakers already starting to struggle, Lavelle suffered a hamstring injury. And so went Boston’s season. The Breakers come into Saturday’s game having last visited the win column on July 1, which is 10 games and 900 minutes of disappointment ago.

Speaking of disappointment, perhaps no team had a more spectacular fall than the Spirit. With two games to play, Washington is only three points ahead of Boston, and in what is somehow simultaneously a strange act of mercy and torture, they play each other this weekend, leaving even that small bit of hope precariously close to being erased.

Washington, and this now seems almost as ridiculous a sentence as the one about Boston winning two straight, came within seconds of winning the NWSL championship a season ago. And maybe then, with that Lynn Williams extra time stoppage time goal, is when it all started to fall apart.

Washington lost Ali Krieger and Diana Matheson, two of the three players remaining from the original 2013 Spirit team, as well as Crystal Dunn and Christine Nairn, in the offseason. Krieger, Matheson and Nairn were all traded, and Dunn opted to spend this season playing for Chelsea in England. Joanna Lohman tore her ACL in the first game of the season. And the Spirit did little to replace any of them. Eventually, Mallory Pugh did end up in Washington, but you can’t just put up one wall and call it a building. Now, the best the Spirit can do is an eighth-place finish.

Houston, more like Boston than Washington, saw its early season hopes dashed by injury and then the same kind of general malaise that seems to overtake the team midway through every season. Ohai finished 2016 as one the league’s most in-form strikers, something that earned her a call from Jill Ellis last fall and then carried over into the start of this season. Houston knocked off Chicago on opening day, with Ohai and Rachel Daly both scoring for the Dash, Lydia Williams keeping the clean sheet and Janine Van Wyk impressing in her NWSL debut.

But however fine Houston looked — and it was then without Lloyd, who was still in England with Manchester City, and Morgan Brian, who was recovering from injury — turned out to be short-lived. Eventually, Ohai started to cool down before an ACL injury ultimately ended her season. In May and June, Houston dropped six straight, parting ways with head coach Randy Waldrum along the way. Waldrum’s departure did provide a temporary spark — the Dash put together a six game unbeaten run in July — but then things started to go badly again. Houston’s won just once more, 3-1 in Boston, and that was back on August 16.

Rounding out the bottom four, Kansas City heads into this weekend in seventh, a return to the playoffs that seemed so possible back in April now long out of reach. Kansas City’s season went bad almost as quickly as it looked like it wouldn’t, with the Blues getting a big boost — and a 2-0 opening day win — from the returns of Amy Rodriguez and Sydney Leroux, who’d both missed the 2016 season due to pregnancy. Leroux and A-Rod both scored in their return, and it looked like FCKC was finally on its way back to being the team that won two consecutive NWSL titles not that long ago. And then A-Rod tore her ACL and Leroux started to struggle, both with form and a lack of service.

Kansas City is still one of the league’s better teams defensively, with Becky Sauerbrunn still a mainstay in the back line and rookie Christina Gibbons a true bright spot. But FCKC is also one of the league’s lowest-scoring teams, and in a season where we’ve seen tons of high-scoring games, the Blues could never quite catch up. There were a few good results — wins over Portland and Chicago in August — but the inability to put together more than a win or two in a row, and ending up on the wrong end of a lot of one-goal games now means another season of the Blues missing the playoffs.

One of the biggest wins — and highest scoring games — the Blues were a part of this season came three weeks ago in New Jersey, when FCKC knocked off Sky Blue 4-1. And really, it isn’t that surprising. Sky Blue has, by a pretty huge margin, allowed more goals than any other team in the league. Rookie goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan has been very good, but defensively, Sky Blue has been a mess all season, saved only — and repeatedly — by Sam Kerr and some serious late-game magic. Christie Rampone’s departure, due to both injury and probably whatever behind-the-scenes turmoil sent head coach Christie Holly packing, left an already shaky and young back line looking completely lost.

Like in Kansas City, there were some bright spots in New Jersey. Kerr, currently tied for the league’s single-season scoring record with 16 goals, established herself as one of the NWSL’s best and most dangerous players. Maya Hayes has started to become a more consistent starter and contributor after years of service mostly as a second-half sub. And Sky Blue games were, finally, mercifully, really fun to watch, with more dramatic and improbable late-game comebacks than any of us deserve in one season. But as fun as it was to watch Kerr put in three goals in the last 10 minutes of games week after week, it’s also a pretty terrible strategy for a successful season and one that ultimately caught up to Sky Blue. They’ll host North Carolina Sunday, and though Kerr’s still got a pretty good chance at both the Golden Boot and breaking Kim Little’s scoring record, it’s probably small consolation for a season that still seemed hopeful even a month ago.

There is one team that still has some hope, and that’s Seattle. The Reign, currently in fifth, haven’t officially joined the eliminated, though they’ll need a win against FCKC on Sunday, or a little help from some other teams, to stay alive.

In some cases, it’s easy to point to where, how, and why it all went wrong. How seasons that shouldn’t have been this bad turned terrible. Injury or bad trades or just not doing enough. Digging too deep a hole too early, or too late. Whatever it was for each team, with two games to go, they’ve all now ended up in the same place. There isn’t much that’s hopeful now. Except maybe that however far away last April feels, the next one’s only seven months away.

All times Eastern

Saturday

Orlando Pride vs. Portland Thorns FC, 3:30 PM, Orlando City Stadium (Lifetime)

Washington Spirit vs. Boston Breakers, 7:00 PM, Maryland SoccerPlex (go90)

Houston Dash vs. Chicago Red Stars, 8:30 PM, BBVA Compass Stadium (go90)

Sunday

Sky Blue FC vs. North Carolina Courage, 6:00 PM, Yurcak Field (go90)

Seattle Reign FC vs. FC Kansas City, 9:00 PM, Memorial Stadium (go90)