FC Kansas City wins NWSL championship, 1-0 over Seattle

Kansas City secured the victory in 78th minute in the most fitting fashion.

“With this being Lauren Holiday’s last competitive match, the whole team and especially Amy Rodriguez, want to send her off with one more trophy”. Stanley made her NWSL debut vs. where she earned her first professional win.

“I couldn’t have wrote a better script”.

Sounder at Heart: “Since coming to the NWSL from English power Arsenal, Little has been arguably the league’s best player and surely the most consistent offensive performer”. No one can match her 26 goals nor her 13 assists in two seasons of NWSL play. “But without a doubt, if we don’t get a championship, we’ll look back on it with regret”. I didn’t realize until after the game that, ah, now I get it. So that was my mentality this time. The Thorns averaged 15,639 fans for the 10 home matches this season for a total of 156,386 fans.

The Reign almost knotted it in the 85th minute when Rapinoe blasted a shot from 18 yards that Barnhart quickly thwarted with a clutch save to preserve the 1-0 FC Kansas City lead. Her teammates say the Stanford alum is a silent warrior, and would never seek a grudging win over Solo.

The lone goal came in the 78 minute, a header from close range from FCKC’s Amy Rodriguez, their regular-season goals leader with six.

Solo, who eagerly wanted to add the NWSL crown to her long list of career accomplishments, was tested a few other times, but stood up. The second half was almost identical to the first on Thursday, with both teams continuing to utilize their strong and aggressive defensive tactics that proved effective with few scoring chances.

Seattle continued its attacking pressure in the final minutes with Solo even moving forward out of goal to help provide additional support for the Reign offense. This is the Blues’ third straight appearance in the postseason: The Portland Thorns won the league’s inaugural championship in 2013.

Barnhart grabbed a ball off a Seattle crossing pass into the box in the sixth minute.

Keeping the ball away from Holiday was critical, since the KC distributor was then limited to feeding the ball into Rodriguez or outside to O’Reilly. Rodriguez blasted a shot in the 14th minute that just went past the left goalpost.

Also known by her maiden name Cheney, Holiday is married to Jrue Holiday, a fellow Bruin who is now playing for the NBA’s New Orleans Pelicans. KC’s ensuing corner also did not amount to much as the pace of the game settled into a more deliberate one.

In the second half, the best chances shifted to Seattle.

But the night belonged to FCKC and to Holiday.

But he also emphasized the importance of putting on a good show and continuing to build the game of women’s soccer.

Holiday collapsed in the game’s late stages and was given extra medical attention due to what officials said was a heart condition, but was able to continue after a brief delay.