The way the NWSL semifinals unfolded on Sunday isn’t really how soccer games are supposed to go. League tables are generally a good indicator of a team’s quality and consistency, but the results of the day don’t always go the way of the technically better team. Sometimes winner-take-all tactics work, and the statistically unlikely outcome becomes reality.

This is why the NWSL playoffs are so exciting every year. The knockout bracket is its own brand of soccer, where teams might start off hesitantly but games often open up once goals are scored. The 90-minute clock begins to take on more urgency, players make uncharacteristic mistakes and, sometimes, the underdog walks out with the win.

On Sunday, the underdog Washington Spirit and the Chicago Red Stars never gave up when faced with climbing adversity. They stuck to their game plans, defeated their higher-seeded opponents and will now meet on Saturday in a championship matchup that nobody saw coming.

On one side, the challenges the Spirit have faced off the field this year are well-documented. The club fired coach Richie Burke in August after multiple players accused him of abusive behavior, a COVID-19 outbreak in September forced them to forfeit two key games and co-owners Steve Baldwin and Y. Michele Kang remain in an open dispute. Some of these wounds were self-inflicted, and some of them were completely outside of the players’ control.

On Sunday, adverse weather conditions affected both the Spirit and hosts OL Reign. Days of rain soaked the field at Cheney Stadium, adding another obstacle to the already narrow and somewhat short converted baseball field.

The Reign’s familiarity with the field would seem to make the conditions work in their favor, but the limited space also meant the other team’s defense could more easily clamp down on their high-flying attack. That didn’t stop the Reign from scoring the earliest goal in NWSL postseason history in the third minute, when Megan Rapinoe sent a beautiful ball in to a racing Eugénie Le Sommer, who shrugged off her mark and tapped it in.

OL REIGN WASTE NO TIME ⚡️

Megan Rapinoe finds Eugénie Le Sommer for the earliest goal in @NWSL playoff history 🤯 pic.twitter.com/GUueNQN3Fk

— Attacking Third (@AttackingThird) November 14, 2021

That was the last time the Reign found the back of the net, despite out-shooting Washington 23 to 13. The Spirit adjusted to the moment, putting in shifts of last-ditch defending that held the Reign to just three shots on goal. The old adage that defense wins championships seemed to hold true in Tacoma on Sunday, but more specifically for the Spirit, defense kept them in the game so that the offense could then take its chances.

Washington’s first goal was a classic example of long-ball transition. Sam Staab lofted a ball over the top to a surging Trinity Rodman for the score and the start of another fantastic performance in her rookie campaign. Their second goal was even more audacious, with Ashley Sanchez taking the ball to the end line and finessing it over the head of Reign keeper Sarah Bouhaddi to put the Spirit ahead 2-1.

WITH THE DIP 🍟#RGNvWAS | https://t.co/bONPZnEXuh | #NWSL21 pic.twitter.com/zeLSMB1VZ3

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) November 14, 2021

As they showed Sunday, the Spirit are operating at an intersection of high-level talent and youthful freedom that makes them difficult to defend simply because teams don’t know what they are going to try next.

Based on each team’s attacking data, the Spirit’s likelihood of winning that game was 5 percent. They overcame the in-game odds and pulled off a stunner, only to be one-upped a few hours later.

What the Chicago Red Stars achieved at Providence Park in the second semifinal of the day could be considered the greatest NWSL postseason upset of all time. This was Chicago’s first trip back to Portland since a 5-0 loss to the Thorns at the beginning of the season.

It was also their first game against Portland since a 2-1 victory in September that set the blueprint for the team Chicago became in the latter half of the season. The Red Stars prioritize organization without the ball, allowing their opponents to possess the ball but neutralizing all available attacking options. The resolve the Red Stars showed at the beginning of the match Sunday, starting Danny Colaprico in place of star striker Mallory Pugh (who missed the match due to COVID-19 protocol), was an early sign that the Thorns weren’t going to get the space they did back in May to put Chicago’s defense on its heels.

The Red Stars defended on every line — starting with their attack — and frequently collapsed in to get numbers in front of the ball. That part of the game-plan was clear from the first whistle. More unclear was how they would score without the individual magic of Pugh or Kealia Watt, who had to leave the match around the half-hour mark with an injury.

Chicago has been sneakily good at figuring out when to send numbers forward in transition, but the two goals they actually scored against Portland were highly unlikely conversions. Katie Johnson (who had subbed on for Watt) took a shot near-post on a tight angle in the 37th minute, one that Portland keeper Bella Bixby would usually be able to punch out for a corner kick, at worst. Bixby, however, didn’t have quite the right angle to stop the ball from sneaking into the back of the net, and suddenly the upset campaign was on.

WOLD-WHOA 😱🚀#PORvCHI | https://t.co/bONPZnEXuh | #NWSL21 pic.twitter.com/G5oXLYE9Xr

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) November 14, 2021

While goals have sometimes felt like minor miracles for Chicago (who once relied on five-straight own goals to carry their offense), the Red Stars are almost impossible to play when they have a lead. Not many teams have the mental fortitude to defend for 60 minutes straight, and it’s frequently a losing tactic for groups with less experience. But the Red Stars live and breathe the defensive formation at this point in the year. And while Sarah Woldmoe scoring an even more improbable goal in the 59th minute added to a feeling of destiny, the Red Stars’ clean sheet was by design, and the Thorns had no answer.

The Red Stars scored two goals with an attack that generated exactly one-eighth of the game’s chances. The Spirit won a game they had a 5-percent chance of winning. And just like that, for the first time in NWSL history, the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds will be playing one another in the final, with each team looking to end their Cinderella stories with the first trophy in their club’s histories.

Their journeys to Louisville might have been improbable, but the Spirit and the Red Stars are exactly where they want to be.

Claire Watkins is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering soccer and the NWSL. Follow her on Twitter @ScoutRipley.

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.

With recent transfers Talia von Oelhoffen and Kiki Iriafen joining first-team All-American JuJu Watkins and the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class at USC next season, the Trojans look to transition from an up-and-coming squad to a legitimate title contender. 

Former Oregon State graduate student von Oelhoffen is the latest collegiate talent to commit to the program, announcing her transfer Monday via ESPN. She follows ex-Stanford leading-scorer Iriafen in the jump to the pair’s one-time Pac-12 rival.

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The 5-foot-11 Washington native was a two-time All-Pac-12 guard during her time at Oregon State. But after the recent dissolution of the Pac-12, the Corvallis side found themselves without a permanent home conference going forward. Many big name players opted to take their skill elsewhere as a result, with von Oelhoffen’s fellow ex-Beaver Raegan Beers announcing her own departure to Oklahoma on Monday.

According to DraftKings, USC is now tied with UConn for the second-best betting odds to win the 2025 NCAA women’s tournament. Dawn Staley’s tested South Carolina side, poised for a repeat performance, holds down the number one spot.

Last year, LSU loaded up in the transfer portal after beating Iowa to win the 2023 national championship. The Tigers were clear favorites coming into the 2023-24 season, but were bounced in the Elite Eight by Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes. Shortly thereafter, star transfer Hailey Van Lith opted to transfer a second time, this time signing with TCU. 

Yet while history proves that an excess of star power doesn’t always translate to on-court chemistry, on paper, USC sure looks ready to hold their own — in 2025 and beyond.

The United States and Mexico have withdrawn their joint bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup, per a Monday afternoon release from U.S. Soccer and the Mexican Football Federation.

According to the statement, they will instead focus on developing a "more equitable" bid for the 2031 tournament, with the ultimate goal of "eliminating investment disparities" between the men’s and women’s tournaments.

The federations went on to cite the upcoming 2026 Men’s World Cup in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as an opportunity to build support for local infrastructure, improve audience engagement, and scale up media and partnership deals in preparation to "host a record-breaking tournament in 2031."

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"Hosting a World Cup tournament is a huge undertaking — and having additional time to prepare allows us to maximize its impact across the globe," said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. "Shifting our bid will enable us to host a record-breaking Women’s World Cup in 2031 that will help to grow and raise the level of the women’s game both here at home as well as across the globe."

The decision leaves just Brazil and a joint bid from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands in the running for the 2027 host spot. Brazil — the rumored frontrunner — has never hosted a Women’s World Cup, while Germany hosted the 2011 tournament as a solo venture. 

Furthermore, this postponement doesn’t mean the U.S. is a shoo-in for 2031, as it's been previously reported that 2022 UEFA Women's EURO host England is considering their own Women's World Cup bid. FIFA is scheduled to confirm the winning bid after the FIFA Congress votes on May 17th.