Ten years ago, a National Women’s Soccer League game at a baseball stadium was a sign of just how far the league had to go. A match during the 2016 season was played at a minor-league ballpark on a woefully small pitch, dubbed “shocking and embarrassing” by the league’s own stars.
Come 2026, NWSL games at ballparks are showpiece events. Attendance records were shattered at Chicago’s Wrigley Field and San Francisco’s Oracle Park in the previous two seasons. Wednesday night added another milestone: Gotham FC’s 1-0 win over the Washington Spirit on a hot, hazy night at Citi Field, the regular home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets, drew the second-largest crowd in league history (42,175) and set the record for the most attended women’s sporting event in the city’s history.
After a month-long pause during the men’s World Cup, the NWSL resumed play on 3 July. If any match seemed fit to be a table-setter for the rest of the season, it probably was this one. San Diego still lead the league, but Wednesday’s result pushed Gotham even on points with the Spirit and the Portland Thorns. (The Spirit sit second, via the goal-differential tiebreaker.) The East Coast rivals met in last year’s final and over the past three seasons have combined for two championships (Gotham), two second-place finishes (Spirit) and three trophies in other competitions.
At the same time, the match dubbed the Queens Classic was also a microcosm, full of the things that have come to define the NWSL at this point in its 14-season history: stakes, star power, sky-high ambition and still some controversy.
Rose Lavelle, the standout Gotham midfielder whose goal decided last year’s final, delivered a brilliant curler in the 37th minute for the night’s lone goal. The crowd favored the home team, but the stands were scattered with the No 2 jersey of star Spirit forward Trinity Rodman, who was captivating as usual but was unable to convert any of her five shots. The loudest cheer of the night came in the 63rd minute, when Australian striker Sam Kerr earned her first minutes since signing for Gotham after six-and-a-half years at Chelsea. It was a sort of homecoming: she starred in the era when the club was known as Sky Blue, scoring the goals that would help make her the NWSL’s all-time leading scorer while navigating off-field turmoil and playing in front of crowds that barely cracked 3,000.
“I feel so spoiled to play at this club, because we keep bringing in incredible players,” said Lavelle, referencing a transfer list that includes Kerr, Irish captain Denise O’Sullivan and Norwegian midfielder Guro Reiten in the past month alone. “I went up to her during a corner and said, ‘Welcome back, but chill,’” Rodman joked about Kerr’s return.
When Kerr left Sky Blue in 2018, the headlines weren’t about the team’s attendance records or mega-transfers, but for their mediocre play, training grounds without running water and minimal resources. That version of the club seems light-years away from what exists now, for more than just the improved finishes, fresh colors and new leadership. Last week, Gotham announced they will relocate to New York beginning in 2028, just around the corner at the future Etihad Park. The buildup to this game involved subway advertising, promotions and even a $15 ticket offer organized by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and 70% of ticket-buyers were “new fans”.
“It was really special just to see how many people were there that that was their first Gotham game,” midfielder Jaedyn Shaw said.
It seemed fitting that the night’s opponent was Washington, another team who have built from the bottom and embraced ambition in a league whose structure doesn’t always encourage it.
“In many ways, this is like a full-circle moment,” commissioner Jessica Berman told reporters at half-time. “We know that with investment, if you build it they will come, and this is a proof point for that.”
This moment of rapid growth for the NWSL – the past 12 months have seen new attendance, TV viewership and expansion-fee records set – does not come without growing pains.
Nearly 10 years to the day of the tiny-field fiasco, both teams seemed to agree that, while the pitch at Citi Field wasn’t terrible, it wasn’t the prettiest either. (“That’s showbiz, baby,” Lavelle said.) The match aired in primetime on ESPN, but the lone goal happened to occur while the screen was split for an interview, with the broadcaster and sideline reporter nearly tripping over each other in their commentary.
The weather conditions Wednesday were far from ideal for playing soccer, and far from ideal for even being outside. A heatwave kept the temperatures in the 80s and 90s fahrenheit and pushed the heat index above 100. Much of New York spent the day under an air quality alert, with smoke from Canadian wildfires drifting south. The ballpark was cast in an orange-brown haze as the sun set before kick-off, and the smell of smoke lingered throughout the night.
While the league has postponed games for poor air quality, it has also received criticism for going ahead with high-profile games even in adverse conditions for players and fans. The most significant incident came last year, when a marquee game between the Orlando Pride and Kansas City Current on national TV was played despite extreme heat that sent more than a dozen spectators to the hospital.
In this case, the conditions did not reach the threshold for delay or postponement. Instead, with the air quality index above 150 – classified as “unhealthy” by the Environmental Protection Agency, but below the 180-200 mark for potential delay and the 200+ mark for postponement – the league instituted two hydration breaks per half. Spirit coach Adrián González was upfront with his disdain for the pauses, saying the lack of rhythm killed the game while acknowledging the necessity on the day.
“I think on both sides, we were just like, ‘Damn, another break, another break, another break,’” Rodman said. “If we have to have a hydration break every 15 minutes, then we shouldn’t be playing the game, and that’s my opinion. … But at the end of the day, there’s 40,000 people, it’s a whole event. So it is really tough. I think it was a really hard situation for everybody to work around.”
Wednesday night will ultimately go down as a success. Such scenes once seemed unfathomable; the Citi Field crowd more than doubled the total attendance across the 12 home matches in the home club’s debut season in 2013. But acknowledging two truths – that the league has come far, and still has a long way to go – is part of understanding this latest chapter.
“It’s pretty cool when you’re out there and you realize that this is your job,” veteran Spirit midfielder Andi Sullivan said, “and that this is what your dreams looked like, or maybe what they haven’t looked like along the way.”
