The Kansas City Current made history Saturday night as the fastest team to clinch the NWSL Shield presented by CarMax, locking their place at the top of the table with five games remaining in the regular season.
It’s been a dominant season for the Current, and the Shield is proof. With weeks left in the regular season before playoff chaos begins, it won’t be a cake walk for the Current to the NWSL Championship on Saturday, November 22. In fact, only two clubs have been able to pull off the double in NWSL history.
Let’s dig into what a Shield win means and a fun history lesson!
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE CURRENT
By winning the NWSL Shield, the Current earned a spot in next year’s NWSL Challenge Cup, where they will face off against the 2025 NWSL Championship winner. Should Kansas City continue their run through the NWSL Championship, the second team in the standings will qualify for the Challenge Cup.
In addition to the Challenge Cup, the Current will also earn a spot in the next CONCACAF W Champions Cup. Gotham FC won the inaugural CONCACAF tournament earlier this year, and the second iteration kicked off just weeks ago.
NWSL PARITY OF PLAY
It wouldn’t be the NWSL, the league of parity, without an equitable distribution of Shields in recent years. Five different teams have won the last five NWSL Shields – Kansas City Current, Orlando Pride, San Diego Wave, Seattle Reign, and Portland Thorns.
The Portland Thorns won their second NWSL Shield in 2021, but started a three-year pattern of the Shield winners losing in the semi-finals. Second place that year went to the Reign, who would go on to reclaim the Shield for the first time since 2015 just a year later.
The San Diego Wave won the 2023 NWSL Shield, the first title in the club’s young history, with a win over Racing Louisville in the final week of the regular season and a Portland Thorns loss just a few hours north in Los Angeles. The Wave beat out the Thorns with 37 total points compared to Portland’s 35.
In 2024, the Orlando Pride locked into first place in Week 16 with three games left in the regular season. The Pride secured their club’s first hardware with a win over the Spirit, in what turned out to foreshadow the NWSL Championship matchup and results.
THE HISTORY OF THE NWSL SHIELD
As the league has expanded, so has parity of play. While the now defunct Western New York Flash and the Portland Thorns won the Shield in 2013 and 2016 respectively, the rest of the pre-2020 (when the NWSL was put on pause due to the pandemic) Shield winners went one of two ways: the Seattle Reign or North Carolina Courage.
Laura Harvey’s Reign became the first NWSL team to win back-to-back Shields in 2014 and 2015. Not to be outdone, the Courage went back-to-back-to-back from 2017-19. While the 2017 Courage team went on to lose in the NWSL Championship to the Thorns, the 2018 and 2019 teams would not follow the same path.
Instead, the 2018 Courage became the first team to win both the Shield and Championship in the same season, a feat they would repeat the following year. The 2024 Orlando Pride became just the second club to accomplish the NWSL sweep.
Kansas City clinching the Shield in Week 21, with five games left in the regular season, is a new league record. In fact, four NWSL Shields weren’t determined until the final weekend of the regular season – Western New York Flash (2013), Portland Thorns (2016), Seattle Reign (2022), and San Diego Wave (2023). More proof of Kansas City’s dominance this season.
The inaugural Shield race in 2013 should have been a sign of things to come in the NWSL as far as spreading the wins goes. Three teams ended the regular season tied in points, so the winner was ultimately determined by goal differential.
The league looked very different in 2013. With only eight teams, the playoffs were between the top four, meaning three of the four teams who qualified for the playoffs tied for first place. Western New York Flash, FC Kansas City, and Portland Thorns FC all finished with 38 points, while Sky Blue FC finished in fourth with 36 points.
With a whopping 53 points at the end of Week 21, a three-way tie won’t be a worry for the Current. Now, all eyes turn to who can secure a playoff spot after them.
