Gotham FC will return to Subaru Park for a game in October

Gotham FC of the National Women’s Soccer League has just about made a tradition of bringing a game each year to Subaru Park, and it will continue this fall.

The team will play its Oct. 1 Concacaf Champions Cup game against the Washington Spirit in Chester, marking the fourth time in five years that the Bats have come to town. Tickets for the 7 p.m. kickoff are on sale now through Gotham’s website.

Gotham has won major titles in recent seasons, the 2023 NWSL championship and the 2024-25 Concacaf W Champions Cup — the first time Concacaf ran a women’s club championship tournament for the continent.

This year, things have not gone so well. With nine games to go in the season, Gotham (5-6-6, 21 points) is stuck in eighth place, the last playoff spot, in a league that is always supercompetitive.

It’s not for lack of talent. Gotham’s squad includes U.S. national team veterans Rose Lavelle, Emily Sonnett, and Midge Purce; and a trio of European stars in Spain’s Esther González, England’s Jess Carter, and Germany’s Ann-Katrin Berger.

(Another U.S. headliner on the squad, Tierna Davidson, is out with a torn ACL. Her absence is certainly a factor.)

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The Spirit are second in the league at 9-4-4, with much of the team that reached last year’s title game. One of the few changes since then was their manager: Jonatan Giráldez left suddenly in July to take over French superpower OL Lyonnes, which Spirit owner Michele Kang also owns. The move sparked quite an outcry, but his assistant Adrian González has kept the ship steady.

Washington’s big-name players start with Trinity Rodman, one of the U.S. team’s top headliners. Other notable Americans include Croix Bethune, Hal Hershfelt, Aubrey Kingsbury, Casey Krueger, and South Jersey native Brittany Ratcliffe; Colombia’s Leicy Santos; and Italy’s Sofia Cantore, who joined the team this summer after helping her country reach the European Championship semifinals.

Carter’s England knocked Italy out on the way to a second straight Euros title. The Lionesses beat González’s Spain in the title game, after the reigning World Cup champions topped Berger’s Germany in the other semi.

Gotham and Washington got drawn into the same Concacaf Champions Cup group, along with Mexico’s Monterrey, El Salvador’s Alianza, and Canada’s Vancouver Rise Academy. (The Rise are a pro team in the new Northern Super League, owned by Major League Soccer’s Whitecaps. The academy team predated the NSL, and won the 2024 national third-division title.)

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The Orlando Pride are in the tournament’s other group, filling out the NWSL’s participation.

Gotham’s Concacaf title last year qualified them for FIFA’s inaugural women’s club tournaments, the Women’s Champions Cup next year and the Club World Cup in 2028.

The first of those has the champion of each of FIFA’s six continental confederations, and the second will have 16 teams from across the globe, with Gotham and the winner of the ongoing Champions Cup taking Concacaf’s two direct slots. A third team will go to an intercontinental qualifying playoff.

Coincidentally, the game here will be the same night that the Union could be in the U.S. Open Cup final. When the draw last month set the western semifinal’s winner to host that game, it opened up Subaru Park that night. Minnesota United or Austin FC will host the Union or Nashville SC after next month’s semifinals.

Rodman, Lavelle, and the other Americans could also make a return trip to Chester on Oct. 23 when the U.S. hosts Portugal in a friendly. That will be the U.S. women’s team’s first game in town in 3½ years.

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