Friday evening’s soccer match did not go perfectly for NY/NJ Gotham FC goalkeeper Abby Smith. She entered the game in the 90th minute, did not have an opportunity to touch the ball, and her team lost the NWSL x LIGA MX Femenil Summer Cup Championship to the Kansas City Current.
In many ways, however, the match represented a triumph for Smith.
“I’ve been injured for more than a year. It’s been 433 days since I have stepped foot on a game field. So it’s, yeah, it’s special,” she told the media postgame.
Gotham head coach Juan Carlos Amorós appreciated how difficult Smith’s rehab process has been.
“These 15 months have been up and down. She was arguably the best goalkeeper in the league when she was injured last year in San Diego, and (experienced) 15 months without doing what she loves.”
Smith’s teammate Nealy Martin saw the goalie’s appearance as an inspirational moment for the team.
“She’s been working hard for 15 months, a lot of ups and downs, away from her family, just grinding, really, and seeing her come in every day with a good attitude, and finally getting to step on the pitch and getting taken off the season-ending-injury list is just a moment of pride for all of us.”
Amorós made his unconventional keeper substitution for reasons that went beyond trying to win this one match.
“For me, it’s bigger than the game, and in this case, I thought that it was the right thing to do for her to come on the bench and feel like a football player again, because she’s worked so hard behind the scenes,” he said. “When the game gave me the opportunity, I decided to, of course, do it.”
I’ve interviewed Abby Smith before, on the campus of her alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin. That session came for a documentary series about the Longhorn program and the bigger picture of how her sport and women’s sports in general rose in prominence. When it drops in a week or so, viewers will learn about the challenges that have come in growing the game to its present-day status.
Female pros in the US didn’t used to get any cup competitions. The NWSL’s predecessor leagues, the WUSA and WPS, were just happy to have a season. The Summer Cup Final, in many ways, reflected the not-always-smooth path women’s soccer has followed over the last several decades.
Like Smith’s appearance, the event had some imperfections. The crowd on hand did not fill San Antonio’s Toyota Field for a neutral-site game that featured the defending NWSL champions taking on the team with the league’s leading goal scorer. A number of prominent players on both sides missed the contest while on international duty. It did not see a sizable media turnout. And technically, it isn’t even summer any more. But as with Smith’s uneventful injury-time minutes, if we focus on the details, we might miss some bigger-picture implications.
“I think we’ve come a long way,” said Smith, who broke into the NWSL in 2016. “The salaries are better, the facilities are better, teams are more organized, there’s more people involved. It’s been a long time coming, and we still have a lot of room to grow, but it’s really exciting to see that we’re now advancing to where we’re incorporating other leagues.”
Though the competition’s final featured two US-based teams, the point of this tournament had been to allow professional women’s teams from the rapidly developing Mexican top flight to play against their northern counterparts.
“I personally really enjoyed playing the teams from Mexico. I mean, we don’t often get that,” said Kansas City Captain Lo’eau LaBonta. “It brings a different thing to the season. So I enjoyed it, and obviously I enjoyed winning it.”
LaBonta assisted on the match’s only two goals, both scored on sublime chips by Temwa Chawinga. The Malawian forward scored three goals across three Summer Cup fixtures to go with her NWSL-leading 20 regular-season tallies. She felt her team might benefit from getting to face players and tactics they wouldn’t normally see.
“We know Mexico has good teams also,” said Chawinga. “Maybe we play them to know the football, what kind of football they play there.”
The game received national television exposure via CBS Sports Network and Paramount+. It included goals from one of the world’s marquee players, Abby Smith’s compelling return from injury, and a trophy celebration with confetti. Gotham even got to go to the White House this month to celebrate last year’s NWSL title. As Abby Smith helped me appreciate through some of the stories she told us for the docuseries, the women’s game has not always had this much going for it. This was the first year of the NWSL x LIGA MX Femenil Summer Cup. Winning coach Vlatko Andonovski saw elements in it that he believed can and should add to the continued progress of women’s soccer.
“Neutral side, two good teams, like, I’m all about promoting this game, and I think that there’s still room for us to grow as a league and get better,” he said. “These are things that we need to keep doing.”
