SAN JOSE, Calif. — Washington Spirit forward Trinity Rodman said she “definitely underperformed” in Saturday’s NWSL Championship final, in which the Spirit fell to Gotham FC, 1-0, with Rose Lavelle‘s 80th minute winner proving to the difference.
Rodman, who has been trying to recover from a sprained MCL in her right knee for the last month, started the match on the bench, but entered the game as a 57th-minute substitute. She was largely ineffective, and didn’t get a shot off during her 33-minute stint.
When asked about the state of her knee, Rodman said it “felt great,” but later admitted she was far from full strength. It marked the second year in a row that Rodman entered the final dealing with an injury. Last year, her back was an issue as the Spirit fell to the Orlando Pride, 1-0.
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The blow of losing a second consecutive final weighed heavy on the Spirit. By the time Rodman made her way through the post-match mixed zone, she could no longer hold the tears back.
“I think naturally only having nine minutes going into a final is not ideal,” Rodman said, referring to the amount of playing time she had after the injury.
“As much as I don’t want to admit it, I still don’t feel like I was my full self tonight, which sucks. I feel like this is the second year I’ve gone to a final not I feeling myself. So it just makes me sad. But yeah, for me, I was just trying to go out there and do what I could. I definitely underperformed.”
After the final whistle, Rodman walked over to the far side of the field, where her boyfriend, American tennis star Ben Shelton, was waiting, and they held each other in a long embrace.
“It was sad, and I feel like you obviously have your team the entire year, but sometimes you just need your outside supporters and Ben is that for me,” Rodman said. “So I was just crying. I’m sad. It sucks and it’s not just we lost a soccer game. It’s all the work we put into it and it’s nice to get that reward at the end, but at the end of the day we can still celebrate because we did so much.”
The question now is whether Rodman has played her last game in a Spirit uniform, or even in the NWSL. ESPN ahs reported that she has lucrative offers from England as well as one from the upstart USL Super League. When asked if the loss would influence her decision on her future, she said, “No, every team loses.”
Typical of a final, the match was intense from the outset, with defenses dominating and chances scarce. That held true for almost the entirely of the game, with the teams combining for an xG of 0.88. It took a moment of magic for there to be a breakthrough, and it was Lavelle who provided it, though substitute Bruninha was instrumental in delivering the killer pass to set up the U.S. international.
The period just prior to the goal saw Washington holding midfielder Hal Hershfelt go down with a lower leg injury, and she received lengthy treatment on the sideline before returning to the match. Hershfelt still looked to be laboring as Gotham scored, and Spirit manager Adrian González admitted that in retrospect, he should have subbed Hershfelt out.
“Obviously we were just receiving information that [Hershfelt] wanted to continue and she was trying, so obviously the message was that she was about to start,” he said. “Obviously took maybe more time than we were expecting, but a player like her, she always wants to play, and I can imagine that in a final you always want to play, and you don’t want to get subbed.
“But it is circumstances that we need to learn [from]. But obviously she wanted to be with the team and with that, obviously now we can say that maybe the sub was late but she was trying to push and that’s the only reason.”
Goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury, who was on the Spirit team that lost the 2024 final, said losing a second final in as many years “stings just as bad.” But she tipped her hat to Lavelle’s clinical strike.
“I think it’s a big shock because this group completely believed that we would win. There was really no scenario where we didn’t lift that trophy today,” Kingsbury said. “So yeah, it definitely hurts. I think it was a great final, came down to a moment of brilliance from Rose Lavelle, and yeah, just super proud of the season we’ve had the way we played. But just a little bit short on the day.”
