The Kansas City Current officially exorcised their quarterfinal heartbreak from a year ago.
Facing off against No. 5 Angel City FC, who entered the Saturday afternoon game unbeaten in their last 10 games, the No. 4 Current booked their spot in the NWSL's final four by edging out the visitors 1-0 in extra time before a home crowd at CPKC Stadium.
Current winger Michelle Cooper converted a penalty kick awarded in the 96th minute to seal Kansas City's victory. On the lead-up to a corner kick in the 94th minute, Angel City goalkeeper Angelina Anderson appeared to push center back Kayla Sharples down in the penalty box in front of the goal. Referee Alexandra Billeter awarded Sharples a penalty.
"I'm not the player that likes to come into a press conference and complain about a call and say, 'That's why we didn't win a game,'" Angel City captain Sarah Gorden said after the game. "We needed to put the ball in the back of the net. But on that call, the ref said that it was called on our goalkeeper, and I personally have never seen that called on a goalkeeper trying to own her six in her space."
Anderson looked shocked after receiving the foul.
"It's a tremendously cheap penalty and at this level this happens all the time," Angel City coach Leif Gunnar Smerud said. "To have a penalty like that against us seems very harsh and very strange. They would probably say there is a push, but there is push in every game inside the box and it just, yeah, it doesn't seem right."
A Video Assistant Referee check confirmed the call, and Cooper struck her shot hard enough into the left side of the goal that it just beat Anderson. Kansas City will advance to the semifinals to face the winner of Sunday's match between Gotham FC and Seattle Reign.
"We just have to go with whatever we get, honestly, at the end of the day," Cooper said of the controversial call. "If we got that PK, awesome, but if we didn't, we still had so much momentum and so many opportunities, I would hope that we would have at least put one of them in at the end of the day."
The victory is a balm to the Current's shocking exit from the 2025 NWSL playoffs. That year, eventual champions Gotham — the eighth seed to Kansas City's top billing — scored a winning extra time goal after a 1-1 draw in regulation.
"We can come up with a lot of reasons and excuses, I could say, for last year and why it didn't really fall our way, but I think this team this year has taken things personal," Cooper said after Saturday's game. The Current adopted a never-say-die mantra, she added, "and we just want to keep it rolling."
For a majority of the game, both sides appeared well prepared, even eager, to face each other. Their styles of play exist in the same realm of transitional expertise, and it showed in the opening 30 minutes.
The opulent displays of pace were highlighted in the transitional moments. Angel City defender Savy King, like many of her young teammates, was playing her first-ever playoff game but looked comfortable containing back-to-back NWSL MVP Temwa Chawinga on fast breaks. Sharples orchestrated the Current backline's movement to maximize their spatial coverage against Angel City's first-half attack pairing of Prisca Chilufya and Sveindis Jónsdóttir.
Every matchup on the pitch was high-octane, offering only thin margins to take the edge. Angel City midfielder and Brazilian international Ary Borges provided the right mix of defensive physicality and offensive progression, while Croix Bethune of the Current, always two steps ahead in her thinking, provided service across the pitch to Chawinga and Cooper on the wings.
Back and forth they swung like a pendulum, challenging each other's endurance as they took turns in their attempts at goal.
Neither team was efficient enough in the first half. The opening 45 minutes ended with the Current getting two shots on target to Angel City's one, a surprising stat for the two highest-scoring teams in the league that can only be explained in the chaos of single-elimination soccer. The Current were undefeated at home all season and had won their last five matches after a bumpy start to their campaign. Notably, Angel City held the Current to a 1-1 draw at CPKC Stadium during their regular season match.
Cooper said the team celebrated today's result with "a mixture of relief, but also excitement. We lost to them earlier in the year, and then we tied them. So we knew that we were better than that, and to be able to prove it in such a dire time was huge for us."
Current manager Chris Armas offered a rare statement to open his press conference, congratulating Angel City and interim head coach Smerud for putting together a successful season. He felt it was unfortunate that two top teams should meet this early into the playoffs, calling it "a shame that one of us on the day was not gonna move on" and describing Angel City as "the hottest in the league."
But as Armas watched the players tighten their grip on the game in the second half, he said he could feel a goal coming, even though it hadn't materialized. Angel City's back line took a hit when King went down with an apparent leg injury in stoppage time of the second half. She was visibly stricken as she subbed off the field and was replaced by forward Riley Tiernan, a signal of Angel City's desperation for a goal.
Both teams entered this quarterfinal shouldering heavy, yet different, weight. Kansas City were without Chawinga in last year's quarterfinal against Gotham, and she was crucial in the quarterfinal of this one, either with the ball or by drawing Angel City players toward her and opening up Bethune, Cooper, or forward Haley Hopkins.
Angel City were looking to make a deeper run into the postseason than they ever have as a club, betting on the strength of their young, talented roster. Losing out on a spot in the semifinals on a tight call will sting.
Kansas City settled into a sturdy defensive shape after their goal to protect their lead. Midfielders Lo'eau LaBonta, Debinha, and Rocky Rodriguez shone there with deep experience stabilizing the midfield and seeing out games. After failing to do as much last year in a similar scenario, the Current were not to repeat their mistakes.
They will await the result of Sunday's quarterfinal to see how much further their grit can take them.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic .
Kansas City Current, Angel City, NWSL, Women's Soccer, women's sports
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