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Master of league titles, Guro Reiten now tackles a new challenge with Gotham FC: The NWSL playoffs
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- Master of league titles, Guro Reiten now tackles a new challenge with Gotham FC: The NWSL playoffs
Master of league titles, Guro Reiten now tackles a new challenge with Gotham FC: The NWSL playoffs originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
HARRISON, N.J. —Gotham FC star Guro Reiten has long been the queen of league titles.
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At 32 years old, Reiten has now won nine consecutive regular season league championships. It started with LSK Kvinner, where she won the Norweigan top flight in 2017 and 2018. She then moved to Chelsea , helping the Blues won six consecutive WSL championships, before her switch this past winter to Gotham who won the club's first-ever NWSL Shield last weekend by topping the league table.
This weekend, Reiten will embark on a new journey, one the serial winner has never encountered before: playoffs.
"I thought about it yesterday, I was like 'oh my god if we lose on Sunday, my season is over,'" Reiten told The Sporting News at the club's training facility on Thursday. "It's weird, I've never played in a playoff."
MORE: A full look at the 2026 NWSL playoff schedule, teams, and fixtures
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The three-game sprint begins on Sunday, as the No. 1 seed Gotham will take on the eighth-seeded Seattle Reign in the quarterfinals. Win that, and they will meet either the Kansas City Current or Angel City in the semifinals the following weekend. A win there puts Gotham in the final, looking to defend last season's Championship on November 21.
A uniquely American entity, playoffs are a totally foreign concept for many European players who come over to the United States to play in either MLS or the NWSL. For these players, the league table is everything; finish atop the standings, and you've won the championship. Here in the United States, the playoffs are considered far more important than 30 regular season games over the course of multiple months.
"It's so hard to perform week-in and week-out and throughout the whole season to be the best team," Reiten said, "to have the most points, it's a very difficult one to win, so I really appreciate those titles."
And it's not just the Norwegian star who feels this way, not by a long shot. To many European natives playing in the NWSL, the American emphasis on the playoffs doesn't make a lot of sense. But they are trying to embrace the idea.
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"At the beginning, I found it really weird that you celebrate the playoffs more than the league, because the league takes longer, so I think it's a harder thing to win, so that was quite an adjustment" said Gotham's standout goalkeeper Ann-Katrin Berger, a German international, after their victory over the Utah Royals last weekend which clinched the Shield. "But I like it, it's almost like another Cup for me to win.
"Now we're playing against the best seven other teams, which is what you want to play at the end."
Sam Kerr and Guro Reiten of Gotham FC holding the NWSL Shield
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It is this dedication to winning league titles that has made Reiten into such a successful player over the course of her career, as she has modeled her daily routine to prioritize peak performance across a long period of time.
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"We talk about winning, I love winning, but when you've done it once you want it more, you want to do it again and again and again," Reiten said. "I'm a bad winner, but I'm also a bad loser. I don't like it, it affects my mood."
The playoff atmosphere is incredibly rare in a sport which usually rewards long-term consistency. Outside of a World Cup knockout stage, there are basically no other environments in global football where one defeat ends a team's entire season, but victory keeps it going. Some European leagues, such as Scotland, feature a type of "postseason," but it is still constructed in a league round-robin format. Even finals like the FA Cup are played after the league season has concluded, meaning the final whistle marks the end of the line for both the winner and loser.
MORE: Gotham FC rides excellent role players to first-ever NWSL Shield
To Reiten, it's just one of many things that she has needed to get used to during her move to the NWSL this past offseason.
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"It's more unpredictable," Reiten said of the differences between the NWSL and the WSL where she has spent most of her career. "Anyone can beat anyone on a given day.
"It is very physical, [there are] a lot of fast attacks. Not that there isn't transition in European football, it's just a little bit more [centered around] control of the game, possession, and that kind of style, whereas here it's a little more chaotic at times."
Speaking of chaos, this season has probably been one of the more unique of her exceptional and glittering career.
Arriving in the United States as an attacking player who had been a goal-scoring and creative presence for much of her time in Europe, Reiten has been moved all over the pitch at Gotham, from central midfield to left wing and, most notably, left-back.
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Yet in this new chapter, Reiten has tried not only to embrace the chaos of her new environment, but to leave her mark on the league and her club as well by playing her own way.
MORE: Savannah McCaskill, Gotham FC 'just want to win' as they embark on playoff chase
"I hope that I have come in here with my qualities," Reiten said, "especially on the ball where I'm best at, creating a little bit more control on our team and the way we play, and making it a little bit more predictable.
"I love consistency, it's always been my thing. If I have a bad day, it doesn't matter if it's game day or training, I put my standards really high and take pride in every performance, and that's made me who I am today. Hopefully I can bring that into this team. You're going to have days, but you want to push that floor as high as possible so you know what you get when you step onto the pitch."
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That consistency has translated to her new home extremely well. Despite being thrown around all over the pitch by head coach and master tinkerer Juan Carlos Amoros, Reiten has logged nearly 2,000 minutes, scoring two goals and assisting six more. She has been a critical piece of a team which has deployed 31 players this season, most in the NWSL.
It's the unpredictability of the playoffs that has the even-keeled Reiten intrigued.
"It's weird, but fun in a way, I don't know," she said with a smile and a laugh. "We'll see on Sunday if I'm a little bit nervous. I just think we need to focus on ourselves and take it one game at a time."
There's a good amount of truth to the cliche in this instance — the NWSL playoffs are the ultimate "one game at a time" environment. There's no guarantee of a tomorrow, a next weekend, a next game.
Guro Reiten of Chelsea with the WSL trophy
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For someone who has built a fabulous career on consistency, Reiten and Gotham now have three do-or-die games to secure the most coveted trophy of the season.
"The Shield is objectively more impressive," Midge Purce, one of Gotham's longest-tenured players, told the media after the win over Houston captured the 2026 Shield. "You are the best team throughout the entire season, it's so difficult to do it. But it's still America, and we like playoffs, and we like championships.
"It happens every time we have a foreign player. I remember [Spanish forward] Esther [Gonzalez] when we lost the league when she first got here, she was so devastated. I was like 'we get another chance at it,' and she was like 'I don't understand,' so I was like 'you'll see.'
"I always say the playoff air just tastes different."
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But maybe there's something more familiar for Reiten and the other European players to fight for: no NWSL team has ever won a domestic treble. That's on the line now as Gotham have already won the 2026 Shield and the Challenge Cup. It's there that one of the most decorated players of this era can take solace knowing there is a longer-term milestone at stake.
