Week 10 recap: Continental Champions!!

Gotham FC is coming back from Mexico with a trophy after defeating Club América 3-1 and Tigres 1-0 to win the inaugural CONCACAF W Champions Cup. 

Gotham struck early in their semifinal match against Club América—in the 21st minute, Sarah Schupansky delivered a corner towards the far post that Geyse was able to run into and send into the back of the net with her feet. 9 minutes later, Midge Purce successfully converted a penalty kick that she earned herself, and 3 minutes after that, Esther’s shot hit the crossbar and then deflected into the net off of an América defender. Gotham did not maintain a clean sheet—Club América struck back in the 38th minute—but was able to hold on for a win.

Gotham then faced the Tigres who were hot on the heels of a resounding victory over the Portland Thorns—speedy attackers Thembi Kgatlana and Lizbeth Ovalle troubled Portland’s back line, and capitalizing on a corner and a goalkeeper error saw them advance to the final to face Gotham FC. The final saw Gotham control most of the ball, creating what felt like countless “almost” chances (including a missed penalty and missed rebound) before finally scoring in the 82nd minute when Esther successfully put the rebound in the back of the net after missing a penalty of her own. Gotham were then able to put the game to bed, holding onto their lead for the next 15 minutes to be crowned champions of the first ever CONCACAF W Champions Cup.

Gotham is finally back in the win column after a rough 3 weeks in league play, but there is still work to do. 

Semi-final: Gotham vs. Club América

Gotham ended a 3-week scoreless drought by putting 3 past the Club América defense on Wednesday. But how much does this scoreline reflect the actual gameplay?

First, let’s look at the stats. Gotham had fewer shots (10/3 on target vs. 17/5 on target), but won the xG battle (2.51 vs. 1.33) and the non-penalty xG battle (1.75 vs. 1.33), so while Gotham wasn’t creating a huge quantity of chances, what they created was still pretty high quality (0.18 npxG per shot). Gotham did however lose the PSxG battle 1.33 to 1.66, which meant they both allowed América to create high quality shots and also didn’t create very high quality shots themselves, a symptom of the finishing problem that Gotham has been struggling with for years. Gotham was also out-possessed (49% vs. 51%), had worse pass accuracy (74% vs. 77%), and had fewer total passes (385 vs. 391). Gotham lost all these battles by relatively slim margins, but they are still important in accurately telling the story of the match, which was not necessarily a resounding or decisive victory on the part of the Bats.

Let’s take a look at some moments from this match

Goal 1: 21’ Geyse

Through it all, this 2025 team has been so good at set pieces, and a set piece goal was perhaps the perfect confidence boost that this team needed after this long drought. Sarah Schupansky is just so good at set piece delivery—she had the presence of mind to recognize Geyse was in space of her own and the accuracy to deliver the ball perfectly into a gap near her. Geyse also had a great read on the ball and was able to slither past her defender to get a foot on it, and Gotham has suddenly scored their first goal of the month of May. 

Almost goal: 24’

Gotham was playing with a renewed confidence after the first goal, and we saw that almost immediately after. The team worked hard to win the ball high up the pitch and keep ahold of the ball until eventually Sarah Schupansky had space to shoot. This play involved a level of tenacity and teamwork that we haven’t seen from this team in a while, and although the shot ended up high, it was a great effort.

Goal 2: 30’ Midge Purce

Lilly Reale had great vision on the pass to Midge Purce in the buildup. The América defender is slowed down from being caught off-guard and was slow enough for Purce to get to the ball first and force her into a foul. Gotham did benefit from some poor defending here—the América defender really did seem favored to win the ball—but credit is still due to Purce here for winning the penalty.

Midge then delivers a powerful strike to net her first goal since returning from her ACL injury—huge confidence boost for her and for the team.

Goal 3: 33’ Own goal

Gotham got lucky on the finish, but the beauty in this goal comes in its build-up. Starting from the top, we have AKB seeing space right in front of her and rolling the ball to Sarah Schupansky. Schupansky has a touch on the ball that almost sees it going back to Club América in a dangerous position, but Jaelin Howell does well to keep the ball with Gotham. Howell passes forward to Geyse, who turns and carries the ball forward until she hits a wall. She passes to Schupansky, who draws and then dribbles through defenders, passing into the space she just created around Taryn Torres. Torres has a quick pass forward to Howell, who brings the ball into the box. Esther successfully tricks América defenders into expecting another forward pass and they start moving forward, while she hangs behind to create space for herself. Finally, Esther finds the gap between two defenders and puts a shot off—but it kind of looks like she whiffs it—and the ball hits the post before bouncing in off a defender in an unfortunate position. A goal is a goal, and suddenly Gotham has a 3 goal cushion 33 minutes into the match.

Goal 4: 38’ Irene Guerrero (Club América)

Gotham did concede once this match. América are able to successfully build out the back, and Mandy Freeman gets beat on their left side and in her recovery efforts allows a player who’s further out wide to make a run into her mark’s pass. No one from Gotham is there to block this player’s cross, and Guerrero has a freak finish—seemingly off her shin into the top corner??—that no one could anticipate. Gotham’s back line finds themselves unable to cover this runner, and they are punished for it.

Almost goal: 47’

This set piece featured yet another great delivery by Schupansky that finds the head of Esther. Esther has a perfect header towards Sonnett who is running into space, and Sonnett’s shot unfortunately bounces off the right post. Midge has a tough look at the rebound, which she ends up sending high. 

Almost goal: 61’

Just another great line-breaking pass by Taryn Torres—that’s all 🙂. Esther also deserves her flowers for this insane shot.

Team play: 65’

It doesn’t work out in the end but this was great play on the forward line.

The most important part of this match was that Gotham got a win. They played with a confidence we haven’t seen in a few weeks that allowed them to press high up the pitch and win the ball in dangerous situations. However, they did struggle with retaining the ball in the midfield, as they have in recent weeks, and allowed those turnovers to result in chances for América. 

América also dominated the second half of the game—Gotham was mostly reactive—and although they failed to put anything else on the board, they still gave Gotham a run for their money. At the end of the day, Gotham benefitted from a couple of flukey situations, but they still remained defensively sound and ultimately came out on top. 

When speaking on the game plan for this match, midfielder Jaelin Howell said that the plan was to “score early—that was our goal—and getting those three goals early really helped.” She did acknowledge that Gotham wasn’t in complete control of the game, and looking ahead to the final said, "now, the next step is continuing to push and control the game, and that’s what we’ll focus on.”

Final: Gotham vs. Tigres

3 separate Gotham players and head coach Juan Carlos Amorós were asked following the América victory whether they’d rather face Tigres or the Thorns in the final, and all 4 gave some variation of “may the best team win,” with midfielder Sarah Schupansky going a step further and saying, “I know our staff is more than capable of preparing us for either opponent.” 

A few hours later, the final matchup was set after Tigres defeated the Portland Thorns 2-0, with their goals coming from a corner kick and a goalkeeper error. Tigres were in a similar spot this match compared to Gotham—Portland dominated in pretty much all match statistics, and Tigres got their goals off of a corner and a goalkeeper error, a similarly flukey situation. Regardless, the pressure created by speedy and skilled attackers Thembi Kgatlana and Lizbeth Ovalle were a real and persistent threat to the Thorns throughout the game, and the Tigres came out of the match looking like a scary opponent to face.

The commentators kept mentioning that the Tigres like to build their attack out of the back, and boy did the Bats capitalize on this. Gotham came into this match with a high press that we haven’t seen since April, creating a big chance in only the 2nd minute of the game.

This moment was a pure goalkeeping masterclass on the part of Tigres keeper Itzel González. There’s not much more Schupansky could’ve done on the rebound ball, but we unfortunately do not see Gotham go up early in the game. Still, this moment showed great intent from the team, who created this chance by winning the ball high up the pitch.

Gotham registered a few more shots on target in this half, the best of which came in the 12th minute.

Geyse wins the ball in the middle of the pass and draws defenders, then has a clever backheel pass into the path of Esther on her left. Esther then rips a shot from outside the area that is powerful and on target but ultimately handled by Itzel González.

Towards the end of the half, Gotham got yet another great look that came from pressing high up the pitch. 

In the 43rd minute, pressure from Midge Purce forces a Tigres player into a poor pass that Jaelin Howell intercepts and passes right to Esther who has tons of space in front of her. Esther takes a few touches to settle the ball, but by that point the Tigres center backs are ready for her shot. They block the shot and are able to clear the ball.

Gotham’s final chance of the half was a big one. For the second match in a row, Midge Purce won a penalty for her team and stepped up to take it.

Purce had a pretty great shot here, and Itzel González once again made things difficult for Gotham by coming up with a great save. Gotham also made things a lot more difficult for themselves, however, in the scramble for the rebound. Emily Sonnett, Midge Purce, and Esther all converged on the rebound ball, they did not communicate, and the ball went out of bounds off of a Gotham player. Sonnett likely had the best chance here, but as always, hindsight is 20/20.

Gotham had many chances in the second half that they couldn’t convert (more on that later), but they finally got their goal with 8 minutes left in regular time. The Bats had just won a corner, and in all the box movement that happens in preparation for it, we got to see one of the funniest (but surprisingly not the most egregious) fouls of the weekend.

Sonnett was undoubtedly facing an inappropriate amount of contact, but the veteran also does a great job to sell the foul, and earns another penalty for her team. This time, it’s Esther who steps up to the spot to take it.

Itzel González guesses correctly once again, but this time Gotham is better prepared for the rebound, which Esther buries. Gotham are up 1-0 with 8 minutes left in regulation, and the rest of the game turns into a keepaway masterclass.

This performance was a much more commanding one on the part of Gotham, even if the scoreline suggests otherwise. Gotham took more shots (23/7 on target vs. 7/1(!) on target), higher xG (3.84 xG/2.38 npxG vs. 0.67 xG), had more possession of the ball (56% vs. 44%), had more passes (304 vs. 256), and had a higher pass accuracy (79% vs. 71%)—this last statistic does reflect Gotham’s own passing accuracy, but more so shows how much Gotham were able to disrupt Tigres’ passing with their press. In fact, 87.7% of the Bats’ passes came in the middle or attacking third of the pitch—for context, that same number for Tigres was 46.9%. 83.6% of Tigres’ defensive actions came in their defensive third, compared to 26.1% for Gotham. Finally, Gotham had an average field tilt (a measure looking at the share of possession each team has in their respective attacking thirds) of 79.8% throughout the match, with 100% in minutes 60-75 of the match. The Bats definitely controlled this match.

Gotham also had 6 big chances and didn’t allow Tigres to create any—the team only scoring one goal is definitely a problem, but besides not putting away chances, they played very very well. Both Gotham and Portland struggled to finish their chances against this Tigres side, but the difference here is that the Bats were able to limit Tigres’ chances in the meantime.

After the allotted 6 minutes of stoppage time, the final whistle blew, and Gotham were crowned the first ever North American champions, punching their ticket to both the 2026 FIFA Women’s Champions Cup and the 2028 FIFA Women’s Club World Cup. As head coach Juan Carlos Amorós put it, “Now, forever, the first team to win the Concacaf W Champions Cup will be Gotham FC.”

What should we be taking away?

Geyse unlocked

Ever since Geyse arrived at the club in April, Gotham has struggled with figuring out how to best deploy her (we saw the worst version of this experiment in the last league game against the San Diego Wave, where she played as the striker). In these two matches, it feels like the team finally figured it out. Geyse did a great job of winning the ball high up the pitch, receiving the ball out wide and carrying it forward past defenders, and holding onto the ball by dribbling out of tight spaces. She was asked to play to her strengths (which are NOT acting as a receiving and shooting player), and the team looked much better as a result.

In fact, we saw both her carrying and her dribbling in the build-up to Gotham’s third goal against Club América.

Gotham’s front line is finally starting to feel like it’s coming together again, but the team still finds itself unable to finish their chances. 

Finishing woes

The entire final tournament, but especially the second half of the final match, saw so many crosses into the box that did not find a single target. 

Midge and Lilly were working overtime on Gotham’s left side to send beautifully placed low crosses into the center of the box. Part of the problem here is team chemistry, but we can’t help but wonder if Gotham’s guidance about missing the nearest attacker when sending in a cross sometimes causes Gotham to skip over their best chance in a particular play.

This is still an improvement—every minute Gotham spends missing a cross in their attacking third is a minute they don’t spend in their defensive third. Furthermore, Gotham being able to get this high up the pitch so many times is indicative of a level of control they had over this match that they haven’t had in the past few weeks. So although they are baby steps, steps are still being taken in the right direction.

However, we have to mention once again that Gotham missed two (2) penalties this match. Tigres’ goalkeeper was great, but let’s head to shooting practice, eh?

Looking ahead to next match

The NWSL is off this week for international break, and we will see several Bats taking flight to join their national teams—Emily Sonnett, Stella Nyamekye, Esther González, Jéssica Silva, Jess Carter, Ann-Katrin Berger, Lilly Reale, and Sarah Schupansky are headed to camp.

Gotham’s next game is at home against the Kansas City Current on Saturday, June 7th at 1 pm, and the match will be Gotham’s annual Pride game. Kansas City currently sit at the top of NWSL standings with 8 wins and 2 losses on the season, and have proven to be a very strong team. Although the side just lost two key players in Alana Cook and Debinha to long term injury, they have players like USWNT forward Michelle Cooper coming back from injury, and this match will probably be Gotham’s toughest challenge yet. Hopefully the Bats can carry the momentum from this tournament into this match, but a loss wouldn’t necessarily be an indictment of this squad, who, might we remind you, are the champions of North America.

Thumbnail courtesy of Gotham FC.