Welcome to this week’s edition of Goalside Gossip!

Well, that’s the regular season done. Gotham finally have a Shield after beating Utah 2-0, and Seattle grabbed the last playoff spot with a 1-0 win over Orlando in Jess Fishlock’s final regular-season game. It was a rough day for North Carolina, who won and went home anyway, and for Denver, whose first season ended on an own goal in stoppage time. Angel City, meanwhile, just keep on not losing.

The bracket is set, and we've got all four quarterfinals broken down below, times, channels and who we think wins it. Away from that, Ashley Sanchez picked up the Golden Boot (though she has to share the record), Columbus started building its training facility, and ESPN got all 16 general managers talking about the Rodman Rule.

Let's get into it.

Game Summaries (NWSL):

News:

Gotham only needed a draw against Utah to lock up the Shield, but they weren’t interested in sweating it out. They won 2-0 in front of 11,209 at Sports Illustrated Stadium, and it’s the first Shield in club history.

The opener came inside nine minutes. Midge Purce beat her defender down the side and whipped in a low cross that took a deflection on its way to Guro Reiten, who was waiting at the back post and drove it in. The timing was perfect, too, since San Diego had gone ahead at Bay just moments earlier. Ann-Katrin Berger had to make a big stop four minutes later, but that was about as close as Utah came, and she finished with her 11th clean sheet of the year. Jaedyn Shaw, back from injury and on as a 60th-minute sub, put it away in the 80th off another Purce ball.

Rose Lavelle made her return as well. The one worry is Jaelin Howell, who came off in the first half with a right ankle injury and will be evaluated ahead of the quarterfinals. Gotham finish 18-5-7, and for at least the next week they’re holding every trophy the NWSL hands out: the Shield, the Challenge Cup and the 2025 Championship.

Up next: Seattle at home in the quarterfinals on Sunday.

Seattle knew a win would get them in, and they made Jess Fishlock’s last regular-season game at Lumen Field one to remember. Center back Jordyn Bugg scored the only goal in the 68th minute, and the Reign are in the playoffs.

Honestly, it should have been more. Seattle outshot Orlando 18 to 8, and the Pride didn't put a single shot on target all game. The problem was Cosette Morché, who kept stopping everything until a corner finally beat her. Nérilia Mondésir swung it to the near post, Fishlock flicked it on with a backheel, Mia Fishel got a touch, and Bugg was there to finish it for her second goal of the season.

Fishlock came off in the 82nd minute to a huge ovation from 16,095 fans, the Reign's biggest crowd of the year. She wraps up her regular-season career with 232 appearances, 52 goals and 31 assists for the club, and now she gets at least one more game. Orlando, for their part, played without Barbra Banda again. She missed the last three games of the season stuck outside the U.S., which we get into further down.

Up next: at Gotham in the quarterfinals on Sunday.

This one was always going to be cruel for somebody. North Carolina and Denver both needed a win and a Seattle loss, and only one of those things happened. The Courage won 1-0 on a stoppage-time own goal, but with Seattle beating Orlando, neither side was going anywhere.

Denver were the better team early, holding 70% of the ball in the first 20 minutes and getting seven shots off before halftime without finding a way through. Ashley Sanchez thought she’d broken the record with a lovely chip over Abby Smith, only for the flag to go up, and Smith stopped her again from a set piece in the 79th. Then, in the 94th minute, the ball came off Kaleigh Kurtz and into her own net, in her first game back in North Carolina since leaving the Courage.

Both seasons are over.

Angel City needed Kansas City to drop points to get a home quarterfinal, and that never happened. They took care of their own business anyway, beating Boston 4-1 in Carson to stretch their unbeaten run to 10.

Nealy Martin got things going in the 17th minute with a shot from outside the box off an Ally Sentnor pass. Believe it or not, it was her first NWSL goal, in her 115th league game. Boston pulled level through Amanda Gutierres in the 37th, but Angel City were much sharper after the break. Evelyn Shores headed in a Sveindís Jónsdóttir cross eight minutes into the second half, and Jónsdóttir got one of her own in the 72nd, finishing a fast break from a Taylor Suarez pass for her 10th of the season. Suarez then set up Claire Emslie from close range in the 84th to round it off.

Ten unbeaten is a franchise record, and nobody in the league has been hotter over the last two months. As for Boston, their first season ends at 9-15-6.

Up next: at Kansas City in the quarterfinals on Saturday.

All four top seeds host, and there are no second chances from here. Every game is single elimination, so if it's level after 90 it goes to extra time, then penalties, and the bracket is fixed, so nobody gets reseeded. Quarterfinals run Friday through Sunday, the semis are November 13 to 15, and the final is Saturday, November 21 at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., 8 p.m. ET on CBS and Paramount+.

Here's how the first round shapes up.

(2) San Diego vs (7) Utah, Friday, 10 p.m. ET. Utah finally get a playoff game and could hardly have drawn a worse week for it. They haven't scored in three, and leading scorer Mina Tanaka missed time late with an injury. San Diego beat them twice already, 2-1 in Utah in March and 4-2 at home in August, and arrive unbeaten in five with Trinity Byars and 18-year-old Melanie Barcenas both scoring. The most lopsided game of the weekend on paper, which is usually when something strange happens.

(4) Kansas City vs (5) Angel City, Saturday, 12 p.m. ET. Somebody's hot streak ends here. Kansas City have won five straight, Croix Bethune just set the single-season assist record, and CPKC Stadium has sold out every game this year. Angel City haven't lost in 10, with Sveindís Jónsdóttir up to 10 goals. They sat 11th when they fired Alexander Straus in June, and Leif Gunnar Smerud has dragged them to fifth since. They split the season series, 2-1 to Angel City in May and 1-1 in August.

(1) Gotham vs (8) Seattle, Sunday, 12:30 p.m. ET. Seattle have the best motivation in the bracket: lose, and it's Jess Fishlock's last game. Gotham won both meetings this year, 2-0 in Seattle in May and 3-2 at home in July, and have the deepest roster in the league. They'll need it, with Jordynn Dudley and Bruninha out for the season and Jaelin Howell's ankle a question mark. Seattle don't score much but they defend well, and Gotham have spent the last few years knocking off higher seeds rather than being one.

(3) Washington vs (6) Portland, Sunday, 3 p.m. ET. The Spirit are playing for a final in their own stadium, which is about as much motivation as a bracket can hand you. Portland won 1-0 in D.C. on opening night, then Washington won 2-1 in Portland in September for the first time in club history. The Spirit lost last year's final to Gotham. Portland make the playoffs for a record 10th straight season with Sophia Wilson leading the line.

So who wins it? Gotham are the obvious favorites. They already hold the Shield, the Challenge Cup and last year's title, and they'll host every round until the final. The catch is the two hottest teams in the league, Kansas City and Angel City, are both on Gotham's side of the bracket, so one of them is waiting in the semis.

If we had to pick one, it's Gotham. We just wouldn't bet the house on it.

Ashley Sanchez won the 2026 Golden Boot on Sunday, though she'll have to share the record. She finished on 20 goals, the same number Temwa Chawinga scored in 2024, after going quiet over North Carolina's last four games.

That shouldn't take anything away from the year she had. She's the first American to reach 20 in a season, and the jump is steep: her previous best was five goals, in 2023 and again in 2024, and she managed two all of last year. Mak Lind moved her out to the wing in his first season in charge, and she turned into the most productive scorer in the league. The frustrating part is the Courage finished ninth, so she doesn't get a postseason.

The one player who might have caught her never got the chance. Barbra Banda was second on 17 goals, but she missed Orlando’s last three games because of U.S. re-entry rules after Zambia’s Olympic qualifier in Uganda.

Columbus is still more than a year away from playing a game, but construction has started. On Tuesday the club broke ground on the 45,000-square-foot OhioHealth Training Grounds, which is set to open in January 2028.

It's a big build. Three grass pitches and three turf fields, plus a weight room, a cafe, a content studio, a childcare area, and rehab and meeting space. The team will play its games at ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, where the Columbus Crew play, but this is the day-to-day home. It'll also host Olympic and Paralympic teams during the 2028 Games, when Columbus is set to stage nine Olympic matches.

General manager Lucy Rushton, who was hired in October, is already using it as a recruiting pitch. Atlanta, the league's other 2028 club, broke ground on its own facility in Marietta back in April.

ESPN talked to the general managers of all 16 clubs for its third annual anonymous survey, and the High Impact Player rule, better known as the Rodman Rule, was clearly a sore spot.

The rule lets teams spend up to $1 million over the $3.7 million salary cap on star players. A number of GMs said that won't be enough on its own to keep big names in the league, and one went as far as calling it “very much inadequate” next to the global market. The players union didn't want it in this shape either, and argued the money should have gone into the cap itself rather than a carve-out the league defines. The survey was also done before the league moved to loosen who qualifies, which ESPN reported in late October.

The one thing nearly everyone agreed on was travel. Charters are capped at six legs a season, which is three round trips, and GMs want more. Several of them tied the rise in injuries to how much teams are flying, and one called the link no coincidence. Most of them still said the NWSL is the best league in the world.

Before you go: Gotham have the Shield, the deepest roster in the league and a home game every round until the final. They also drew Kansas City and Angel City, the two hottest teams in the NWSL, on their own side of the bracket. Does the No. 1 seed even reach the final? Hit reply and tell us. We read every one.