The origin story of the Kansas City Current‘s run to the NWSL Championship begins with a victory over OL Reign.
Not the 2-0 win on Sunday over the Shield-winning Reign in the semifinal in Seattle. That gutsy result clinched the Current’s spot in this year’s NWSL Championship, set for Saturday at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., where they will face the favored Portland Thorns. But it was hardly the starting point for the Current. Rather, the Current’s stunning turnaround from last-placed team in 2021 to championship contender in 2022 began taking shape more than a year ago, when the Current managed a 1-0 victory over OL Reign on Aug. 14, 2021.
At the time, Kansas City didn’t even have a permanent name or branding — the first-year team had simply been known as “KC NWSL.” They also failed to win any of their first 13 games of the 2021 regular season. Including the preseason NWSL Challenge Cup, the team went 17 games without a victory heading into that match against the Reign.
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A 1-0 win over the Reign marked the start of a six-game unbeaten streak at home on the team’s converted baseball field — another byproduct of the team’s rushed NWSL entry after Utah Royals owner Dell Loy Hansen was removed from the league and his team relocated to Kansas City.
Players believed that Kansas City was better than the team’s record suggested, but the stats were brutal. The team that would later be named the Current finished bottom of the 10-team table with 16 points from 24 games, 14 of which were losses.
