The NWSL wants a team in Philadelphia, but it’s not clear how much Philadelphia wants a team

"It’s a place where we’d like to be at some point," commisioner Jessica Berman said. There's been an effort to get an expansion team, but it hasn't gone far.

Gotham FC and the Washington Spirit played a game in the NWSL's Summer Cup with Mexican clubs at Subaru Park in July. The teams faced off Saturday in the NWSL's semifinals, with Washington advancing on penalty kicks.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published Nov. 16, 2024, 4:47 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — It’s been 13 years since Philadelphia last had a professional women’s soccer team, and there’s little sign of that changing any time soon. But as the National Women’s Soccer League eyes further expansion, commissioner Jessica Berman let the city know on Saturday that she’d like it to have a team some day.

“Philadelphia is one of the great cities in our country that we think the NWSL could be successful in,” she said at a news conference before the Washington Spirit hosted Gotham FC in a playoff semifinal. “Whether or not that’s now or in the future, [I’m] not going to specifically comment on that. But I think it’s fair to say it’s a place where we’d like to be at some point, and we’ll see where our process now and future processes take us.”

The league currently has 14 teams and will add a 15th in Boston in 2026. Ideally, a 16th team also would join that year.

Last month, the Sports Business Journal named Philadelphia as one of five markets in the running, along with Cincinnati, Cleveland, Denver, and Nashville. Former Eagles linebacker Connor Barwin is fronting the effort and has been working for some time to assemble the financial and logistical heft needed to get a team.

It’s not clear who else is involved, and Barwin has yet to comment publicly on how far he has gotten. But there’s a perception within some circles around the league that Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Nashville are leading the field.

“We’re inching our way toward the finish line,” Berman said. “No specific update, nothing particularly newsworthy, other than that we are still on track to close by the end of this year. We’ve been really excited about the interest and the momentum — [it’s] given us a lot of ideas about how we think about future growth as well.”

There have been three professional women’s soccer leagues in the United States since the first, the Women’s United Soccer Association, launched in 2001 to capitalize on the historic 1999 World Cup. Philadelphia had a team in that league, the Charge, which played at Villanova’s football stadium. The league went out of business at the end of 2003.

Another league, Women’s Professional Soccer, ran from 2009 to 2011. It included the Philadelphia Independence in the last two seasons and played at West Chester and Widener’s football stadiums and once at Subaru Park.

The NWSL launched in 2013. Philadelphia and Atlanta are the only cities that had teams in both previous leagues but not the current one.

Northern New Jersey-based Gotham FC has occasionally played games at Subaru Park, starting in 2021 to honor Delran native Carli Lloyd’s retirement. This year, Gotham and the Washington Spirit each brought a game during the NWSL’s Summer Cup tournament against Mexican teams during the Olympics, allowing area natives to have a homecoming and testing the waters for local interest.

The U.S. women’s team hasn’t come to town since a 2022 friendly at Subaru Park and hasn’t played at Lincoln Financial Field since 2019. That game, part of the World Cup victory tour, drew 49,504 fans — still the largest crowd to watch the U.S. women at a standalone friendly game in team history.

Washington ousts Gotham in playoffs

The Washington Spirit knocked reigning champion Gotham FC out of the playoffs on Saturday in the first of this year’s semifinals, winning a penalty shootout after earning a 1-1 tie with a late equalizer.

Esther González’s 56th-minute header for Gotham looked destined to be the game’s only goal until Washington’s Hal Hershfelt leapt to head in a free kick in the 93rd. The sellout crowd of 19,563 erupted for the latest feat by the 23-year-old rising star with the club and the U.S. national team.

In the extra sessions, Gotham survived the ejection of right back Bruninha in the 101st minute and took the game to penalty kicks. But the Bats ran into a brick wall in Washington goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury, who saved all three shots she faced in the shootout.

The game featured eight players from the U.S. Olympic squad that won the gold medal this summer: Gotham’s Rose Lavelle, Lynn Williams, Emily Sonnett, Tierna Davidson, and Jenna Nighswonger against Washington’s Hershfelt, Trinity Rodman, and Casey Krueger.

All likely will be on the U.S. squad for the upcoming friendlies at European powers England and the Netherlands that will be announced Monday.

Washington will play the winner of Sunday’s semifinal between the Orlando Pride and Kansas City Current (2:30 p.m., 6abc), in the championship game, Nov. 23 at the Current’s stadium — the first venue built specifically for a NWSL team.

Kansas City’s Temwa Chawinga and Orlando’s Barbra Banda were the league’s top scorers this year, with Chawinga tallying a record 20 goals and Banda 13.