The Kansas City Current have won the 2025 NWSL Shield, wrapping it up with a 2-0 win over Seattle Reign FC.
Debinha gave the Current a half-time lead with a penalty in the 34th minute, with the advantage doubled by a Temwa Chawinga header quarter of an hour from time.
It is the first time the Current have won the Shield, and it comes off the back of a season where they have won 17 of their 21 matches.
They are currently on a 14-match winning streak, and have won the Shield in record time – with five games left of the campaign. The previous record for fastest to clinch the title was with four matches remaining done by Seattle in 2014, North Carolina in 2018 and Portland in 2021. The Current is the seventh different Shield winner in the league’s 13-year history.
Kansas City coach Andonovski: We are better than last year
It is also a first Shield for Current’s head coach Vlatko Andonovski, who has won two NWSL Championships and has twice been named the NWSL Coach of the Year.
“[Winning the Shield] is good and it’s important that we work for things like this and moments like this all season,” he said afterwards. “I am happy for them, and obviously they are happy. It’s just justification of all the work that we’ve done this year, and last year too.
“We talked last year that we had a great season, and we said we were going to come out stronger.
“We proved that we are a better team than last year and we are going to keep growing as we go forward.”
Kansas City Current’s play-off record
After the conclusion of the regular season, the top eight NWSL teams go into a play-off for the Championship. Kansas City Current, as the table-toppers, will go into that as the top seed, meaning they will play the eighth seed at home in the quarter-final, and should they progress, they will also host their semi-final.
The NWSL regular season concludes Sunday, 2nd November, and times and dates for play-off matches will be confirmed after that. The NWSL Championship final match will take place on Saturday, 22nd November, at PayPal Park in San Jose, California – the home of Bay FC.
This will be a third play-off appearance for Kansas City, but their first as top seed.
They also reached the play-offs last year, progressing as fourth seed. They beat North Carolina Courage 1-0 in the quarter-finals but lost 3-2 to Orlando Pride in the semi-finals.
Their first play-off appearance came in 2022, when they beat Houston Dash 2-1 in the quarter-finals, OL Reign (now Seattle Reign) 2-0 in the semi-finals, but lost 2-0 to Portland Thorns in the final.
