Orlando Pride lift first NWSL title behind Barbra Banda’s early strike

In a volatile league the Orlando Pride have always been reliably disappointing, but no longer. The punchline has struck back and the Pride have their first NWSL Championship.

Part of the league since 2016, Orlando’s sole prior playoff appearance came back in 2017, the only other time they have finished in the top six. This year, something changed. And now everything is different.

The NWSL Shield was secured with a record 60-point haul after a regular season that included a 23-game unbeaten run and eight-match winning streak. On Saturday the Pride added the Championship with a gritty 1-0 win over the Washington Spirit, becoming the first Shield winners to claim the Championship since the North Carolina Courage in 2019.

This triumph on a frigid night at CPKC Stadium in Kansas City is a tribute to the prodigious skills of Seb Hines, the 36-year-old head coach and team chemistry professor. Hines, a former England youth international and Orlando City player in his first managerial job, has molded the Pride into a solid and resilient collective since graduating from the assistant’s role in 2022.

Good players certainly help, such as a six-time Fifa World Player of the Year. Watched in person in the US by her mother for the first time, Marta had declared this to be the most important match of her career. That’s quite a claim from a forward who represented Brazil in a World Cup and three Olympic finals, all defeats. The assertion no doubt reflected the approaching sunset for a footballer who turns 39 in February, as well as the pinch-yourself thrill of reaching a final after seven years with a habitually struggling club.

There was no repeat of the mazy solo goal Marta scored in the semi-finals against the Kansas City Current. She saw little of the ball, but no matter: a rising star delivered the decisive goal.

The Spirit were marginally the better side in an uneventful first half until Barbra Banda, the Zambian striker signed for the second-highest transfer fee in the women’s game – $740,000 from Shanghai Shengli in March – scored her 17th goal of the season and fourth of the playoffs.

The 24-year-old former professional boxer surged down the right wing in the 37th minute, cut inside and unleashed a powerful low finish from the edge of the six-yard box. The officials would have been perfectly entitled to give a foul against Orlando’s Angelina for a push on Leicy Santos in the build-up, but the goal stood.

The vagaries of VAR aside, Banda’s physical power and direct running made her the most dangerous player for an Orlando side that spent much of the match on the back foot, with Trinity Rodman a threat for an injury-hit Washington team.

Hines celebrated the goal for about a second then gestured for his players to keep their heads, and his wariness was warranted. The Spirit almost equalized from a corner shortly before half time when an Ashley Hatch header rattled a post, and another aerial opportunity soon after the restart brought a smart save from Anna Moorhouse to deny Rosemonde Kouassi.

This was a clash between first and second seeds, which almost seems like an oddity in a competition that mangles pedigree and mocks expectations. Gotham FC went from worst in 2022 to first in 2023, beating OL Reign in last year’s final. (More precisely, they ascended from 12th in the standings in 2022 to sixth in 2023, then got hot in the playoffs.) But the fixture still represented a sharp season-to-season change: last year Orlando finished seventh in the league with Washington a place below.

The Spirit, champions in 2021, will surely be a force in the future under their 32-year-old coach, Jonatan Giráldez, who arrived in midseason after great success at Barcelona, and the ambitious ownership of Michele Kang, an IT healthcare mogul who is shaping a sports portfolio including teams in London and Lyon and a stake in MLB’s Baltimore Orioles, and days ago announced a $30m donation to US Soccer for women’s and girls’ programs.

But near-relentless Washington pressure failed to yield a breakthrough on Saturday against a desperate, obdurate and sometimes fortunate defense that conceded only 20 times in the regular season. Orlando had their dream double and Marta’s mother wept tears of joy in the stands at the final whistle as her daughter sank to her knees and pointed to the heavens.

Asked on CBS what victory meant, Marta said: “So much, so much.” She had, she added, been asking herself why she was still playing for Orlando after all those fruitless years, a serious star sticking with a team that was something of a joke: “I have so many questions about it. Now I have the answer.”