5 Magic Moments from Angel City’s Ascent

When Angel City walked off the rain-soaked pitch on September 26th having taken all three points from second-place Washington Spirit, a tangible sense of belief hung in the air. Angel City had collected their 16th point out of the last 18 available, and moved into 6th place in the NWSL standings.

If you rewound 30 days, looking down from a playoff position would have felt considerably less realistic. A 2-0 loss to North Carolina stretched Angel City’s winless run to six games, played largely without their two leading scorers, Sveindís Jónsdóttir and Maiara Niehues. By the end of August, Angel City had gone more than a month without a win, and the final playoff position was drifting further and further away.

But in football, things can change in the blink of an eye. This is a game of moments, where a moment can turn a difficult month into one of the best stretches of football in club history.

Angel City have been collecting those moments hand-over-fist for the past four weeks, scoring , earning points home and away, and placing themselves in the thick of the NWSL playoff positions.

Here are five of the most meaningful moments from ACFC’s climb up the table.

Reinforcements Arrive in Boston

After six games without a win, Angel City headed to Boston on August 31, needing a result to stay within touching distance of the final playoff spot.

Thankfully, their two top goalscorers returned to action just in time.

Sveindís Jónsdóttir only needed 18 minutes to tally her first goal back to give Angel City a crucial 3-1 advantage in what was a wild first half, beating her defender to a long-ball and finishing from an absurdly tight angle to get back on the score sheet.

Niehues also announced her return in style with an absolute laser from 20 yards to give Angel City their fifth of the game and wrap up their first win since July 18.

The game was an encouraging reminder of how electric the ACFC attack can be when everyone is fit and firing, and it laid the foundation for what they built on in the weeks that followed.

A Brace for Shores

After a scoreless first half against Racing Louisville on September 5, Evelyn Shores spent most of the second half doing what wingbacks typically do: getting forward, getting involved, and making the opposition account for one more attacker than they would prefer.

The game was scoreless for 68 minutes, both teams searching for the goal that would tip the scales.

Evelyn Shores found it. And then she found one more.

Her first came from outside the box, turning off of a seemingly innocuous Sarah Gorden pass, squaring up her defender, and blasting one into the bottom corner to put Angel City in front.

Her second came deep into stoppage time, when Ally Sentnor slipped a gorgeous pass through the Louisville defense and Shores had once again pushed herself all the way into the attack, this time finishing to put the game away.

Shores’ brace accentuated one of the best qualities of this Angel City team: there are goals all over the pitch. Fullbacks maraud forward at every opportunity, midfielders regularly smash goals in from 20+ yards, and a forward line is a handful for even the best defenses in the league.

Shores gave Racing Louisville a taste of what it looks like when you have to try to defend them all.

Sentnor From the Spot

Surrendering a 1-0 advantage and falling behind 3-1 at home to Denver Summit could very well have been a fatal blow to Angel City’s playoff hopes.

But shortly after a Prisca Chilufya goal brought ACFC within one, Sentnor attempted to head a long Jónsdóttir throw-in toward goal. But as she made contact with the ball, a Denver Summit boot met the side of her face. The ref pointed to the spot. Penalty, Angel City.

Sentnor could have given the penalty to one of her teammates, taken an extra beat to regain some composure after being in some understandable pain.

But the 22-year-old stepped up to the spot, took her paces, and confidently slotted hard and low, bringing ACFC back from their 3-1 deficit to salvage a crucial point.

That game could easily have derailed a fortnight of positive momentum and put Angel City on the back foot again. But two late goals retained the momentum of ACFC’s climb up the NWSL table

Super Sub Suarez

When Seattle Reign came to BMO Stadium on September 16, they had something Taylor Suarez wanted: a place in the playoffs. At the time, the ninth-vs.-eighth-place matchup was as close to a must-win as you can get in mid-September in the NWSL.

They say 2-0 is the most dangerous lead in football; Suarez knows this. So when she came on with Angel City two goals ahead in the 80th minute, she gave her teammates room to breathe.

It took eleven seconds for Suarez to make her way from the halfway line to her position on the wing, another four to play a perfect one-two with Evelyn Shores, and six more to leave two defenders in her dust and curl Angel City’s third of the game around another. 21 seconds on the field. 3-0 ACFC.

In her next substitute appearance the following week, Suarez did it again.

After coming on to attack a Utah Royals team down to nine players, Suarez needed 71 seconds to put the game out of reach, bursting into the box and delicately redirecting a Gisele Thompson cross past the Utah keeper.

Two games, two game-sealing goals in less than a minute and a half.

Not a bad weapon to have on the bench.

The Thunderbolt

You could write a book describing how good this goal was and they would have to print it in a hundred volumes.

There’s too many words for how beautifully it came off her foot, how calmly it floated in the driving D.C. rain, how politely it narrowly avoided the crossbar before nestling itself in the back of the net.

Washington Spirit showed up on the West Coast as winners of three of their last four, in second place in the NWSL, ready to rain on ACFC’s proverbial playoff parade.

But little did they know, Maiara Niehues would score a worldie in any weather. When she wound up from 20 yards and absolutely buried the game-winner as the clock struck 88 minutes to steal the points, she took Angel City Football Club's already surging belief to the next level.

It was the perfect cherry on top, an absolute punctuation mark on one of the club's best months in its history. It took a team that has looked as dynamic as any team in the world and solidified its place in the playoff picture for potentially the first time since 2023.

Nothing about the next few weeks is guaranteed. Seven points separate third from ninth, and in this league, fortunes can change in a weekend.

But Angel City is finding its best football at exactly the right time. And on a rain-soaked night in D.C., with two minutes to play and a playoff race hanging in the balance, Niehues provided the kind of moment that makes you wonder just how far this team can go.

There are three more opportunities to find out this season. A trip to Denver on October 17. Then Bay FC and Boston come to Los Angeles to wrap up the regular season.

So come and help push them on to the finish. Bring the noise. Bring the energy. Bring your voice. Help ACFC solidify their place in the playoff picture.

Because from what we’ve seen over the past five weeks, that’s more than enough time for us all to create a little more magic.