Sunday, October 12, at 2:00 p.m., Angel City FC hosts the Houston Dash. The match will be broadcast on ESPN, with radio broadcasts available in English on iHeart. You can buy tickets here.
Match Up
Angel City’s last regular-season game was a 0–1 loss at home to Kansas City on October 7. Forward Michelle Cooper scored the winner for the Current.
Houston’s last match was a 1–1 home draw against Orlando, with defender Malia Berkely scoring for the home team.
ACFC’s last match against the Dash was a 3–1 win at home on April 12. LA is 2–1–4 (W–L–D) all-time in this fixture.
Angel City are in 11th place with a 6–11–6 record. Houston are in 10th at 7–10–6.
Scouting Report
Houston brought in a new coach, Fabrice Gautrat, to start the 2025 season, and have improved markedly over last year. In 2024, the Dash finished in last place with a 5–5–16 record; while they currently have just two more wins, they’ve salvaged twice as many draws, putting them seven points ahead of their 2024 finish with three games to go. The team’s improvement has been especially marked since the summer break, as they’ve lost just two out of 10 in this stretch.
One offseason player acquisition who has stood out for Houston is forward Yazmeen Ryan, who came to the club via trade with Gotham last December. The onetime TCU standout leads Houston in goals, with four, and has also added two assists.
More recently, Houston picked up defender Anna Heilferty from Washington in September. A former standout for the club who helped the team to a third-place regular-season finish and NWSL Championship win in 2021, Heilferty suffered back-to-back ACL tears in 2023 and 2024, sidelining her for almost two full years. She debuted for Houston on September 19, drawing a penalty that Ryan converted to win the game against Chicago.
Playoff Math
Sitting at 24 points, Angel City aren’t mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, but with three games to go, they’ll need other results to go their way to keep their hopes alive.
ACFC will finish with 33 points, if they win out; with Racing and San Diego on 32 and 31 points, respectively, that could be good enough for seventh place, two spots above the playoff line, but only if San Diego gets no more than a single point out of the rest of the season, and Louisville gets zero—and, of course, neither tenth-place Houston nor ninth-place North Carolina also win out.
As the first tiebreaker is goal differential, LA could be in a difficult position if they tied on points with another team for eighth. ACFC currently has a GD of -9, compared with San Diego’s +2 and Louisville’s -4. On the other hand, Houston and North Carolina sit at -9 and -6, respectively, so if a major shakeup means Angel City ends up competing with one of those teams for a spot, they’d have a better chance.
