This is what we’ve waited for all year. The Orlando Pride have risen from the bottom of the NWSL and into the playoffs, finishing the season as the league’s hottest team, on a 6-0-3 streak to end the 2017 campaign. Now the team will play its first postseason game against a team that’s been nearly as scalding hot down the stretch — the Portland Thorns.
Mark Parsons’ squad was, unlike the Pride, widely considered one of two favorites to win the whole darn thing this year before the first ball of 2017 was even kicked. Orlando, by virtue of winning at Shield champs North Carolina last weekend, punched the most difficult ticket to the championship by having to play in front of the throngs at Providence Park — multiple time zones away and on artificial turf.