Attendance was announced at a record 32,000 and soccer-starved southern Californians were stoked when the San Diego Wave and Los Angeles’ Angel City FC — the two 2022 expansion teams in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) — opened the world’s newest football ground in San Diego in September. Adding the Wave and Angel City, who play within 130 miles (215 kilometers), of each other has given the NWSL not just its first real derby, but also a long-overdue presence in a region home to 20 million people, from Tijuana to Los Angeles.
“To see soccer in California not exist before this season for many years, to see San Diego embracing us as a women’s professional soccer team so quickly in the way that they did — it was just a great moment,” Wave striker Alex Morgan, the 2019 World Cup silver boot and an NWSL original since 2013, said in a post-match press conference. “It felt like we were home and had 32,000 fans behind us from the first minute. Read More
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