LOS ANGELES – The Angel City Football Club had to wait a year, but finally made their own piece of history.

Angel City FC reached the final day of the NWSL regular season needing a win and some help around the league to clinch their first playoff berth.

By the time the dust settled and the live standings stopped, Angel City (8-7-7, 31 points) had a lot of goals and most importantly a 5-1 win over the Portland Thorns to finish in fifth place and clinch a spot in the NWSL playoffs in front of a sellout crowd of 22,000 at BMO Stadium.

Angel City finished tied with Gotham FC and the Orlando Pride on points, but thanks to the third tiebreaker (goals scored), Angel City would finish fifth. Angel City finished the season with 31 goals scored. The second tiebreaker was goal differential and after eliminating the Pride from the equation, both Angel City and Gotham, who were also tied on wins (eight), were even at one.

“The goal was to go out, focus on ourselves and score as many points as we could and win the game,” Angel City defender Sarah Gorden said.

Angel City will visit fourth-seed Seattle-based OL Reign in the quarterfinals Friday at 7 p.m. (Paramount+).

With all of the games in the league played at the same time Sunday, it allowed for some wild moments for fans and team executives watching the live standings.

At start of the day, Angel City was in eighth place and by halftime, the club was in sixth.

After some tense early moments in the first half, Angel City broke through on the scoreboard on M.A. Vignola’s strike from the left wing that eluded Portland goalkeeper Bella Bixby in the 36th minute. Two minutes later, Scarlett Camberos’ header made it 2-0 and the celebration was just getting underway.

Angel City interim coach Becki Tweed said the team and staff were aware of what was going on across the league.

Savannah McCaskill (47th minute) and Sydney Leroux (51st minute) gave Angel City a 4-0 lead early in the second half.

“I kind of feel like, the last 12 games (of the season) for us have been must-win games because of where we were (in the standings) a few months ago,” Gorden said. “Coming into this game we already knew the mentality that we had to put out and what we had to do to perform.

“I also feel like it’s a little bit of poetic justice for us, we didn’t forget what it was like to go into Portland and have them tie up the game in the final minute with their goalie a few months ago (April 29) and then even the Challenge Cup game (May 31) where they came back to win…that kind of puts a chip on your shoulder even more. You have to win and then you’re playing a team that did that to you, so this was a really special game for us.”

Despite the large lead, it wasn’t all safe on the standings watch for Angel City. Portland scored in the 79th minute on a goal by Hina Sugita and that bumped Angel City from fifth to sixth in the standings. However, in the 80th minute, Jun Endo restored Angel City’s four-goal lead and moved the club back into fifth place.

Portland entered the game in with a chance to win the Shield as the best team in the league, but with Angel City’s outburst and San Diego Wave’s win over Racing Louisville FC 2-0, it was the Wave, in their second season, winning the Shield.

Later in the game, the other results around the league started to come in for Angel City as Gotham and Kansas City played to a 2-2 draw, Orlando defeated Houston 1-0 and North Carolina defeated Washington 1-0.

“We knew that people wrote us off, but no one in the room wrote each other off, we were all in it and we all believed in it, staff, players, we knew we weren’t done,” Tweed said. “There was a vibe that we weren’t done. Taking that into this game was so big for belief and confidence and ultimately the performance that we’ve been waiting for.”

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