Kansas City Current Face Critical Match Against Denver Summit to Salvage Playoff Spot

When Katie Lampson scored in the 121st minute on a bitterly cold day last November to ensure Gotham FC would progress in the playoffs at the expense of the Kansas City Current, it hardly felt like a sign of doom and gloom for the ousted side. They won the NWSL Shield with five games to spare, won a record number of points and ultimately lost to a talented team that went on to win the NWSL Championship . The Current had not reached the mountaintop just yet, but they had already assembled a title-winning team and were undoubtedly well-positioned to compete again.

Nearly a year later, though, they are hovering just above the playoff line with five regular season games to go and no guarantee of a postseason run.

The Current enter Saturday's clash with the Denver Summit on 38 points and in eighth place, the final spot above the playoff line. There is very, very little room for error. The Summit, who have 35 points, can overtake them with a win thanks to their superior goal differential. They can both be outdone by the Seattle Reign, who enter the weekend with 37 points, but face bottom-dwellers Boston Legacy on Friday.

For the Current, a win is the most straightforward scenario and at least possible for a team that boasts two-time NWSL MVP Temwa Chawinga and U.S. women's national team forward Michelle Cooper. Things have hardly gone according to plan for Chris Armas' team this season, though, to the point that Saturday's NWSL matchup is anything but predictable. That's in large part because the Current themselves have been hard to pin down – their luck has swung like a pendulum this season, injuries hindering their progress over the course of the campaign. In many ways, the good news for the Current is that some of their issues are either out of their control or problems with straightforward solutions.

And yet, it is hard not to ask if the Current's slide down the NWSL table is a mess of their own making, fixable or not.

How to watch Kansas City Current vs. Denver Summit, odds

Date:  Saturday, Sept. 26 |  Time:  12:30 p.m. ET Location:  CPKC Stadium -- Kansas City, Mo. TV: CBS | Live stream:   Paramount+ Odds:  Kansas City Current -105; Draw +290; Denver Summit +210

The Current's reliance on star trio

There are few teams that look exactly the same without their best players, but this season, the Current have relied extensively on three players, their form almost entirely dependent on the availability of Chawinga, Cooper and Croix Bethune.

The trio has only played together 10 times this season; the Current essentially different teams when they're on the pitch compared to the days when even one player is missing. They have 21 goals from 24.71 expected goals, the per game average of 2.4 expected goals easily among the league's when isolated for those 10 games. Their output is not actually inadequate without the specific combination of Bethune, Chawinga and Cooper – they average two expected goals this season regardless of who's on the pitch, tied for first with the North Carolina Courage. They average 1.8 expected goals without that trio, third-best in the league.

Their chances, though, are not coming off. The Current average 2.1 goals when their star trio plays, which would be a best-in-the-league figure, and 1.2 goals without them, a figure that is only better than Bay FC and the Chicago Stars' season-long averages. It leaves them stuck appropriately in the middle of the NWSL's 16-team table, the drop-off understandable considering the caliber of the players who are not available. It is unclear if they will be fully staffed for Saturday's clash against the Summit – Bethune has missed the last two games with a hip issue, and it is unknown if she will be available.

Was Chris Armas the right hire?

Player availability can wreak havoc for all types of teams, and the Current are no exception, but their overreliance on Bethune, Chawinga and Cooper raises questions about their roster construction. Some of the blame will be laid at Vlatko Andonovski's feet following his transition from head coach to sporting director last winter and it could be why he left the club this month, though he did quickly find a similar role with the Chicago Stars . Andonovski, though, was only in the sporting director role for eight months and boasts an impressive track record with the Current as the head coach, the roster fairly similar from this year to the last one. The respect his ex-players have for him is a testament to his work in Kansas City. The likes of Cooper, Chawinga and captain Lo'eau LaBonta took to social media to heap praise on Andonovski immediately after the news broke, and the weight of the decision may still linger over the team.

"There are conversations that happen in the locker room that are not always in the media," LaBonta said in a subsequent press conference. "The announcement with Vlatko, the finality of it, hurts for the players. We've lost, from those two years, our head coach, our GM, our head of performance, our head scout … the list goes on, and so it hurts the players because, in women's sports especially, it takes so long to build trust, and we had that with the group."

So far, though, the Current have not been better after Andonovski's departure from the touchline. They are still designed to be an attacking force when they are at full strength, but the defensive resolve Andonovski built during last year's Shield-winning run has evaporated this season, adding to their middling form in 2026. Andonovski did have work to do after his first season in 2024, when they conceded 1.2 goals per game from 1.1 expected goals against, bringing the figures down to 0.6 goals per game from 0.7 expected goals against in 2025. Their attack held steady during Andonovski's two seasons as the head coach, essentially building a nearly indomitable side along the way.

The Current have a middling defensive record this season with 1.4 goals against, exactly level with their expected goals against figure, the underlying statistics understandably not changing much on their star trio's availability. It is not all that much of a surprise considering Armas' track record as a coach, the vast majority of which was spent in Major League Soccer. He joined the Current after two seasons with the Colorado Rapids, who rank 24th out of 30 in goals conceded per game (1.8) when combining statistics for the 2024 and 2025 seasons and 26th in expected goals against (1.7).

In short, the Current may have made the wrong hire, a coach who is not a stylistic fit for a team that is in the hunt for championships. It does not help, though, that they also went about hiring him the wrong way – club owners Angie and Chris Long reached out to their friend Jesse Marsch, now the head coach of Canada's men's national team and a friend of theirs when they all attended Princeton University, for a recommendation and he pointed them towards Armas, who was previously a member of his coaching staff at different jobs. Chris Long said that they did a "full search" after Andonovski's transition but that Armas was always at the top of the list, despite admitting that he had to play catch-up in the NWSL after years of working in men's soccer.

"It's a learning curve for me to learn the league and the different tactical setups, the player pool for sure, and then my team," he told ESPN before the season .

Perhaps all Armas needs is time and a healthier, more robust squad. The second is now a project the Current will have to start from scratch as they look for Andonovski's successor in the sporting director role, whoever that might be.

With last winter's reshuffle, the Current were shoved into a reset season instead of one that built upon 2025's successes, which was ultimately a miscalculation by the higher-ups. It is a notable misstep for one of the NWSL's most prominent ownership groups, one that projects plenty of ambition and has something to show for it with the 2025 Shield plus a team-specific training ground and stadium that is so nice that the Netherlands' men's national team used it as a training base during this year's World Cup. Clearly the Current have the ability to dig themselves out of this hole and on Saturday against the Summit, Armas and his players will begin to do their part. The onus is ultimately on the club's higher-ups, who have the resources and aspiration to return to last year's form. The series of problems in front of them is fixable; they just have to do it.

Add CBS Sports on Google Join the Conversation comments

_Originally reported by [CBS Sports](https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/kansas-city-denver-summit-nwsl-live-stream-online-playof-chase/)._