It will be a meaningful day Sunday when the Angel City Football Club host the Portland Thorns in the final home game of the season.
Angel City (7-11-6, 27 points) will start the day alive in the NWSL playoff chase, but could be out by kickoff at 2 p.m. A win or draw by Racing Louisville in its noon game against Gotham FC will be enough to eliminate Angel City.
The game will also have an emotional tone with it being the last time that hometown heroes Ali Riley and Christen Press will take the field for the team in front of the local fans. Riley, 37, announced Sept. 30 that she would be retiring at the end of this season. On Wednesday, Press, 36, announced she was also retiring at the end of the season.
Angel City will honor both in postgame celebrations, starting with Press, five minutes after the final whistle, and then Riley.
“It’s going to be super emotional,” Angel City midfielder Kennedy Fuller said Friday. “Christen and Ali have done so much for our team, so much for the club and just so much for the game in general. It’s going to be super emotional and I think for us, we really just want to be able to put the best thing out for them. We want to be able to allow them to have their moment and obviously that will be super nice with a win and with really good energy and high spirits. They deserve all of their celebrations and all their flowers, so we’re hoping to give that to them.”
Fuller, who earned NWSL Player of the Week honors last week, is one of several teenagers to have had the chance to learn from the veteran Los Angeles Natives. Fuller, 18, is in her second professional season.
She credits an early chat with Riley, who played at Harvard-Westlake High, for helping her decide to bypass college.
“Ali Riley was one of the first people that I ever talked to on the team and the first thing she said was ‘Are you looking to sign?’ and I was like, ‘I’m not sure, I’m really in between, I want to go to college and I want to experience that, but also I loved the professional aspect.’ So I was kind of in a headspace of I’m not sure,” Fuller remembers. “She sat with me and talked to me, for almost an hour at the airport, before I had even stepped on the field to play and she guided me and helped me make my decision and I hadn’t even played with them.
“That’s the type of person she is. She’s the type to pick you up when you’re down or when you’re not down. She’s literally so awesome.”
Riley was acquired from the Orlando Pride in January 2022 before Angel City’s inaugural season. The defender, who was a team captain at Stanford and for New Zealand due to her father’s ties to the country, has yet to make her 2025 debut after coming off the season-ending injury list in July.
Press, who also starred at Stanford where she is the Cardinal’s all-time leading scorer, was the first player signed by Angel City after the team acquired her from Racing Louisville in August 2021. The forward and Chadwick High alum, who helped lead the United States to two World Cup titles, overcame a torn ACL in 2022 that led to four surgeries and sidelined her for 781 days.
“And I’ve gotten the privilege to work and learn from Christen a lot more this year. She is so smart and she’s so gifted and she’s kind of stepped into a little bit of a different role this year and she is like the best hype man. During halftime of the last game, I had missed a couple of shots in the first half and Christen came up to me at halftime and was like, ‘It could take you 10 shots, it could take you 30 shots, you need to keep shooting.’ And she’s like, ‘One of them will go in and I want you to have confidence and I want you to believe in yourself because you can do it.’
“And I ended up scoring pretty much the next shot that I took. That’s the type of energy and, like, happiness that they’re able to bring to our team and especially the young ones. Like to have that confidence from a veteran player in you, is something that you can’t find.”
PORTLAND THORNS FC at ANGEL CITY FC
When: 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: BMO Stadium
How to watch: ESPN