In 2017, when Sam Kerr played in the NWSL, the team she played for was known as Sky Blue FC, and their home games were played at Yurcak Field on the Rutgers Campus. Today, that team is known as Gotham FC and on Wednesday night, Kerr made her debut for them for the second time, only this time at Citi Field in the Queen’s Classic against their arch-rivals, the Washington Spirit.
Kerr came in the 64th minute and had nine touches in her team’s 1-0 win. She received a massive cheer, one of the night’s loudest, from the sell-out crowd of 42,175. “It’s still as crazy as it was back then,” Kerr said of the NWSL in a post-match interview with ESPN. “It’s go, go, go.”
“I went to her at a corner, and I was like, ‘Alright, welcome back, but like, chill,’” Washington star Trinity Rodman said post-match. “I’ve always looked up to Sam as a player. I think she’s amazing. She did amazing while she was in the NWSL, too. She’s a legend, and now for her to be coming back, I think it’s really cool for the game.”
Gotham has come a long way since Kerr’s last season in 2017, when she won the NWSL Golden Boot and MVP award. Since then, she has been to two more World Cups and one Summer Olympics for Australia, and Gotham has two NSWL championships.
Kerr holds the regular-season career goals record for NWSL and remains Australia’s top goal scorer with 73 international goals. For Gotham FC, which has scored only 15 goals in 13 matches until Wednesday’s win, her scoring abilities are more than welcome. She reunites with her former Chelsea teammates Jess Carter, Ann-Katrin Berger and Guro Reiten.
“I always had a desire to come back to the NWSL,” Kerr told reporters after signing. “I’ve loved my time here. I had so much fun here. Played some good football here, so I think I always had a desire to come back, and then with all the change at Chelsea and me wanting something new, I think it was really the only league that I saw myself in.”
NWSL’s growth has grown impressively in the past few years, with the attendance skyrocketing. The league set a new attendance record in the opening weekend of 2026, drawing 129,202 fans. Total season attendance cracked 2 million for the first time in 2024. When Kerr played her last home game with Gotham, on September 24, 2017, there were 2,690 fans at Rutgers, 40,000 fewer than for her first match back on Wednesday.
“Gotham is growing at a level that, when I came here, I was dreaming of…[tonight] was truly special,” head coach Juan Carlos Amoros said.
“It kind of feels like a full-circle moment to me,” Kerr said earlier this month. “Last time I left Gotham, we were Sky Blue at the time. We were playing down in front of a couple thousand people, and this is the type of stuff we were fighting for … to play in front of sold-out stadiums with the best players with wages that we deserved.
“There’s so many people that have done so many amazing things over the last six years while I’ve been gone that have allowed me to come back and live out my American dream.”
