Angel City left Foxborough with five goals, two entries in the club record book and a playoff race that suddenly looks open again. The 5-2 win over Boston Legacy in the clubs’ first meeting matched the highest-scoring performance in Angel City history and lifted its season total to a new high of 32 goals. It also ended a six-game winless run and restored some of the edge that defined Angel City’s early-season attack.
The match took only 18 minutes to become chaotic. Massachusetts native Ally Sentnor scored from outside the box in the fifth minute, and Sammy Smith answered for Boston three minutes later. Prisca Chilufya restored Angel City’s lead in the 14th before Sveindís Jónsdóttir ran onto Savy King’s pass and made it 3-1 from a tight angle. Four goals had arrived before either side could settle.
Angel City’s only previous five-goal game was the 5-1 home win over Portland in October 2023 that secured the club’s first playoff berth. The goals in Foxborough came through several routes: second-phase set pieces, direct running, pressure after loose balls and shooting from distance. Four players scored. Angel City held only 52 percent of possession, yet turned 20 attempts into nine shots on target.
Chilufya drove the middle of it. Her first finish followed a corner that Boston couldn’t clear cleanly. Her second came after an initial effort was blocked, with the Zambian forward staying in the play and collecting the rebound between two defenders. The brace was her first in the NWSL and doubled her season total to four. Interim coach Leif Smerud said Angel City “knew we could hurt them with Sveindís and Prisca.”
The returning players stretched the attack further. Jónsdóttir scored her team-leading seventh goal in her first start after missing three matches through injury, while King supplied the assist in her first start since April 3. Maiara Niehues entered in the 62nd minute and scored four minutes later in her first appearance since July 26. Her seventh of the season gave Jónsdóttir and Niehues 14 of Angel City’s 32 goals between them.
The attack has options again
Jónsdóttir had already established herself among the NWSL breakout players shaping 2026 before the injury interruption. Her speed gives Angel City an immediate route behind a back line, while Niehues can arrive against a defense that has already been stretched. Chilufya added the central reference point in Boston, competing through contact and keeping attacks alive when the first shot or pass didn’t settle the move.
Sentnor connected those pieces with a goal and an assist. Her opener forced Boston to chase early, and her pass for Niehues created the final goal as the substitute attacked a retreating defense. Boston found its own flashes through Smith and a late goal from Aïssata Traoré. On several of Angel City’s decisive attacks, however, Boston survived the first action but not the second.
The win moved Angel City to 29 points, two behind eighth-place Seattle Reign with nine matches remaining. The schedule now gives the chase a direct shape. After visiting Racing Louisville on September 5, Angel City hosts Denver Summit on September 11 and Seattle on September 16, then visits Denver on October 17. Those games give Angel City direct influence over the playoff line.
Five goals against a Boston side that has lost four straight don’t erase the problems behind Angel City’s winless stretch. They do alter what Smerud can choose from as the season tightens. Chilufya has a brace to build on, Sentnor is producing from the front line, and two seven-goal attackers returned without needing a long runway. The five goals won’t travel to Louisville, but the options that produced them will.
