Marta and FC Gold Pride secure WPS Championship appearance with four games to spare

The San Francisco Bay Area’s FC Gold Pride clinched the WPS Regular Season title Sunday evening with a 3-2 victory over the Chicago Red Stars in front of 6,089 fans at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Ill. As the winners of the regular-season title, FC Gold Pride earned the right to host the WPS Championship presented by Citi on Sunday, Sept. 26 at 2:30pm ET / 11:30am PT, where they will await the winners of the WPS Super Semifinal from earlier that week.

With the WPS Season entering Week 19, FC Gold Pride held a six-point edge over second-place Philadelphia Independence, but needed a fortuitous series of results in order to clinch the title outright this weekend. FC Gold Pride needed to see Boston lose or tie and Philadelphia lose, as well as winning their own game on the road in Chicago to guarantee finishing first this season. And they got all three.

Boston lost to the Atlanta Beat, 3-2, on Saturday, and Philadelphia dropped a 1-0 decision to Sky Blue FC, the first loss in four games by Philadelphia to their New Jersey rivals. And with the score knotted at 2-2 of their own game, FC Gold Pride\'s star forward Marta scored on a 78th-minute penalty kick to break the deadlock and capture FC Gold Pride’s first regular season title in the second season of Women’s Professional Soccer.

FC Gold Pride now has 43 points, nine more than Philadelphia (34). While the Independence could still mathematically catch FC Gold Pride’s 43 points with three consecutive wins to finish the season, FC Gold Pride has already clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker between the two teams by virtue of their two wins earlier in the season (3-1, 2-0) against Philadelphia. The two teams play on September 11 to finish the regular season. No other 2010 WPS Playoff positions have been locked up.