Call it the curse of the late-season international break, or just call it what it is: bad injury luck hit Gotham FC extremely hard during a 13-day break between NWSL matches.
The league leaders had 11 players called up by their national teams for this October window of matches, but they lost one regular starter and one key depth piece to the season-ending injury list, while they were also dealt an injury scare that forced one of their top players out of national-team duty earlier than expected.
Jordynn Dudley and Bruninha were each placed on the season-ending injury list on back-to-back days. Dudley's loss is highly significant, as the rookie out of Florida State had appeared in 25 of the club's 27 NWSL matches while chipping in five goals and three assists, and while leading Gotham in goals added (g+), which measures a player's total on-ball value.
Dudley is a clear contender for NWSL Rookie of the Year and was just named Rookie of the Month for September, but is now out for the season after suffering a foot fracture, an injury that occurred during a training session held prior to Gotham's 1-1 draw with Angel City FC at Sports Illustrated Stadium.
Dudley had been called up by the United States U-23 squad and was expected to head into national-team camp after the Angel City match, but never got there after suffering the injury.
Bruninha, meanwhile, got a call-up from Brazil for this international window and was set to represent her country in a pair of friendlies with Argentina. The 24-year-old fullback came on as a substitute at halftime of Brazil's first friendly of this window on October 10, but she suffered a torn ACL shortly into her appearance and had to be removed in the 70th minute.
Her injury luck has been particularly bad in 2026, and Bruninha missed all of Gotham's matches between early February and early July as she recovered from a serious hamstring injury.
With three games remaining until the NWSL playoffs, Gotham knows it can't count on Dudley or Bruninha to contribute, but there's also an injury scare looming around one of the team's best players of the season.
Jaedyn Shaw, who leads Gotham in goals and is co-leader in assists, was supposed to spend this international break training with the United States U-23 squad — her consolation prize after being snubbed by Emma Hayes for a spot on the full senior USWNT squad to take on Spain.
Instead, though, Shaw was forced out of US U-23 camp early after suffering a "minor" injury. That's according to an announcement shared by US Soccer on October 8, though it's unclear how serious Shaw's injury is, and what it might mean for her availability for the final three Gotham matches of the regular season.
Needless to say, these are brutal injury developments for Gotham, especially when you consider how the Gotham roster has evolved over the course of the season. Depth options in attack and defense — defender Lilly Reale, midfielder Sarah Schupansky, and forward Khyah Harper — were shipped out to other NWSL teams after Gotham came to rely on a pretty set-in-stone starting lineup. The injuries to Dudley and Bruninha were also preceded by a season-ending injury to starting defender Emily Sonnett, and the midsummer departure of striker Esther González.
Gotham has been filling in roster holes as they've developed, with Sam Kerr brought in to take over for González at center-forward, and with players like Meredith Speck, Tess Boade, Leila Ouahabi, and Olivia Wingate all added to the roster late in the season as needs and roster spots opened up. There's still depth available to Gotham coach Juan Carlos Amorós, it just looks very different than it did at the start of this season.
The club remains in the driver's seat when it comes to winning the NWSL Shield, four points clear at the top of the table with three matches left to play, and with a home playoff game already clinched, but the margin for error is slim, and the injury to Dudley, in particular, really hurts the Gotham attack.
Midge Purce was asked to move upfield from right-back to take Dudley's place on the right of the attack against Angel City before the international break, but the domino effect of that move means asking veteran defender Mandy Freeman to become an every-match starter at right-back.
If Jaedyn Shaw has to miss any time, Amorós could pull a similar move and have his de facto left-back, Guro Reiten, slide back into her usual (with Chelsea FC) role as a wide attacking player, but that again opens up a spot at fullback — a spot that could have been filled by Bruninha pre-injury, or by Lilly Reale pre-trade.
An attack without both Dudley and Shaw might really struggle to create the kinds of scoring chances Gotham had grown accustomed to seeing this season, so fingers will be crossed across the greater New York/New Jersey region that Shaw can make it back onto the pitch in little time after her injury with the US U-23s.
