Weary Gotham FC looking to get back into NWSL playoff picture

There’s a busy schedule, and then there’s what Gotham FC has.

“I don’t think there’s a team that works harder in this league than Gotham,” owner Carolyn Tisch Blodgett said last weekend.

Three weeks ago, the team was in Monterrey, Mexico, claiming the inaugural CONCACAF W Champions Cup — an achievement that was celebrated Tuesday night, when the Empire State Building was lit up in Gotham blue.

Then it was off to international duty for many of the team’s standouts.

Then, Gotham (3W-3D-5L) returned to regular-season NWSL play, losing a 2-1 decision to first-place Kansas City on Saturday that dropped them to 10th place in the 14-team league.

Two more NWSL tilts to try to claw up the standings — starting with Friday night’s road game against the Utah Royals (9:30 p.m. Eastern) — and then it’s time for a month-plus-long international break that for a sizable chunk of the roster isn’t a break at all as they scatter to the corners of the world to play for their national teams.

“Our team knows that if they want it easy, they probably wouldn’t have come to Gotham,” Tisch Blodgett said. “We have high standards. New York, New Jersey has high standards, and players come here because they want to compete with the best.”

To that end, five Gotham players soon will depart for the summer’s marquee event, the Women’s Euro: forward Esther González (Spain), goalie Ann-Katrin Berger (Germany), defender Jess Carter (England), forward Jéssica Silva (Portugal) and the team’s newest signing, former Harvard midfielder Josefine Hasbo (Denmark).

Forward Gabi Portilho (Brazil) will participate in Copa América.

And midfielder Rose Lavelle is expected to join back up with the U.S. women’s national team for a round of friendlies after returning from an ankle injury last weekend.

How about a lull later in the summer? Nope.

On Thursday, Gotham announced four extra matches for August through October as they look to defend their W Champions Cup title.

“I think people are still understanding the significance of that in the global game,” Tisch Blodgett said of the CONCACAF trophy. “When we came in as new owners last year, we set a vision to be the first global women’s sports franchise, and this is a critical step in that.”

But first, of course, the not-so-small matter of working their way back into at least the NWSL’s top eight and a playoff spot.

Gotham has lost three straight regular-season matches on either side of all their extracurriculars, though head coach Juan Carlos Amoros, typically the optimist, said Thursday, “I think the team is in a good place.”

Still, the stakes against Utah (1W-2D-8L) are heightened with Gotham in desperate need of three points.

“If you’re in the bottom of the league, everything counts, every single shot, every single duel. If we don’t get it right, we can actually end up even lower, and I think all the girls know that,” Berger said. “And I think Utah actually have a really good team, and I think they’re playing really nice soccer.”

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Forwards Midge Purce and Ella Stevens did not travel to Utah after getting subbed off due to injuries in the loss to Kansas City.