The San Diego Wave came back to work on Saturday at Snapdragon Stadium with the schedule finally moving again, but not with the player who had carried much of their attack. Dudihna is done for the season after tearing her right ACL on June 9 in a friendly against the United States, and the Wave opened against NJ/NY Gotham FC without a clear answer for how to replace her goals and assists.
That is why Gotham Vs San Diego Wave drew attention before kickoff. San Diego entered at 8-4-1 and in first place in the National Women’s Soccer League, while Gotham arrived four points back and riding three straight league wins before the break. The Wave also had been idle for a month, so this was not just a return to play; it was a test of whether first place could hold when the team’s most productive attacker was suddenly gone.
Dudihna had five goals and four assists for San Diego before the injury, numbers that made her the team’s most direct source of end product. The absence matters because the Wave are already one of the league’s sharper attacking teams, with 19 goals, and they were asking the matchday group to stretch into a role that had been built around her finishing and final pass. In practical terms, that means the goals have to come from elsewhere now, whether through a wider spread of scorers or a different attacking shape that does not depend on one player to finish the move.
Jonas Eidevall said the time off came at a good point for the team and gave the group three weeks to train together more often, a stretch he framed as a chance to build something new rather than try to drop in a perfect replacement for Dudihna. Kenza Dali put the emotional side more bluntly, saying the injury hit when Dudihna was at her best and that the squad had to accept it and move forward. That is the pressure point for San Diego now: first place is useful only if the team can keep finding goals without the player who had been producing them most often.
Macario adds another layer to that uncertainty. She still had no timeline for her Wave debut and had not returned to the practice field, leaving San Diego without a second major attacking option it had hoped to count on. Gotham, meanwhile, brought a defense that had allowed only five goals in 11 matches, with only Denver, Kansas City and Boston managing to score against it this season. That makes Saturday less about a single absent forward than about whether San Diego can solve a stubborn matchup while its roster is still taking shape.
The next step for the Wave is straightforward and difficult at the same time: keep winning while the attack is reassembled on the fly. They last played on May 31, a 2-0 road win over the Chicago Stars, and Saturday was their first home match since Memorial Day weekend. If San Diego can stay on top through this stretch, it will be because the team found a new way to share Dudihna’s production instead of waiting for it to be replaced by one player.
