Athletica Roster-Offseason (Trades, Signings, Free Agents, Etc.)

Thanks to Karyn at WPS for noting that the WPS site has now posted some partial lists of players who have had their options exercised for next season.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#239rXZ/www.womensprosoccer.com/Home/news/transactions-09.aspx/

The Athletica players mentioned are Aluko, Fletcher, Logterman, Loyden, and Weber. We'll know more on Wednesday when much of this becomes final.

I am assuming that some of the bigger name players (Daniela, Chalupny, Ellertson, and Solo) have multi-year contracts. Either that or most Athletica fans will be in a panic come Thursday.

Out of the 18 full roster players at the end of the season, 5 options exercised, 2 lost in expansion draft, leaving 11 that we don't have definitive news on yet...

Chalupny, Cross, Daniela, Ellertson, McNeill, Solo, Stoia, Tancredi, Walsh, Welsh, and Woznuk.

Also, once we get an idea about who other team's free agents are, we can discuss more fully who we would like to sign. It looks like Cristiane is going to be a free agent for Chicago (although we don't know 100% for sure). Athletica needs a scorer and with Barcellos as coach, I would think that was at least an outside possibility.

Apparently, the draft on the 23rd wasn't just for ATL & PHI; and for once Athletica are the first (of the original seven) to announce results! (Does that mean they're in the final stages of planning already? We already knew Barcellos was looking overseas for more striking power....)
http://www.womensprosoccer.com/Home/stlouis/news/general/090929-wps-international.aspx
Madelaine Edlund and Elaine, both from Umea. LA tries for two of their players last year, ATL tries three this year, and STL tries for two more..... I wonder if there'll be an Umea left by next year.

Edlund has played 154 matches and scored 85 goals coming into this season in the Damallsvenskan. If I can figure out the translated page, 17 goals last season and 8 so far this season. We did see her score in the All-Star match.

http://svenskfotboll.se/damallsvenskan/person/?playerid=5486

She has 11 caps for the Swedish National team, but was not on their Euro 2009 squad. She was on their Algarve Cup squad and played in the final against the US as a sub.

Elaine is sort of an interesting choice, given she is a midfielder. I thought that was probably one reason we didn't protect Cinalli was because we had an overcrowded midfield situation with Chalupny, Daniela, Fletcher, Woznuk, and Stoia.

The other thing that surprises me is that it temporarily uses up all of Athletica's international slots. Of course, we don't know how many of this year's internationals will be back. Aluko and Daniela will be back, and I would think Tancredi, but I wouldn't be too sure about her. Walsh is a big question mark. If all the international slots are filled, we still wouldn't be able to sign one of the above and we wouldn't be able to go after international free agents (e.g. Cristiane). Of course, having the rights is one thing, signing is another.

Dang. Have y'all checked out the transaction page yet? STL either waived or did not resign (ie bcm free agents) 10 players. That is over half the team. A team that freaking came in 2nd.

eta: Here's the list from the transactions page:

She asked to be left out of the EURO squad for unspecified personal reasons, then popped up to play the All Stars game instead. In St. Louis. Not that there's necessarily anything untoward about that...

Also, Elaine has played regularly in defense for Umeå.

Holy flbleeping shit!
I mean, Gray, Kane, Pistorias, and(?) Walter I'm not surprised about, since they were developmental players already, but.... but- I mean, really!?!?! Daniela? Walsh? Welsh? And what about Fletcher and Loyden? I know they're "on loan" to CCM, but does that mean they're coming back?
I guess Hope had a multi-year contract.... But Lori and Tina didn't?
<sigh> the downside of transparency....
Though, if players are potentially not coming back, I'm glad I'm learning now instead of at the season opener.

Kinda crazy, no?

Daneila?!

check out the league wide list. equally crazy in some corners.

Actually I just looked at the transactions page. Every existing team except for NJ and WSH put at least nine players in the situation our ten are in. LA even has eleven waived or free, and they came in first.... So I guess I don't feel so bad.

Actually, if people could clear this up for me: how is "waived" different from "becoming a free agent"? I know free agents can negotiate with any team they want.... but I don't know either category's contract details, etc.

I have no freaking clue. I asked the same thing on the WPS Free Agency thread. My google fu failed me, too. You'd think the league would have mentioned something about the waiver procedure....

This should clear things up:
http://www.womensprosoccer.com/Home/stlouis/news/general/090930-roster-transactions.aspx

It just confuses me even more. Why cut Daniela and Walsh? Money? International player spots? Injuries that don't seem to be healing? All of the above?

There are only 2 reasons I could see Daniela becoming a free agent:
1. Money, plain and simple.
2. Her knee isn't as in as good as shape by now as they would have liked, so they didn't want to spend a lot of money and use an international roster spot on someone that wouldn't be able to play most of the season.

I really hope it's the first one and they can come to some sort of agreement allowing Daniela to re-sign with St. Louis. It will be a shame to see her go.

Well, if Edlund & Elaine both come to STL, then there have to be international slots for them.

Last season, Aluko, Tancredi, Daniela, Larsson, and Walsh were the 5 internationals.

And now the only one who hasn't been set afloat is Aluko. So even with Edlund and Elaine, there'd be two spots left.

Admittedly, with the exception of Aluko, all of our internationals had injury issues. Still, I would definitely rather seem them return over getting Edlund and Elaine.

That article obviously didn't clear up the "why" of anything, but it did clear up the "what" and "how", which was what I meant. Waiving is apparently equivalent to free agency, except those listed as pure free agents are still on the roster on Athletica's site, while those listed as waived are not. Also, it appears Solo indeed had a multi-year contract, which makes me feel better.

I think waiving refers to players that the team had the option to keep under an existing contract, where as the free agents were players with one-year contracts that ran out as of September 30, 2009. So my guess is both Walsh and Daniela had team options after the 1st year of the contract that could have been extended, while Cross, Stoia, Tancredi, and Welsh had one year contracts that simply expired without the team re-signing them to a new contract. The four developmentals were free agents anyhow.

I know most of the teams kept their core players, but this doesn't make any sense to me unless it is totally about cost cutting. We all watched how long it took almost every team in the league to come together as teams last year. Now you're going to lose part of that chemistry or continuity if you lose all of these free agents.

I really don't understand the Daniela situation unless she had an extremely expensive contract option or they just don't think she's going to be healthy.

I hope that Athletica at least did their homework with Edlund and Elaine. If they can sign her, can Edlund be a good match with Aluko up front? She is a proven goal scorer in a darn good league. And she does have a lot of experience, although still pretty young.

I'm trying to figure out our overall strategy and it just isn't making a lot of sense to me right now.

Very shocking that Daniela was waived. If she was healthy some people felt that could've been the difference in beating NJ and getting to the final.

In other sports when you are waived you generally don't come back the team and when you clear waivers you go to the minor league team. Obviously Daniela won't go to a minor league team but it's a mystery as to why they would cut one of the world's best unless her knee is that bad or she wanted a ton of money by WPS standards.

Did you notice that Larsson was declared a free agent by Atlanta?

I guess Atlanta wasted a draft pick...

I guess it is possible for her to come back to St. Louis...
But, I doubt it.

Any guess as to what happened with Larsson?

IMHO, several of these well known players who are listed as free agents ( or waived ) are actually "Expansion Draft Dodgers", that is, a player who wants to continue with her current team and knows that they want her back and allows herself to be listed as a free agent in order to permit some other player to be protected from the Expansion Draft.

In the Boston Breakers forum, the current interim GM (Andy Crossley) hinted in a carefully worded statement that they were doing this with two of their players.

Of course, for this to work, both the player and the team must trust each other.

Tom Timmermann of the StL Post-Dispatch has updated an early report that he made with more details after talking with Barcellos...

http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/fr...-roster-shaken-up-along-with-rest-of-leagues/

Apparently, Daniela's situation does relate to her injury..."Jorge Barcellos told me that the team let Daniela go because she still has six to nine months to go on her rehab and could miss much of next season." Remember when they were telling us she might be ready by the playoffs.

The team also apparently told Tom that they were close to signing a couple of internationals.

So here we are, 3 weeks into free agency, and all is painfully quiet in Athletica Land. Are we hibernating?

I hope the league isn't hibernating. Have you heard some rumblings that WPS could be in some financial trouble?

No, the league is definitely not hibernating - people are still buzzing a bit about the drafts, and teams are signing free agents with a fairly regular frequency (one or two per week league-wide). We just haven't heard anything from Athletica. As usual.

I myself am starting a new job and had LA's main headquarters (laptop) go kabloo-y.


So, I've been a bit far and away. The army just sold the last 2 scarves though so that's f'n SWEET!! Now I guess we need more, haha!

Sorry about the computer...

Looking at the other teams...

Boston is making moves (both additions and subtractions) right and left.
Sky Blue has made several.
Philadelphia has made several.
Chicago got Sitch.
Gold Pride has made one move and according to their GM on twitter, will have two more shortly, including a free agent signing and a discovery player.
Atlanta ???.

Saint Louis, Los Angeles, and Washington have all been fairly quiet.

We are in dire need of a forward and an attacking midfielder...and probably a defender. While we could start a back line of Weber, McNeill, Ellertson, and Logterman, I personally don't think that's an overly strong back line. It's okay, but lacking experience and Ellertson's the only speed burner of the group.

I wonder when Edlund and Maurine's contracts officially run out, so they could sign with another team, namely us. Cristiane? Aly Wagner? Anybody???