Good news for Spirit fans: Once again, Banini is coming back from Spain to play in DC http://washingtonspirit.com/pro/washington-spirit-re-signs-forward-estefania-banini/
Houston has a coach now: https://equalizersoccer.com/2018/12/06/houston-dash-set-to-hire-james-clarkson-as-head-coach/ DC and ORL are still looking, but I don't think we can expect anything out of DC until the whole possible ownership shift is settled. Crickets out of ORL though...
And in an interesting example of drafting a player just to secure rights to her: Seattle have signed 2018 draftee and Spanish NTer Celia Jimenez Delgado: https://thebold.com/reign-fc-sign-spanish-international-defender-celia-jiménez-delgado-5294212196cf ==== https://www.houstondynamo.com/post/2018/12/11/houston-dash-name-james-clarkson-head-coach ==== And lastly, silly-season-related, here's a count of the numbers of players currently with each team: By my (very rough) count, here's the signed players for each NWSL club as of now:18 - Portland, Seattle17 - Houston16 - Utah13 - Chicago, North Carolina, Orlando10 - Washington9 - Sky Blue FC— Chris Henderson (@chris_awk) December 12, 2018 Poor Sky Blue... And I notice they, with Washington and Chicago, together make up the bottom 3 in terms of player retention. With the exception of Seattle, it looks very much like having that affiliation with a men's pro team provides enough side perks to make them a bit better at keeping players around.
Clearly SkyBlue's well documented problems are hitting them hard. I wonder if even drafted players will be interested in playing for them.
From my sporadic tracking of Woso news, Player Moves for the 2019 season have been hard to find. So I started a thread. Please help! I have learned: Sabrina D’Angelo has signed with Vittsjö GIK in Sweden Adriana Leon is going to West Ham Taylor Smith is injured – out for the 2019 NWSL season I may have heard: Amanda Frisbie and Christina Gibbons are going to Europe Kyah Simon is injured, and may or may not be ready in time for 2019 NWSL, If she is coming back. What news can you report?
Chris Henderson said in an podcast that Katie Johnson may be going to Europe, rather than returning to Sky Blue.
Per the Norway thread, Amanda Frisbie should have signed for Klepp and Rebekah Stott for Avaldsnes, both Toppserien's (Norway's Division 1) clubs. Apparently many Sky Blue FC players being scattered around...
Looks like Summer Green is leaving Chicago for Sweden: .@chiredstarsPR midfielder Summer Green has left the club to join Swedish side Vittsjö.https://t.co/YfMcThFICe— Kieran Theivamanoharan (@KiersTheivam) January 7, 2019
New Courage Player: Julia Spetsmark [NEWS] Julia Spetsmark joins the defending champions. Welcome to #CourageCountry @JuliaSpetsmark!Read | https://t.co/TVrkOS58Cy pic.twitter.com/YwBaI08JDA— NC Courage (@TheNCCourage) January 7, 2019
Vero Boquete has rejoined the NWSL, this time in Utah: New year, new adventure. I’m happy to announce that from today I’m a @UtahRoyalsFC player! I’m ready for an ambitious challenge in the @NWSL 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/5orxhJb0Cf— Verónica Boquete (@VeroBoquete) January 4, 2019
This prompts a question from a non-english-native-speaker like me: why people use to call the pre-season market "silly season"? Am I silly for not getting it?
The term "silly season" has been used to describe many things, but I think it started being used for professional sports offseasons in North America due to the introduction of the free agent system and subsequent speculation about player movement.
The origin of the term goes back to 1950s (or before) newspapers. Since most of the government and a lot of business would go on vacation in mid summer, but they still had to put out a paper every day, there was a period in late July through late August when all of the stories in the paper were either light fluff, sensationalist or just pure speculation. Nothing important or serious or even factual. It was called the 'silly season'. (Kind of like most news coverage today!)
Worried about propagating a rumor but i just saw this: Chris and I can tell you that the word on the street is the first big trade to happen will be:SkyBlue sends Shea Groom to Seattle for Nahomi KawasumiGroom for NahoThis reunites Groom with a coach she had been tremendously successful with in the past.— Jon Lipsitz (@jonlipsitz) January 9, 2019 Naho for Groom. Weird. Vlatko likes Groom and the Reign need firepower up front (i'm not a Groom fan though). But it's pretty unlikely Naho will play for the Reign this year and it's very unlikely she would play in NJ. Players are leaving SkyBlue but would they trade a quality player for right to a player who won't report? Weird.
I don't understand this from Sky Blue's perspective either but as a FCKC fan turned Seattle Reign I am elated! Groom (though not popular) is a hometown fav in KC and after seeing live many times in both high school and the pros she will be a huge upgrade offensively. The Reign desperately needed to get younger and speedier and acquiring Groom and Darian Jenkins does that. For once in my life I am ok with the Reign trading out of the 1st round bc I don't think there will be a better attacking player than Jenkins or Groom at #9 which is when our pick was.
This trade makes no sense for SB but given that all their players will rather retire than play there I assume it’s a fire sale. I personally don’t like us just trading Naho to SBFC knowing very well it’s just forcing her into early retirement. Her contributions to this club demands a better ending than that. As for Groom I really like her and her services will be especially useful during the World Cup.
From a Sky Blue perspective, maybe the international spot goes so that Sky Blue has it whether Naho plays for them or not. Given their current reputation with the players in the US, maybe they're going to need to bring in some internationals.
She went to Chicago for 2 draft picks. I think highly of K-Jo. Good trade for the player and for the Red Stars. Everyone jumping ship from Sky Blue. https://equalizersoccer.com/2019/01/09/katie-johnson-traded-chicago-red-stars-sky-blue-fc-nwsl/
Which Kim? Little? I think the situation is slightly different as Kim left of her own accord as she was ready to return to Europe. This move is pretty much putting Naho out to pasture. I rather we traded a draft pick and waive Naho than trade her.
At one point I would have been excited about this move as am a big fan of Boquete but I think NWSL may have pass her by. Also it's interesting that Harvey continues to recruit the exact same mode of player for her midfield: Jonsdottir, Matheson, Scott, and now Boquete are all slight variations of the same type of player.
They could still have waived/not exercise option on Naho and traded the spot to Sky Blue along with a draft pick. I guess the only way I'll feel better about this is if it became know that all parties involved know that this is a sham trade and just a way for Sky Blue to claim they are getting something out of the deal and come March she just does not turn up and hopefully everyone forgets because SBFC will be a bigger mess at that point.