I think before they can expand they need to be able to raise the salary cap and increase the number of internationals per team. Expansion will dilute the product offered by the feds and teams need to be in position to get quality replacements.
I don't think diluting the product at this point will hurt at all. I think there are some quality players who didn't get enough time to play last season. It will also provide more spots so more players will stick with it coming out of college for a longer time. Which will over time build up more and more talent. That's why I wish that they were expanding next year, especially with the stacked list of seniors that will be available.
Well I was mostly talking about the NT players. Certainly there is enough next level talent to expand. The league is already divided into the teams that have real goal scorers and those that dont. What happens when u jump up to 12 teams?
The problem is you're never going to have enough NT players to fill up 8 rosters... even with Canada and Mexico helping. Maybe if you had 8 of the top 15 NT teams involved you could, but that'll never happen. Because of the lack of a league after WUSA ended and then again with the WPS ending, we've seen quite a few players that were pretty good but not NT caliber retire who could still be playing professionally and that has hurt the talent pool. But you can't just say because we didn't have enough talent as of last year, we can't expand; because next year there will be an influx of new talent and the year after that and the year after that. And not all of that talent is going to be NT ready or NT caliber ever. But some could be very decent professionals and some might need a few years to be able to play professionally and surprise people by rising to that level. And so the league needs to grow to keep these new players involved and thus grow the talent pool. But this is also why I would like slow and steady growth by adding 1 or 2 teams next year and then 2 or 3 more over the next few years, rather than what I fear might happen which is them bringing in a lot of teams at once in 2015 (when they're already gonna loose a lot of talent to the WWC).
There are multiple groups that want in. The league had to take some time (a full year) to review and decide on the "best" groups to bring in long-term. They don't want to rush into expansion and then have expansion teams back out two years later, and so on. They want "healthy" long-term ownership, and they are indeed taking their time on determining the right groups they want in the league. In the long-run, they're taking the safe approach, which is better for sustainability. As much as we all would like 16 teams in the league (I'm raising my hand), the league knows it can't just take everyone in a two year span. It will be "safe" expansion, not "bulk" expansion in a rush. Even though the fans would love large growth in the league immediately, because the fans want an expansion team down the street, not one from multiple states away on the map.
So now they r saying that some sort of decision will be made tomorrow concerning Houston entering the NWSL in 2014 as part of the no expansion expansion.
Another Travesty! Who is their sister club in the deep South? Isnt this why Pali and the Strikers can't get it? Travesty! 2014 will be the Year of the Yahoo in the NWSL. What did the Joker tell Batman, "You just couldn't let me go!" That sounds like SBFC owners and that team and stadium.
To be fair, the geography argument was for travel expenses, and an MLS-backed team wouldn't have to worry like the Pali/Stirkers team would have. Still, after having the Aces on the radar for a while and saying no expansion for 2014, to suddenly let the Dynamo in just reeks. Still, considering the Dynamo just announced this, and it's just interest on their part with no indication that they've actually talked to NWSL yet, I would be shocked if the Dynamo go from "completely off the radar" to "NWSL team" in a matter of less than three days. I would bet this "announcement" is just something bureaucratic. I highly doubt that they'd want to throw together another team in as short a time as they did last offseason, and like @Blaze20 said, nine teams would be weird, and there doesn't seem to be another MLS organization ready to jump in. And actually, @kernel_thai , where did you hear that an announcement would be made? NWSL's twitter has been quiet, same with Equalizer and AllWhiteKit. =edit= And, since I've posted that, it's now on Equalizer. Geez.
So I just did a Twitter browse, and man does Canetti has been busy recently! One thing that stuck out to me is that he tweeted that each NWSL gets allocated three USWNT players. Now I know the US talent pool is deep, but I would expect that once expansion happens the allocations get a bit thinner....
Dan Lauletta tweeted it. Now that decision may simply be Gulati telling them there is a chance instead of his no expansion announcement from earlier in the year. From what I ve read about this, it started with Houston sending out a survey to season ticket holders about their interest. This certainly isnt going anywhere soon. Doubt the switchboard blew up at Dynamo headquarters yesterday. The other thing I saw is the Aces r not amused, pretty much putting an end to the speculation that the tw organization were planning something together.
I don't think it's a huge problem. You just give one team a bye every weekend. And/or have some Midweek games too. Maybe they'll let the newly combined LA Blues SC in with Houston?
Well if they are doing this without the NWSL's blessing and they get let in, it could start a bad precedent: now any team that wants in just has to start selling tickets and they'll be let in regardless of whether NWSL wants to expand or not. So you have to sort of figure that Houston and NWSL came to some sort of hush-hush agreement that they would let Houston in if they sold x number of season tickets.
I dunno.... to a certain extent these boards read like NWSL FanFic.... guess that's what you get with high interest/lack of transparency.
Well, on one hand, we now haveSeveral options being discussed regarding #NWSL expansion to Houston. Am told more than one of those options involves Houston Aces.— Dan Lauletta (@TheDanLauletta) November 21, 2013 On the other hand, there was this quip over in Houston's MLS forum: I'm just really torn right now....
Well if there is a way to work the Aces into the equation it even makes it easier for the NWSL to say yes. The Aces actually have a decent team to use as a foundation. Building a team from scratch prolly involves the league having an expansion draft which means actually unlocking the office and shuffling papers.
Well, there's going to be an expansion draft anyways. That's just how soccer in the US (apparently) works... Besides, having a great WPSL team really doesn't mean much. The Flash got a huge makeover when they "promoted" from W-League to WPS (heck, even the Freedom did for WPS year one) and there wasn't much carryover from last year's WPSLE teams to the respective NWSL teams.
My one thought is how does this affect the allocations? Given that Seattle is sitting very pretty right now , I don't want anything to disrupt that. Would it still be the perogative of ussoccer to allocate 3 players each to a team. Obviously this is not scalable. Or will they implement some other system in which teams are allowed to have X allocated players and anything team that have a shortage will probably have their salary cap raise or have an additional international slot.
I'd expect that the allocation shuffle to be a different process than the expansion draft - i.e. all allocated players are inherently exempt from protection or selection in the theoretical expansion draft. The US player pool is pretty deep, so if they're really just bringing on one new team this year, going from 23 to 27 allocated US players isn't a huge stretch, especially if some current players expected to be dropped are instead kept on. Even for Canada, going from the 15 they currently have (Booth retired) to 18 wouldn't be hard, especially considering Quon and Tanc weren't allocated last year. Now, Mexico.... not sure about that one. Though if any team would do well with two Mexicans on the squad, it'd be Houston. (Maybe San Diego if a team in that region is ever brought back.) But yeah, once we get to 10 or more teams, the "even" allocation thing just won't be viable, so there will have to be some sort of cap lifting/compensation thing done.
Yes talking to some people that came out to the KC vs Chicago game here in Chicago, they were cheering for KC because they had players in the National team that they knew, Chicago had none (Boxx was hurt by then). There is a reason why the game with Hope Solo was the only "sold out" game here in Chicago.