There wis a new "Silly season thread" or something of the kind where it was posted. But it makes sense to repeat it here also, since it's the more general NWSL info thread.
I find it impressive that, at her age, Sinclair still managed to play all the minutes of all of the games in the league (one of just 5 players to do so, including a GK), and with the quality we all know! Also, as a Japanese NT fan, I am proud of Yuki Nagasato's achievement of being 3rd-placed in the assists' chart.
I don't remember if we normally have separate threads for the end-of-year awards or not, but since voting is live, here's what I did as my fan vote (in order first pick / second pick / etc): MVP: Zerboni / Rapinoe / Kerr / Horan / Williams Coach: Riley / Andonovski / Parsons (I think Dames and Pauw were big snubs here) Rookie: McCaskill / Sullivan / Dorsey (holy sh!t why is Latsko not here??) GK: Williams / Bledsoe / Franch (the amount of snubs Sheridan has gotten all year is baffling) Defender: Erceg / I forget what the rest of my order was Best XI: Daly - Kerr Sinclair - Zerboni - Rapinoe - Horan Erceg - Ertz - Brunn - Nielsen Sheridan
Looks like the Championship game will be a sell-out! Looks like less than 50 tickets left. Might even hear them announce it by tomorrow! Too bad they don't have the additional 4000 they will have for next season to sell as well!
Not very clear to me how the final lists were finalized. The website says: But it actually doesn't say how the lists were trimmed down after that "preliminary round" (of if it says that, I didn't find it). I ask, because some choices (and especially some omissions) seemed quite odd to me, although in general I found most of the players I was expecting to find. For instance: I would have considered inserting Christine Sinclair in the ballot for MVP. Also, young Australian Ellie Carpenter could have qualified as "Rookie"? Anyway, I won't go into details and I'll only write down my first choice for each category: MVP: Rapinoe (she brought Seattle to play-offs almost single-handedly) Coach: Andonovski (it was two seasons Seattle didn't make play-offs and he managed to turn the team on its head, while keeping most of the old players) Rookie: Dorsey (could have been McCaskill: anyway I wanted one of the Sky Blue players who fought till the end and Dorsey had seemed to me the more energetic at that) GK: Franch (I said multiple time that she looks to me like the biggest goal-saver in NWSL and the semifinal made another case for her) Defender: Sauerbrunn (supreme placement and timing in every situation: very difficult to score when she's at the center of a defense-line).
Dames maybe. Houston won 3 and got 14 points out of 18 games against anybody not named Washington or Sky Blue. That's nowhere near Coach of the Year to me. If the Spirit and Sky Blue had not been so historically bad, yhit would have gone down as another forgettable bad season for Houston.
Fair take, but I would offer the counterpoint that she did much, much better with the team she had versus what people expected. Even with as bad as DC and NJ were this year, there's definitely something to be said about pulling off the clean sweep, which no other team aside from NC did. They say good teams need to consistently get those results against the cellar-dwellers, which is part of why NC did what they've done and one reason why I think HOU's similar accomplishment shouldn't be completely written off. And ever with a less-than-stellar point count against the other teams, I think that (at least in the majority of games) HOU wasn't outplayed like most people expected them to be before the season started. Therefore, compared to expectations, I think Pauw should've at least been considered, and could have made top-three. The top three given all had pretty stellar rosters anyway, so I kinda think you need to do more than just win with rosters like that to prove you're a really great coach. (This is, of course, ignoring off-field issues that might remove a potential "great coach" title.) Sinclair, maybe, but I kinda view her this year more as a reliable stalwart than a true star player. Still gets her into my Best XI, but I think it's fair that most people are looking at Horan well ahead of Sinclair for MVP. As for Carpenter, the term "Rookie" is usually pretty specific in that it's for someone who came up through the college draft that year; if you want to be more generic, it's for someone who has little to no top-division experience yet. Carpenter, who didn't go to college and has already played several seasons in the W-League, fits neither the specific nor the general meaning of "Rookie".
Doesn't have to be through the draft. Linda Motlhalo qualified as a rookie of the year candidate, for example. Just can't have played professionally before, which as you note Carpenter has.
Thanks, I had the feeling there could have be some issue of this kind, but since she is anyway so young and she's at her first season in NWSL I had wondered to myself about the exact notion of "Rookie" in NWSL.
I don't know how to quote a quote, but what the website said was "The list of finalists was decided after a preliminary round of voting by owners, general managers, coaches, players and media" The answer to what is not clear to you may be that it was a bad choice of words (or word) on the website. Instead of "was decided after a preliminary round of voting", it should have said "was decided by a preliminary round of voting."
Thanks! Yeah, I didn't know which definition of "Rookie" NWSL officially uses, so I included both to cover my bases. =-)
....so, continuing on the Rookie of the Year conversation.... I just ran into a Twitter user who told me that the gulf between NCAA and NWSL is so large that NWSL shouldn't do a Rookie of the Year award. I'm literally not sure how to respond to that.
His general argument was that the gap is so big that it's a disservice/insult to NCAA players for NWSL to "celebrate" the Rookies that actually made an impact.
First and Second XI's are out: https://equalizersoccer.com/2018/09...brunn-makes-it-six-for-six-rapinoe-kerr-dunn/
Amanda Duffy says #NWSL rosters will expand roster sizes next season. This has been a HUGE request from coaches across the league, and mitigates some tricky issues for players 20-24+ who essentially train all year without compensation.— Jeff Kassouf (@JeffKassouf) September 21, 2018
I am suspicious that this, among other things, is a sign that the league will revoke Sky Blue's franchise status for next season.
That looks like the direction the league may take. With the prospects of expansion unlikely for 2019, and the problems of having to schedule too many mid-week games when they have an odd number of teams, Sky Blue's time may have run out.
If you want a run-down of all the issues NWSL faces going into 2019, here ya go: https://equalizersoccer.com/2018/10/02/amanda-duffy-on-new-streaming-deal-expansion-and-more/ Covered are --Yahoo streaming --Roster growth --Salary growth? --Sky Blue/housing issues --VAR --Commissioner? --NWSL referee issues - lack of pay?
. Yahoo streaming sounds nice, as does roster growth. I don't know why VAR would be discussed in the same year that they want to address SBFC housing issues and referee pay issues. You'd think they want to settle on the basics first before looking to spend more money on what is IMO secondary issues.
I can see VAR being discussed because it's in people's minds. It had a big "debut" at the MWC this summer, plus MLS just started using it too, so people would be very curious about adding it (especially with the other referee issues NWSL has). That is, it's less something NWSL has been considering internally and more something they know other people would hope that they're considering and they know other people will ask about, so they have to have an answer ready. But yeah, when they still have stadia that can barely support streaming and other broadcasts, VAR is pie in the sky.
How so? As I stated in the game feeds/TV/media thread, Yahoo is owned by Verizon. Go90 was owned by Verizon. It's likely just a continuation of the same contract as they had before. So no net league benefit. However, stuff shown Yahoo Sports is currently only available on phones and tablets, there is no casting support, no streaming devices (eg Roku, Android TV, Apple TV) support, and no website. I do expect they'll eventually (though knowing the NWSL, probably not until after the season starts and fans start complaining) get it up to Go90's level of accessibility (which honestly wasn't that great either with not having support for streaming devices), but as it stands, it's a loss for fans.