Every few days, we'll start a thread with a specific team. The attempt is to try to predict each team roster, one team at a time (each roster with 18 players, you can add up to 3 additional developmental players if you want). We'll start this thread with Boston. Later in the week we'll analyze D.C., and so on. Then once the rosters are final for all eight teams, we can look back on this to see who was the most accurate for each team. If we have eight threads (one for each team), then we can have up to eight winners on this board. This is like participating in a pool for the NCAA tournament (friendly predictive competition). Instead, you're predicting rosters, instead of predicting teams who win and advance further into the tournament. Remember, it's 3 USA-FED players per roster, 2 CAN-FED players per roster, and 1-2 MEX-FED players per roster. BOSTON BREAKERS (WPS_Movement predicted roster) F - Kyah Simon (Australia - International) F - Melissa Henderson F - Courtney Jones F/MF - Victoria DiMartino (2013 rookie, Boston College) F/MF - Lauren Cheney (USA-FED) MF - Heather O'Reilly (USA-FED) MF - Diana Matheson (CAN-FED) MF - Dinora Garza (MEX-FED) MF - Tameka Butt (Australia - International) MF - Leslie Osborne D - Taryn Hemmings D - Elli Reed D - Lauren Sesselmann (CAN-FED) D - Kelley O'Hara (USA-FED) D - Melinda Mercado D - Cat Whitehill GK - Jillian Mastroianni GK - Alyssa Naeher F - Jess Luscinski (Developmental) MF - Amanda DaCosta (Developmental) MF - Bri Rodriguez (Developmental - 2013 rookie, West Virginia) Tameka Butt is one of the most underrated midfielders in the world:
The only 3 people I would put on this list as probable are O'Reilly, DeCosta & Lucinski. Everyone else I think is a maybe at best. Team is going to look a lot different than it did coming out of last year. Even Osbourne may not come back to Boston if she did move back to west coast in the offseason and wants a change of pace.
Less players will be drafted, and more players will be assigned to teams, compared to years past. A lot of players will want to play out west as their first choice. Not all of them will get that opportunity. I'm not sure Leslie Osborne is in a position to pick and choose the team she'll be on. She's no longer on any U.S. national team, and has no leverage to choose her 1st or 2nd choice. She'll be happy to be in Boston (or out West), because she may end up getting stuck in Kansas City or Chicago, and those are probably two of her least likely choices. She has always seemed a coastal kind of player in what she prefers (if not west coast, then on the east coast). She may get stuck right in the middle in Kansas City or something. She has no power to choose where she goes at this point. If she were guaranteed a Breaker in 2013 at this point, she shouldn't turn it down.
If anyone is close to a guaranteed Breaker at this point it is Osborne. She helped find the team new investors last season.
Well, the non-NT players probably won't go through a draft or allocation, so she will likely be in a position to choose teams as a free agent. I'd be surprised if she went anywhere other than Boston.
Yeah, both Mewis and DiMartino are upcoming rookies (in the rookie draft) from Boston College. The Breakers will draft one of them, if they can. They might not be able to get both (and probably won't). Mewis and Nairn may be the Top 2 picks (and should be no worse than 2 of the Top 3 picks). Will Boston have a Top 2 or 3 pick? We'll have to wait and see. DiMartino should be a Top 10 pick, and may be a Top 5 pick. Mewis may even go #1 overall.
You are assuming there will be a draft. Do you have any direct information indicating that will be the case? What if the teams work together and simply divvy up the top players? Or, work with the top players to decide where best to assign them if they want to play?
There is absolutely no intelligent information to support that the Breakers would be targeting players simply because they went to BC. If anything they rarely draft any players from BC. If you look at their track record in drafts they tend to favor drafting players from BU for local players.
Your also including a lot of players who will still be Seniors, the NCAA may not allow them to be eligible for the draft until after the first season. You have to look at players who graduated last year I think.
Both the WPS and the WUSA drafted players who were graduating that same year. Some players completed their education before joining their teams.
Yea I probably should have added that we don't know if the NCAA will do the same for the NWSL. It's likely and I don't see why not, but you never know with NCAA, does the fact that US Soccer is running the show change things?
You would think. Same thing happened for Amy Rodriguez, Tobin Heath, and Alex Morgan, when they went #1 in each of the three rookie drafts.