So very cool to be at the Red Stars meet and greet and hear one of the new young draft picks say, Lori Chalupny is a good role model for the young players.
I hope they get a good crowd. If they do, that could open the door for more games at Toyota in the future, and not just one double header with the Fire every year.
Well the Fire most be doing ok financially, at least not losing too much money for them to do this, TP needs the income, so I imagine the Red Stars got a good deal, defenitelly a lot less than what they were paying back in the WPS days.
Women's Soccer Zone preview of the Red Stars: https://audioboom.com/boos/3046820-women-s-soccer-zone-nwsl-preview-chicago-red-stars
It's too bad the Red Stars will have to cut some of these kids this week to get the roster down. There is some really god talent on this young squad. Good thing the CRS have a WPSL team and a U-19 team as well. The Red Stars sales staff was at the games at Lou Fusz soccer complex near St. Louis working hard to sell/spread the CRS brand. These folks are the hardest working soccer people I've seen. So far I have been to all the pre-season games and they have had a tent with Red Stars paraphernalia at every game. If anyone thinks the Chicago Red Red Stars do not work hard to spread the word and sell tickets, does not know what they are talking about. I see the amount of work they put in with my own eyes. One more thing, I can't say this enough, Danny Colaprico is Awesome!!
Red Stars in a suite at Busch Stadium watching the USWNT game. Looks like the Red Stars owner takes care of his players. 584451430729129984 is not a valid tweet id
This is, what, the third time or so he's gotten them tix to a baseball game? This seems to be somewhat regular. =-) Nice perks!
http://chicagoredstars.com/chicago-downs-missouri-6-0-iowa-state-3-0-in-45-minute-games/ 17 players used in each game, though not the same 17. Glad to see Lillie Toaspern got minutes in both games, though when you're creaming opponents by a combined score of 9-0 it's hard to tell what it means. Rosters should be finalized pretty soon, right? Chicago still missing 3US and 4CAN players, and those 4 missing Canadians are really gonna hurt for the first half of the season, eating up roster spots...
Here's the Red Stars 2015 roster: http://chicagoredstars.com/red-stars-announce-18-player-roster-for-2015-nwsl-season/ So they still have 2 players to announce. What else can it be but Goalkeepers? With Leblanc out for the WWC, they will need 2 keepers.
Or maybe Rachel Tejada. It's a shame that the National team players will take up roster space during the WWC. Chicago could possibly have up to 7 spots taken up by players who may not play until middle of Julie when those spots could have been given to a young kid while the National Team players are away. IMO, NWSL should have considered this a little better.
Don't worry, that's why every team got an extra international slot that they won't be able to use without cutting a domestic player... Yep.
I'm sure NWSL considered it a lot. I'm betting that maintaining the salary cap got in the way of suggestions like yours. The one thing we know from history is that a league that is not financially viable will not survive. That doesn't mean the owners have to make money, but they can't lose too much. The owners have agreed on a salary cap, which represents their determination of how much they can afford to lose at this time and still keep the league alive. I'm sure the Red Stars owners were in on that discussion and had as much say as anyone. I respect the owners' decision, since it's their money and since most of the teams -- probably all but the Thorns -- are losing money. I'm assuming, in this response, that when you say "when those spots could have been given to a young kid" you're meaning to a young kid who will be paid. If you don't, then my understanding is that the roster spots can be filled with amateurs while the NT players are away, which would include young kids.
Except they are not mutually exclusive. You can raise the roster space without increasing the cap. Likewise you can raise the cap without increasing roster space. I mean, they added a 4th international slot... surely you'd expect the average international would cost more money than the average domestic player because the average international is expected to be a higher caliber player than the average domestic player, right? Why else would they have increased the number of international slots? To lower the quality of the league? I don't think so. So if every team is expected to fit one more high priced player in the same cap, why couldn't they put 2 more low priced players in it instead? And to further counter your argument... if they did add an additional roster spot, just because they added it doesn't mean that they'd have to use it. The roster minimum is 18... if a team is happy with 18, they can keep 18, they don't have to have over 20.
It wasn't my argument, it was my best guess as to what the owners' rationale is. While your arguments are reasonable, are you really suggesting that the reason the league/owners maintained the current roster levels had nothing to do with the salary cap? Or, if that was the owners' reason are you saying you don't think it's a good reason? If it's the latter, I think if it's their money, I trust their thinking more than I'd trust yours or mine.
I'm saying I don't think they fully thought out the implications of playing with 2-6 amateur players for an extended period of time. They decided letting a team have a completely useless additional international slot (it's completely useless because they haven't even used up all 27 from last season, let alone the additional 9 they have for this season) would help keep the quality up. Putting aside the fact that most of the best internationals will be busy at the time this extra slot is needed, it doesn't really help when it's just taking away a paid domestic player spot and it doesn't address the issue of having so many amateurs. And these amateurs are not gonna be just below the NWSL level, those players end up going to play professionally in Iceland or some other random place in Europe. These amateurs are going to be the ones who aren't able to get a professional contract elsewhere. It doesn't really have anything to do with money, just poor foresight. They thought they were fixing the problem, but they didn't.