News: NWSL general news and info

Lateral collateral ligament.

 

This is the beginning of the end of the NWSL.
As it fades away and leads to be a bigger and brighter league .... the MPSL

 

More on the potential FCKC sale:

Potential buyer of Kansas City NWSL team is Elam Baer, CEO of North Central Equity in Twin Cities. Needs approval. Sporting KC has passed.

— Subscribe to GrantWahl.com (@GrantWahl) October 17, 2016

And no, Baer isn't involved with the Loons, to the best of my knowledge (after several searches on Google/Twitter/etc.). But it looks like moving FCKC to the Twin Cities isn't likely.

 

You are correct he isn't involved with the MNUFC ownership group.

 

Interestingly his company owns Yeadon Fabric Domes which makes sports air domes. Wonder if he sees cross promotion with this. They list "United States Soccer Inc" as a client which I think means USSF as those are the only results I see.

 

Nice article from the Kansas City Star, giving a ton more details about Baer, his current status with the purchase, and some of the nastiness among the current ownership group:
http://www.kansascity.com/sports/mls/fc-kansas-city/article108823457.html
Baer has already attended two FCKC matches from this past season, and reiterates that he has no intentions of moving the team.

 

Good read

 

Just got my STH letter from the Red Stars with this interesting passage:

"We expect the number of home games at Toyota Park to expand to 12 or more .... If you act before we finalize our match calendar and we play more than 12 games, the other games are yours as a bonus...".

Obviously no World Cup or Olympic break next year... but still intriguing... 10 teams? balanced schedules??

 

12 home games = 24 games total, which would not go balanced between 9 (10-1) opposing teams. You could, in theory, do a 10-team balanced schedule with playing every opponent 3 times, but then you run in to the issue that no three-game series will be truly balanced in the home-away sense, as well as having some teams host 14 home games while other only get 13. (Which might not be a wholly bad idea in the "league average attendance" sense if the five teams hosting the extra game were POR, ORL, HOU, SEA, and WAS - but that's a different issue.)

Now, I think having a 24-game schedule that's 3opp*2g + 6opp*3g wouldn't be bad at all... But that's up for debate. Or maybe even a 26-game schedule where you player everyone 3g except for a single opponent that's only 2g.

Anyway, the bigger story I see from this is that NWSL apparently feels that having a longer season across the calendar is not prohibitive from an operational or financial standpoint. It means that at least some teams are okay with the added expenses of 2+ extra home games or an extra month of player salaries. The latter of which should be obvious just based on this past season - even NWSL wasn't playing during the Olympic break, the players were still being paid for that time - so I think the former is the bigger story, at least from the tidbit given by CHI*.

*Of course, this could just mean that CHI likes TP and plans to hold extra games, e.g. friendlies, even if the NWSL schedule doesn't expand. But that's much less likely, I bet.

 

Games against UWS?

 

Unless the Red Stars Reserves switch from WPSL to UWS, I kinda doubt it; while I'm sure UWS would love the publicity of interdivision games, I don't see how NWSL teams would agree to that, except as preseason matches.

 

Or to fatten the field if they tried to add a cup system

 

oooo I hadn't thought about a cup...
Though I can't think of how they guarantee more than one extra home game with an added cup... Heck, a cup shouldn't even guarantee one extra home game to begin with.

 

Or maybe there is going to be a preseason tournament like Portland had last year? That would be exciting - although Chicago weather in March/April, not so much.

 

Well, I did consider preseason in response to Fracas' UWS suggestion, but I agree it's unlikely. Heck, I think fans would revolt if the only way to buy a season ticket package was to pay for preseason games

 

A fire destroys a large majority of the family house of FCKC's Alexa Newfield.. If you want to contribute, there's a GoFundMe started: https://www.gofundme.com/newfield-family-house-fire-2vmaf38

 

Jen Cooper (host of Mixxed Zone podcast) has uploaded some WoSoCo 2.0 sessions to youtube. Here's a couple that are related to US women's professional leagues (not just NWSL, but WUSA and WPS):

The Nerd-off between Dan Lauletta and Jen Cooper (covering professional US woso trivia):



Dan Lauletta on all three of the WUSA finals:

 

Ive been meaning to watch the WUSA Founders Cup video. I attended the first one in Boston but honestly dont really recall a lot about it besides rooting for the Cyberrays because Tisha Venturini played for them and Boston wasnt in it.

 

Here's one more WoSoCo 2.0 video. This one is a Q&A session with Jen Cooper and Dan Lauletta in which they answer questions about NWSL expansion, MLS's relationship with woso, pre-determined championships locations, health of the NWSL, and more:

 

Speaking of Cooper, Backline Soccer did NWSL awards and the Dash team got best broadcast.

http://backlinesoccer.com/the-2016-backline-soccer-nwsl-awards/

 

Looking at the stats for 2016, I see that Christie Rampone played every minute of every game. Age 41. Amazing.

So, I'm too lazy to figure it out: who is the second oldest player in the NWSL?

 

Barnhart most likely? Anyone else I could think of is younger than her.

 

I just watched this UK Woso interview and enjoyed every minute.

http://www.somersetlive.co.uk/yeovi...n-s-football/story-29861669-detail/story.html

Not NWSL, but I wanted to share.

 

Not looking to get political, but I guess Masar isn't coming back anytime soon:

http://www.sportingnews.com/soccer/...trump-is-president/1bqtaeda8g6z114vlp6vaxk9kh