If the Challenge Cup is the entire season, will the winners be considered 2020 NWSL Champions in the league records?
Disturbing in what sense? That these numbers are evidence that we lacked a coordinated federal response? That we are led by a President who is both grossly incompetent and entirely devoid of empathy for human loss and suffering? Or am I missing something?
The transfer/loan economy is actually quite developed in the women's game already, but nowhere near as all encompassing as in the men's game. It's basically only at a few elite clubs involving elite players. Umëa isn't going to be paying Sky Blue for McCall Zerboni any time soon.
Why did the NWSL decide this is not the 2020 season? Records, stats are kept. If this is all the season we get, it's the season.
Not to turn this excessively political but the US is just fine and it is handling the pandemic perfectly. I know that is true because Trump has said so and he never lies.
I am just guessing here, but I would imagine that players probably have bonuses written into their contracts for hitting certain statistical milestones like being the leading scorer in the league, or playing a certain number of league matches or minutes, or being MVP, etc that owners have no desire in paying out for this tournament.
If they say it's not the season (which they have), then it's not the season. There doesn't have to be a 2020 season. This is just a standalone tournament. For me, the real question - if they don't play any further games this year - is how the NSHOF treats 2020 with regards to eligibility. For about a decade, it actually counted the abominations that were the 2004 WUSA Festivals as a "season" with regards to player ballot eligibility. They finally stopped doing that. There is a more compelling reason to count this tournament, though. Given the fact that it was actually meaningful games by actual teams, and not two-off games of random players wearing one team's jersey in Minnesota and another's in Los Angeles.
Athletic article about plans for the rest of 2020 is up. It contains info from an e-mail sent out to players as well as a teleconference with Baird yesterday. The basics: -The league has started some initial plans for play in home markets. Any competition or matches would follow the local and state protocols and guidelines. There's no firm plans or further information though, but it sounds like they're hoping for possible friendlies between teams and/or regional tournaments. -Players should report back to their home markets by August 17. -There is a firm end date for any matches/competitions. All play will end no later than October 17. -Post-Challenge Cup, the NWSL will be entering Phase 5: exhibition matches. (Phase 2 was small group training, Phase 3 full team training, Phase 4 was the tournament). -While a second "bubble" tournament has not been excluded, its unlikely at this point (seems likely that it wouldn't get player buy-in either if they're being asked to be away from home again for another whole month, considering how difficult players have said this tournament has been both physically and mentally). EDIT: the Equalizer also has an article filled with quotations from the teleconference with Baird. It has more about the success of the tournament and sponsorship as well as future plans.
Too late to edit this post, but I just finished reading this one, and I LOVE that a media member apparently asked Baird about the NWSL Playground. If you're wondering, she loves the online interaction of fans, was also disappointed that no player celebrated on the slide, and wants to do something with the playground in the future.
The New York Times (behind a paywall) has an interesting article proposing rule changes for all the major sports, including soccer. Most of the rule changes proposed are to speed up interminable baseball, football, and basketball games. (Reasons I like soccer include that the action is continuous and the games last only 2 hours.) One proposed change I heartily endorse is elimination of the archaic notion that fans should be silent while watching tennis and golf matches. Using the rationale for that, we should all be silent when a soccer player is taking penalty kicks or a basketball player taking free throws. One of the rule changes proposed for soccer is to revise the off side rule to state that a player is only offside is his or her whole body is offside. Please! I'm tired of seeing offside called when somebody has a toenail offside. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...on=click&module=Editors Picks&pgtype=Homepage
Why don’t the NWSL just follow the rest of American soccer; allow starters to re-sub back into the game? Over 99.99% of Americans play it this way & will make the game into a much faster pace
This seems to imply a misunderstanding of the reason the offside law came into existence. It was inserted into the Laws of the game to increase scoring. Before offside was implemented teams often played an effective 9-1 formation to present the easy goal from a pass to a player all alone in the attacking zone. The ultimate effect I see from easing the use of the offside law as suggested would be that teams would drop more players behind the ball to limit breakaways that would become supposedly become more common. My suggestion would be much simpler and that would be to have referees actually call the laws as they are written. Make fouls in the box be called the by the same criteria as they are called at midfield and make the criteria for yellow cards not change if a player already has one. Right now referees fail to make calls because they do not want to affect the game and by not making calls they affect the game even more. That simple change and taking away the advantage the defense has in the box would, at first, increase the number of PKs in each game and the number of red cards but players that are really any good would adjust and those that do not or cannot would no longer be played by their coaches. Changing the offside law would have the result of making the game more defensive but requiring the referees to call the match as the laws are written would, after a short period of adjustment, increase the number of good chances and, if the players can finish, the scoring by several goals a game.
That is not allowed in the MLS or the USL or any professional league I have ever heard of. If it were allowed it would slow down the game a lot and coaches would use it to waste time if they were leading late in the game. It would require that the clock be stopped for subs and that is something no outdoor soccer league should allow. And the main argument against that sort of absurdity is that no league that tried to use it would be sanctioned by FIFA and that would prevent many domestic players from playing in it and virtually no international payers would transfer in.
Then you'll just change the discussion to what constitutes a "body" and the frame of reference for your toenail discussion won't go away, just the frame of reference will change.
Posted this in the 2020 Cup final thread, but it might deserve more discussion (or at least WMG) here, since it's opening the possibility of future Challenge Cups beyond 2020! So what do people think? I would personally love to see the Challenge Cup evolve into either a League Cup (just NWSL teams) or an Open Cup (all divisions) - and I already have two format ideas for both situations. X-D
And therein lies a large part of the problem with changing to "American-style" substitution rules. Do you really want to make NWSL games into contests to see who can run faster, jump higher and bust a gut more, or would you rather they be contests of skill.
I think a season-long open cup probably isn't in the cards, both because the number of teams involved will likely be fairly small, plus the lower division teams have short windows with which to play games due to their dependence on NCAA players. But yeah, having a cross-division cup is much needed in the US.
I agree with you skill wise & sooner or later we got to switch to FIFA rules if we’re going to compete with the rest of the world but the original question was how to make the NWSL games more exciting as quite a few of the posters were complaining about how boring the games were as well as the low scores traditionally pro women’s club sports have never been big sellers but the 2019 NWSL final(an actual exciting match) was seen in ESPN by a ridiculous small 166K audience(this is smaller than the average Game for the first pro league back in 2002). A bigger share was announced by CBS for the opening game of this 2020 Challenge Cup(550K) & hopefully bigger numbers for the final yesterday, but you got the feeling that woso which has an annual participation by millions, should be have higher ratings when played at the pro level
Actually, the final of the Challenge Cup that was played yesterday was quite exciting. I guess it's mostly a question of time and preparation: in a normal season, the tournament would have been much longer that just one month and the pre-season would have been more challenging and significant. In the previous years, you used to see quite entertaining matches when you were looking one month into the league or beyond (I remember even crazy 5-4 or 6-1 scores! ): I have no doubt that it will be the same in the future, as soon as we get a Covid-free full season.