https://www.sounderatheart.com/seattle-reign/2020/10/26/21534847/nwsl-homegrown-player-rule-2022 NWSL likely to add homegrown player rule within next year Rule needs to balance rewarding teams for player development and maintaining competitive balance. One piece of eye-catching news when OL Reign’s training roster was announced ahead of the 2020 NWSL Fall Series was the inclusion of two Reign Academy players — goalkeeper Neeku Purcell and defender Smith Hunter. Although neither was eligible to play in games without losing their NCAA eligibility, it provided the coaching staff an opportunity to assess them against pros in a training environment and in scrimmages. With more and more NWSL academy graduates now in college and some potentially ready for the professional level, the question has turned to whether the teams that helped develop them through their academy systems will get some benefit from that, similar to the MLS Homegrown Player rule. We spoke with OL Reign CEO Bill Predmore about this and other topics last week. Before the pandemic struck, Predmore revealed that the league was well on its way to developing such a rule this year. He now feels there’s about a “98% chance” that such a rule will be in place by the middle of next year, with the first homegrown players potentially signing ahead of the 2022 NWSL draft. “This has been discussed in a significant way for the last year,” said Predmore about the potential homegrown player rule. “Twelve months ago there was a decision by ownership that we wanted to explore implementing a homegrown rule. There was intense debate around that discussion probably for two months after that, where we were really pushing to try and get something done. The start of the season, and maybe more than anything Covid then just sort of blew everything up and our focus as a league really became what do we do and then how do we pull off the Challenge Cup. So we didn’t really revisit the homegrown rule until maybe 45 days ago.” One of the challenges for the NWSL in drafting such a rule is how significant the college draft still is for the league compared to MLS, where the vast majority of talent now comes through the international market or academies. Finding a middle ground between letting NWSL teams directly sign all of the talented young players who come up through their academy and maintaining competitive balance is a priority. “The ramifications of a homegrown rule are so significant that we just really have to be careful with that,” Predmore noted. “[The NWSL draft] is massively impactful, particularly those first three or four picks can change the trajectory of a team for half a decade. So getting this right and not destroying what I think we did get right — we have mechanism now to by and large equitably distribute talent across teams via the draft — there’s some caution about blowing that up and ending up with a situation where we could make it possible for one team or another to disproportionately grab those players coming out.”
Well they were going to have to do that to allow Portland to keep that 14 (15?) year-old professional player that has been training at Nike in Portland the last year.
Yep and other clubs want to keep their own as well. Question is what about clubs that don’t have any development academies? Do they get players from the other NWSL related academies? Like a draft pick style like 3 potential players in that academy for example? Or just from any club in the U.S. even if they are not part of the NWSL?
"Homegrown" is a mechanism for roster-building mechanism from the teams up, not from the league down, so there's no "distribution" to be had for teams that don't have their own academies. This either puts financial pressure on teams to run academies and/or favors teams with the capital to run the academies. Not only that, but they have to consider the geographic range of what counts as "homegrown". Some teams are in WoSo-rich areas, and their "territory" could be just their metro area; others may want to claim full states, or entire regions. I mean, the LA team could draw from just SoCol and probably be better than most; a team like Utah, though, doesn't have nearly as big of a population to draw from. Utah currently has an academy in Arizona, and probably would like to claim the entire Rockies+Sun Belt region. In either case, expansion makes "homegrown" rights a sticky issue - what happens if a new group is granted a franchise in an already-claimed territory? This is basically a similar issues to franchise market rights, but larger-scale. They've got to figure that out to make it work well. For reference, here's the MLS version of the Homegrown process: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homegrown_Player_Rule_(Major_League_Soccer) "unspecific league requirements" MLS is no better than NWSL at transparency
Phil Murphy, governor of NJ and owner of Sky Blue, released his and wife's joint tax returns for 2019. From an article on NJ.com. https://www.nj.com/politics/2020/11...prawling-tax-returns-heres-what-we-found.html "THEIR SOCCER TEAM KEEPS LOSING MONEY Murphy said they bought Sky Blue FC, a professional women’s soccer, to provide a place for young girls to realize dreams of playing pro ball. But the club also continues to be a money pit. He and his wife lost $1.1 million on the franchise in 2019 — up from about $823,000 the year before. They have lost more than $7 million in the team since buying it. Sky Blue garnered negative headlines last year when former players reported the team’s playing and housing facilities were dismal, including practice fields without showers or laundry service, and rental houses with “plastic bags for windows.” Murphy vowed improvements, and the club announced last November that Tammy Murphy would “take an active role in club activities.” Since then, Sky Blue has added upscale apartment for players, a revamped front office, and upgraded practice facilities. The team also began playing at Red Bull Arena in Harrison and made their league playoffs."
A little bit of under-the-hood news that probably is a very good sign from last week: new Chief Revenue Officer! https://www.nwslsoccer.com/news/article/nwsl-hires-mitch-poll-as-chief-revenue-officer
Craig Harrington is officially out. LePeilbet remains interim coach for Utah. Utah Royals FC confirm what I reported six weeks ago on @EqualizerSoccer: Craig Harrington is officially and permanently out as head coach. His contract has been terminated. Not much detail in the club statement. Amy LePeilbet remains interim coach.➡️ https://t.co/J1fuYMWuJU pic.twitter.com/vhHRP2Rtou— Jeff Kassouf (@JeffKassouf) November 9, 2020
I see they also issued a separate statement about assistant coach Louis Lancaster: I don't remember the past events enough to figure how much he had possibly looked involved with Harrington's misconduct at the time, but I suppose not enough for it to be relevant.
I wonder what the extent of the misconduct was? He was always a nice mild mannered guy, sensible, when I talked to him while he was Assistant with the Red Stars.
Yes, and Ted Bundy was a good, helpful and kind neighbor. It is always the worst that hide their darker side the best.
OK, comparing him to Ted Bundy? Come on. I don't know, but he may have made an off-color joke to someone which 10-20 years ago would have been no big deal, now is, and in the summer that we had everything was under a microscope and Utah just wanted to clear the slate moving forward under the new management that will eventually come. I'm curious though.
If I asked it's because I remember something about a "toxic environment" at Utah Royal, but I don't remember the extent of the involvement of each party in this situation, so please nobody relies on me for info. I am the one looking for info, not the one providing it!
I haven't seen specifics, but there was an allegation of him being "verbally abusive" towards players: I'm told Harrington was initially placed on leave because players complained he was being "verbally abusive" toward them. It got to the point that players would organize their own group film sessions. #URFC #NWSL #woso— Alex Vejar (Tortured Poet version) (@AlexMVejar) November 9, 2020 https://www.sltrib.com/sports/rsl/2020/11/09/utah-royals-fire-coach/ Earlier allegations (circulated on social media immediately after he was placed on leave) were about some inappropriate comments to staff, not players. Again, I don't know which allegation (if either) was the one substantiated that led to his being fired.
2021 #NWSL competition schedule:Challenge Cup: AprilRegular season: May (24 matches per team)Playoffs: November (Expanded to 6 teams, top 2 seeds receive a first-round bye)Okay we 👀 you @lisainog!!!— Meredith Cash (@mercash22) November 18, 2020
Easy vs. West bubble locations? West: Reign FC, Portland, Utah, Houston (host), Chicago East: Louisville (host), SkyBlue, Washington, Orlando, North Carolina Play each team within bubble twice, group winners do a home-and-away series to determine Challenge Cup winner?
Another year, another year that having a bunch of USWNT players isn't really a thing in the NWSL. 24 game season - How many will the core WNT group actually play?
Which is really interesting because you'd think it would impact their WNT performance.. Megan Rapinoe hasn't played at all this season and, given her absence this year, I would not be surprised if she doesn't play next year as well...
Really excited for all of this! A return of the CC and expanded playoff were things I was definitely hoping for. Well, if the regular season is going to be 24 games and they aren't starting until May, that's gonna put more games in the post-Olympics time frame, especially if the league tries to avoid FIFA dates like it has been the past few years. I mean, the playoffs are gonna end deep in November. USWNTers may still miss a significant number of games, but I think the announced schedule tilts the deck a bit toward dates that the USWNTers would be expected to make.
Five-team groups with DOUBLE-round-robin would mean 10 matchdays, and that's not including playoffs; no way in hell that happens, even without the one-month time limit. They can't fit the CC into just a month if the total number of matchdays, playoffs included, is more than 7. That's certainly possible with five-team groups (five matchdays) if you skip the QF phase and go straight into SFs. I'm curious, though, if they decide to invite two non-NWSL teams to make a fairly even field of 12; several formats could come from that which might make more sense.
And actually, per the previous post, the folks at EQZ have more details on the anticipated CC format: https://equalizersoccer.com/2020/11...up-six-team-playoffs-regular-season-schedule/ ; emphasis mine So an East/West split with one champions game actually does sound like the way they plan on going - it'll just be three or four "pool play" games instead of the eight you would get from a double-round-robin. The abbreviated CC playoff structure might be a trade-off for the expanded official championship playoff structure.
Moving back to Kansas City: NEWS: Utah Royals players were informed today that the franchise is relocating to Kansas City. The sale of the team, however, is still not officially complete. Legal details still to be finalized. NWSL clearly feels they will be sorted shortly. KC outcome has been imminent.— Jeff Kassouf (@JeffKassouf) December 6, 2020