Who will come is a tricky list to make, but you can make a list over those, who will definitely absolutely not be there when the league starts in March. USWNT Allocations: Ali Krieger (Washington Freedom) Signed an extension of her contract with German champions FFC Frankfurt just days after the allocation. Stays in Bundesliga (at least) until summer 2010. Ali talks about this in an interview with the DC Examiner. Still listed on Freedom's player roster. International Draft: Lotta Schelin (St. Louis Athletica) Signed a two year contract with French champions Olympique Lyon a couple of weeks before the draft. St. Louis renounced its rights November 19. Margret Lara Vidarsdottir (Los Angeles Sol) Signed a one year contract with Swedish runners-up and Cup winners Linköping FC November 24. No longer listed on the player roster at Los Angeles Sol's website, but the club's player rights are still listed at the WPS website. There has been no official renouncement. Post draft discovery players: Anja Mittag (FC Gold Pride) Under contract with German top club FFC Turbine Potsdam until July 2009. She has stated that she will not leave. Still listed on Gold Pride's player roster. Ingvild Stensland (St. Louis Athletica) Stensland's contract with her Swedish club expired in December 2008. She spent the fall talking to clubs in (at least) Sweden, Germany, England, France and USA and finally signed with Olympique Lyon. St. Louis renounced its rights November 17. Lene Mykjåland (Washington Freedom) Extended her contract with Norwegian champions Røa for at least one more year on November 27. Still listed on Freedom's player roster. WPS General Draft India Trotter (St. Louis Athletica) Signed a two year contract with FFC Frankfurt in July 2008. Still listed on St. Louis' player roster. A small reservation. The European leagues concerned here will be on hold during July and August due to the European Championships. Players who won't have any national team duties (read: the American players) during that period could possibly be loaned out to the WPS clubs that have retained their rights for the player.
Thanks for the information! Living in the St. Louis area, I hadn't heard that about Trotter. It seems odd that they would use their top pick in the general draft to pick someone who is already under contract, but of course, the same was true with their pick of Schelin. If positive rumors about Sara Larsson and Eniola Aluko coming over turn out to be true, it will offset the mistakes in picking Schelin and Trotter.
a signed contract doesn't mean that the player is not coming. it's up to st. louis to decide if it is willing to pay the transfer fee. most transfers in the world of football is of players who have signed contracts with the team they are leaving. so even players who have recently signed contracts are not precluded from coming, unless they and their teams have publicly stated so. and even then....
Yes, but the transfer fees wanted by the international clubs (I'm sure) would be a decent chunk of change that I don't think the WPS would be willing to pay. Not to mention quite a few players who have signed these contracts have already had negotiations with the league and couldn't reach an agreement. So, I would bet that newly signed contracts are a good indicator those players will not be coming over, at least not for the upcoming season.
truth. are there any players who are well enough known locally/nationally so that their wps team would be willing to spend the extra $ to get them? like the beckham approach on a much smaller scale?
So, India playing in Europe, good decision on her part? She has had trouble cracking the USWNT roster, actually she has only made one touranment a couple years ago.
I got the impression from discussion of the Ali Krieger/Washington Freedom issue that the team wasn't even allowed to talk to the player unless her contract was close to expiring.
Transfers are a bit tricky. In India's case, in order for her to be able to play in the WPS for free is if her contract has six month's remaining. If St. Louis really wanted her they would have to submit a inquiry to the club, in this case Frankfurt, and ask for the value of the player. Once that is agreed the club then is able to offer a contract to the player and she accepts then they need to pay the transfer fee. Then there is other details such as monthly installations and compensation that the club selling the player might want. In Frankfurt she has been second half sub from all the games I've watched. Although I'm sure she probably started a game or two so far. Germany and Sweden do have good leagues. India went to a team where it is hard to get a first team spot within a couple of weeks even if she is a good player. She will probably learn a lot playing with Frankfurt and might be a good experience in her playing career.
why would teams draft players that they know wouldnt come? is it really worth drafting them to only have them on loan for a few games? what good is that for team chemistry?
I think it might have been a little poor research. Unlike men's soccer where it's fairly easy to find out a player's contract status, it is hard to find news on women's professional teams, let alone their contract status. Dandal has about the best website I know of with news of European players, but there aren't a lot of others, especially for those of us who can speak one language. St. Louis probably didn't know that Trotter had already signed a contract or figured that most American players would stay here to play in the WPS, if given the opportunity. It was funny to see a lot of the European players' reactions to the WPS International draft. Most were amused and quite a few were confused. It was like nobody over there had any idea what was going on with the WPS. And let's face it, drafts are totally foreign to the Europeans. It's an American thing, borrowed from other sports.
An addition as of today: International Draft: Renata Costa (St. Louis Athletica) Signed a contract Sweden's LDB FC Malmö today. Understandably still listed for St. Louis. The news is less than 60 minutes old.
Sorry if this was already posted, but the Breakers renounced the rights to Emma Byrne on 1/16 according to the Transactions page of the WPS website.
I think what really pisses me off is that the WPS has pretty much kept everyone's photos up on their players page. Those like Mykjå and Mittag who have signed other contracts or said no thanks, and even Byrne, who's rights have been dropped. But yet they keep updating that page with all their newest draftees. So, it's not like they haven't been editing that page. It feels as if they're purposely trying to be deceitful.
The Freedom still hold the rights to Mykja - which is why it says "WPS Playing rights assigned" next to her name. We can hold those rights for a year so if she decides to come over and play in WPS next year, we would be the club she negotiates with. As soon as we renounce her rights she will be removed from the page but I figure people would like to know which players we hold the WPS rights for.
So, when actual player contracts are signed, will there be a designation between the signed and non-signed players? Separate pages perhaps? I think it's swell that the teams and league want to showcase players they have the rights to, but I still think it's highly misleading to John Q. Public.
Agreed. The teams actually have the non-signed players as being on their roster. This is incorrect, since they are under contract to another team and not on loan to the WPS teams. They really do need to somehow differentiate between true roster players and players that they have the rights to, but are in fact under contract to another team.
not sure john q. knows much about these players, so i don't know how it would really mislead. fans of wps would know the difference.
WELL SH**. That's, what, the FOURTH Athletica draftee who is/has signed elsewhere??? And we traded away someone for moving up two places in the draft last Friday??? I'm starting to think that I'll be shocked if we even have eleven players on the field for opening day.... (apologies for the very.... raw post I just made, but this is really getting frustrating, especially since it seems STL is the only team having this many problems....)
I share your frustration. To recap: Schelin signed in France. Renata Costa signed in Sweden. Ingvild Stensland (post-draft discovery)-Rights renounced. India Trotter signed in Germany and then retiring. Joanna Lohman traded to Washington to move up two spots in the draft. That leaves two players from the original international draft, Daniela and Melissa Tancredi and two players from the general draft in October, Angie Woznuk and Amanda Cinalli. I can see the international draft, but the general draft? These were all American players. Hopefully, our current post-draft discovery players (Eniola Aluko, Sara Larsson, and Francielle) will sign, but things haven't been going well up until now. Please, some positive news soon!
From what I've seen in various posts here and on the WPS fan site, there are WPS fans who doesn't know the difference. Thus the need for threads to keep track of confirmed signings and confirmed no-shows. And it would be nice if, just to pick a club, Washington Freedom's roster could distinguish between players they have agreements with (Lindsey, Sauerbrunn, Janss), player they own the WPS rights to, but whose playing rights belongs to another club (Mykjåland, Krieger) and players they are trying to get agreements with (just about everybody else). Even if STL made bad (uninformed?) decisions in the Schelin and Trotter cases, for Stensland and Renata Costa they simply lost to the competition. There will be competetive bidders for attractive players and in some cases the WPS club will not win. And I'm convinced Aluko and Larsson will show up for STL in March.
and i'm also sure that some of those overseas signed contracts were probably improved just to keep those players away from wps. that's gonna happen. i'm thinking that that's just the cost of competition in a new league. you win some, you lose some. in fact in a new league, we're lucky we've got some of the good ones. i know, i know, that's not much comfort to the athletica.
I don't know about you, but I'd say this had all the signs of an out-and-out conspiracy against the Land of the Free! Seriously, though, it's quite normal in Europe for players to use their current offers as leverage in negotiations. Just like any other "employee" trying to get a raise.