The W-League has announced its divisional alignment. Interestingly, they left out how many games each team will be playing (last year it was 14, or 13 for the midwest teams after Columbus folded). http://www.uslsoccer.com/home/86732.html And like last year, the W will have a freakish playoff system, with each conference having a different format, and a "final four" hosted by a team which gets an auto-bid. Interesting that Cincinnati has been given the host of the Central conference playoffs, without getting an auto-bid.
Well I am suprised to see Atlanta got a team, but it not suprising that we didn't hear about it....they usually keep things under hat. Although the Beat drew well partly with the W-Nat players involvement, I think there are alot of people who will come out and support just any type of pro women's soccer. It will be a good thing to tap into because it grows the Silverbacks name and will hopefully bring fans out to the mens game too.
But, three Canadian teams are not returning: Calgary, Edmonton and Montreal. I'm most surprised at Montreal ... was hoping they would establish a hold as they definitely had/have some great players.
Considering that the WPSL already has a team there,I'm really surprised that the W-League would consider putting one in San Diego...
Yeah, that caught my eye, too, as a San Diego ex-pat. I thought maybe the Lions were defecting to the W. Oh well, hopefully it'll all work out.
team in San Diego? I do not know if I just looked in the wrong places on the W-League website, but I couldn't find anything about how much it costs to start a team, and how much to run it. I had no problem doing that at the WPSL site last year. Can anyone point me in the right direction? I've been trying to find out because someone told me that it was about 10 times as much for the W-League as the WPSL. It seems to me that that would make it even more unlikely that a team would be able to make a go of it out here (unless a 'mini-Anschutz' is planning to do it... .
W-League team in San Diego? I'm surprised too that we still haven't heard anything about San Diego's new W-League team several weeks after Mark Zeigler first mentioned this in one of his columns. What I heard from some of the people involved with the San Diego WFC was that it costs about $50,000 to start a W-League team as opposed to $5,000 for starting up a WPSL club. As of two weeks ago no one I spoke to on the WFC staff had any information about a San Diego W-League team. For a W-League team to have any chance of being successful in the San Diego area I would think that at least one of the former USWNT players who still lives in the area, such as Shannon MacMillan and Julie Foudy, would have to get involved to help the team get started and also help attract some quality players to join their roster.
I noticed that the Vermont Voltage added a W-League team. It's nice to see existing programs adding more teams. It's also nice to see a new W-League team out west. I wonder if CASL will ever add a W-League team?