I love the name Angel City and I hope they stick with it. NWSL badly, badly needed to be in that market and the ownership group certainly looks robust. The Louisville franchise will come on line first and they recently announced a name and their basic kit ... Racing Louisville. Very fitting, I think. I'm thinking it's past time to break up the star power the league has clustered in Orlando a bit ... because it's been an abject failure on the pitch, if nothing else. So maybe Alex Morgan could be the first big name in LA. It would be a good fit since she's from San Dimas.
MLS news of sorts ... Dave Tepper's Charlotte franchise, who have pushed off joining the league until 2022, went ahead and announced the club name, logos and colors yesterday. No shock on the colors, as they just went with the NFL Panther's colorway. Duh. They went vanilla on the name though ... Charlotte FC. I mean, that's fine but fairly dull. I would have much preferred Queen City or Charlotte Town just to stand out from the boring MLS herd a bit.
They have hinted that they will do something similar to what they do when the Canadian national team play in BC Place ... which is graphic fabric over the upper deck seating. Done well, that looks sharp and isn't a distraction. Do it poorly and it looks decidedly bush league.They also said they have 25,000 season ticket deposits. The other clubs that play in football stadiums block off part of the seats, I assume Charlotte will do the same. If those deposits get converted and they get a strong walk up, they’ll be top 3 attendance in the league behind Atlanta and Seattle, who also play in football stadiums.
That's bad (really bad) for the league, but that's something that serves the individual players well. Sammie Mewis had kind of quietly become one of the best box to box midfielders in the NWSL ... THE best IMO. She needs to be playing, not sitting around training and not getting games. Rose is a unicorn, and still just a kid. She has a shot to be the best player in the world one day, but again ... she needs games.Sam Mewis is leaving the NC Courage for Man City in the FA Women’s League and Rose Lavelle is considering an offer from them. The contracts are for 1 year so they wouldn’t be allowed to return to the NWSL until after the Olympics next year. Because the NWSL doesn’t have any games scheduled after their tournament, there is no transfer fee.
They have hinted that they will do something similar to what they do when the Canadian national team play in BC Place ... which is graphic fabric over the upper deck seating. Done well, that looks sharp and isn't a distraction. Do it poorly and it looks decidedly bush league.
Yeah ... Seattle is good with the tifos and Atlanta does a good job with lighting to kind of make the upper deck disappear. I just mentioned BC Place because that's the one that Ryan Bailey (media guy for CFC) specifically mentioned on a podcast I was listening to a couple of weeks ago. Ryan is a hoot, BTW. He was an awesome hire for them.Seattle and Atlanta do it for their teams too, they don’t fill the football stadiums. The supporters and marketing department will come up with tifos to cover the seats, it will probably look a lot like what the Premier League lower levels look like. As long as it doesn’t look like the Greensboro curtain...
That's bad (really bad) for the league, but that's something that serves the individual players well. Sammie Mewis had kind of quietly become one of the best box to box midfielders in the NWSL ... THE best IMO. She needs to be playing, not sitting around training and not getting games. Rose is a unicorn, and still just a kid. She has a shot to be the best player in the world one day, but again ... she needs games.
Apparently they would like Midge Purce to grow into that RB role when O'Hara ages out, so they can use her like they use Dunn on the left side. That's why Purce has been slogging away at fullback for Sky Blue, driving her internet fans bananas.
There isn't a lot between Horan and Mewis. They play the same game in the same way, but Mewis is more versatile in attack and a bit quicker with the ball at her feet. Since Horan can play any of the three traditional central midfield roles though, she's about as useful a backup as one could imagine. Those are definitely first world problems, and that depth and versatility is what separates the US from the second tier of world class programs. As we saw in that last World Cup, England, France and others have drawn VERY close to the US in their starting 11s. But the benches are nothing like what the US can boast ... at least not for the next rotation. I think the English will definitely get level soon and the French could be there by the next WC. Brazil and Sweden need to re-load but the traditional Euro powers are moving forward quickly and surpassing the US in terms of investment in the pro game. That's why all of this infighting with the Federation has hurt so badly. If USSF supported the NWSL half as much as they have MLS for all these years, it wouldn't be a problem because the US college system is the best development program for female soccer players the world .... like by light years. But no ... we're too stupid for all that cooperation and achievement nonsense.
It's a poor statement on the overall health of these leagues that we're seeing so many multiple repeat champions. It's fun for the fans of those specific teams, but the fact that the stratification of Serie A and the Bundesliga has thinned out to just one club is troubling. It's one thing when fringe leagues like Scotland and the Scandinavian leagues do that, and quite another when it's 2 of the 4 biggest leagues in Europe. While I think we're probably already on a bullet train to a permanent "Super League" I think that's a horrible development for the overall strength of European football since it will just ghetto-ize the VAST majority of clubs in second class leagues and drive the money even more to the thinner and thinner top tier. Sooner or later there will be a revolt. This IS Europe we're talking about after all.