Jan 29, 2010
Future of WPS depends on how it rebounds from loss of Sol
Yesterday’s news that WPS is discontinuing the operation of the Los Angeles Sol is a huge blow to the league. It’s bad enough the league has taken on the inherit challenges that come with trying to establish a successful soccer league and successful women’s league in the U.S., but to lose the team that dominated the regular season and had the most talented female player on the planet on its roster looks really bad.
If this was the NFL, NBA or MLB, the franchise could have been saved for a while a new owner was found (that’s how we here in Washington got our baseball team after all) but because WPS is only one year old, the option of the league running the franchise is simply not an option.lo
Jeff Kassouf of The Equalizer has attacked this story from all sorts of angles and it is worth checking out his various posts on the topic to get a more complete picture of how this news impacts everyone involved.
My personal, shortened take on this situation is that WPS and its franchises have been in survival mode since the league formed and there will continue to be casualties as the league tries to take hold. I personally have been one of these casualties. You can’t take these things too personally though because everyone making the decisions is just doing what they think will help this thing survive.
As the fallout of this situation continues to ripple throughout the league, the excitement many players and fans felt after the recent draft has been altered. As has been mentioned elsewhere, mid and late round draft picks will now have a tougher fight for a roster spot and players who were on the fringe last year will probably be headed back to the W-League or WPSL to wait until the next round of expansion opens more slots.
The impact on International players will be even more severe, given that teams are still limited to five active International players and most squads have already filled those slots. If you look at the Freedom’s roster, do you cut loose Lisa De Vanna, Homare Sawa, Erin McLeod, Sonia Bompastor or the newly signed Lene Mykjaland if you can bring on Karina LeBlanc or Aya Miyama? Glad I am not the one that has to make that call.
This situation may actually benefit the Freedom in a way also. With the Freedom Futures of the W-League under its umbrella, Jim Gabarra and company will be able to bring in more players, place them on the W-League squad and see how they perform in Gabarra’s system without having to use a pro roster spot. Obviously this is a blow to the players since the Freedom Futures is a completely amateur squad, but I bet there are plenty of players out there willing to play one more year as an amateur if it increased the odds of being raised to pro status in 2011.
As I have also seen mentioned, the problems with the Sol are in no way a reflection of what’s going on with WPS. The spin WPS is using is that it did add two expansion teams this year before this situation went down and if you look at the players brought in this offseason from overseas, there are plenty of people who believe this league will still succeed.
The thing that we need to do as fans though, is actually make sure it does.
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