The Complex Draft for NWSL Expansion Teams

The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) is growing from 10 teams in 2021 to 12 teams in 2022. Like many other North American sports, the NWSL will hold an expansion draft. This draft will allow the two new teams to acquire players quickly to get them on their feet. Unfortunately, this also means that the expansions teams will most likely end up in last place.

Table of Contents

• Meet the NWSL Teams
• Challenges with the NWSL Expansion Draft
  • 1. Expansion Draft Concept
  • 2. Expansion Draft Rules
  • 3. Expansion Draft Complexity
  • 4. Next Steps

To start, let’s review the current NWSL teams and the two new expansion teams. Then, let’s get into the challenges these two teams face with the NWSL expansion draft and why they’re headed for trouble.

Meet the NWSL Teams

Existing NWSL Teams*

Team	Year Founded	Year Joined	Champions	Runners-up	Regular Season Winner
Chicago Red Stars	2006	2013		2019
Houston Dash	2013	2014
Kansas City Current	2020	2021
NJ/NY Gotham FC	2007	2013
North Carolina Courage	2017	2017	2018 2019	2017	2017 2018 2019
OL Reign	2012	2013		2015	2014 2015
Orlando Pride	2015	2016
Portland Thorns FC	2012	2013	2013 2017	2014 2018	2016 2021
Racing Louisville FC	2019	2021
Washington Spirit	2012	2013

Two New 2022 Expansion Teams

• San Diego Wave FC
  Owner: Ron Burkle. Burkle is a businessman and the co-founder of a private investment firm.
  President: former USWNT coach Jill Ellis. Ellis won two World Cups with the United States national team: 2015 and 2019.
  Head Coach: former English player Casey Stoney. Stoney played on the English and Great Britain national teams and club teams Arsenal, Charlton Athletic, Chelsea, Lincoln, and Liverpool
• Angel City FC
  Owner: The team has a majority female ownership: Becky G, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Mia Hamm, Serena Williams, Kara Nortman, Alexis Ohanian, Julie Uhrman, Uzo Aduba, Jessica Chastain, America Ferrera, Jennifer Garner, Lilly Singh, Casey Neistat, Julie Foudy, Rachel Van Hollebeke, Shannon Box, Amanda Cromwell, Lorrie Fair, Ronnie Fair, Joy Fawcett, Angela Hucles, Shannon MacMillan, Trisha Venturini, Saskia Webber, Lauren Holiday, and Abby Wambach.
  President: Julie Uhrman. Uhrman is a video game entrepreneur.
  Head Coach: former player Freya Coombe. Coombe played for the English club Reading.

Challenges with the NWSL Expansion Draft

1. Overall Concept of an Expansion Draft

Expansion drafts, on the surface, seem like a great idea. They allow for new teams to quickly select some already proven players. However, existing teams never want to unload players that are producing or are deemed worthy their salaries. So, the prized players become protected and ineligible for the draft and the older, less skilled, and injury-prone players are the ones that are left.

In addition to undesirable draft picks, many expansion teams struggle with team development in the early years. It can take years for players and coaches to earn trust, feel comfortable, and truly bond with each other.

So, while expansion drafts may help in the short term, it still leaves the expansion teams struggling to be competitive in their early years. In fact, one can see this play out in past NWSL seasons.

Competitiveness of Expansion Teams

There are four expansion teams in the NWSL.*

*While North Carolina Courage joined the league in 2017, they were actually a relocated and rebranded Western New York Flash. At the time of their relocation, Western New York Flash had won one championship (2016), been one runner-up (2013), and won one regular season (2013).

If history repeats itself then we should expect San Diego Wave FC and Angel City FC to place in the bottom two of the 2022 season.

2. The Rules! Oh, the Rules!

Expansion drafts always have lots of rules. This protects the existing teams from being picked apart and allows for more even distribution of talent to the expansion teams.

Here’s a recap of some of the 2021 rules:

• Nine of the existing teams will submit a list of players they want to protect and unprotected players, along with the player’s position (goalkeeper, defended, midfielder, or attacker). They can protect up to nine players with only one of them being a US allocated player. An allocated player is a player whose salary is not being paid by the team but, instead, paid by someone else. In the case of a US allocated player, the United States Soccer Federation pays their salaries. Players from Kansas City Current will not be included in the draft due to a prior agreement. Below is a list of the 31 allocated players with the Chicago Red Stars having the most (6).
• The expansion teams will take turns selecting one player from each of the nine teams. They can pick only from the unprotected players. And they can only select up to one player per position from each team. For example, if San Diego selects an attacker from OL Reign first then Angel City is not allowed select another attacker from OL Reign.
• Teams will be given a $150,000 grant. They can either keep the money or they can trade it for one US allocated player.

There are some other rules like how much time the teams have to select a player and time-outs. For a complete list of the rules, check out the NWSL 2021 Expansion Draft Rules.

In the end, these rules allow existing teams will keep their best players and the expansion teams can expect the leftovers.

3. So Many Moving Pieces

Each existing team will be submitting a list of their protected and unprotected players on Friday, December 10th. Up until that point, the expansion teams will have to guess and hope that the players they want will be available.

Then, two short days later, the actual expansion draft will start. Both expansion teams will have three minutes to make a selection, so it’s going to go by quick. They’ll have to be prepared to know things like:

• Player stats: age, injuries, passing completions, tackle success rate, shots on target, save percentages, etc.
• Player dispositions and if they’ll blend well with the coaching staff and other players
• Upcoming players in the college draft
• Who’s been selected and who might be selected
• Formations and players that might fit those needs
• Holes in offense or defense

Eventually, not just from this expansion draft, these teams need to fill roughly 25-30 players in the following positions:

With any luck, the teams will keep the amount of their offense (forwards and midfielders) at around 52-55% of their team, goalies around 10-12%, and defense around 34-38%. This is roughly the breakout that the top four teams had in the 2021 season, which allows for some depth at each position and keeps the team balanced.

As you can see, this is a lot to be juggling and there are a lot of moving parts. The three-minute selection process will put a lot of pressure on the teams and may result in some regrets.

4. The Expansion Draft Isn’t the End

You may have noticed in the rules section that the expansion teams take turns selecting from nine different teams. And, if you were counting with me, then you only counted 18 players between the two teams. This definitely isn’t enough to field a team for 11v11, especially in comparison to the team average of 27 players.

So, as if the expansion draft wasn’t enough, the teams will start the 2022 draft on Saturday, December 18th. This is just two days after the actual expansion draft on Thursday, December 16 and eight days after the list of protected and unprotected players is released on Friday, December 10th at 5pm ET. All of this is to say that we need to buy these people some coffee because these people are going to be exhausted!