Newsletter 2: the NWSL Draft, World Cup Final in Dallas, Barron Trump likes soccer

Notes on the American soccer-verse plucked from the previous week

The 2024 NWSL Draft

Ah, the draft. The annual shuffling process that allots the nation’s top young talent to last season’s worst team. (Unless a trade for that spot precedes the pandemonium, of course.) 

It’s among the more American sporting quirks. Doe-eyed young athletes on the verge of realizing dreams, the professional ranks within arm’s length, bright lights and big production in a room full of executives and angst, the fate of future star athletes up to seemingly everyone but them. 

As time goes on, not every American sports league relies so heavily on the draft-system to fuel their team. Major League Soccer, for example, increasingly only does so at the periphery of their roster. (Though, the 2014 MLS SuperDraft did shift fate for the Union when they acquired Jamaica’s elite goalkeeper, Andre Blake, as the first overall pick. And perhaps even more of a Draft night coup: the Union accrued the defensive powers of London-born Jack Elliot from West Virginia University as the 77th draft pick in 2017.)

But for now the draft remains a core catalyst for the creation of NWSL’s teams, as the USA’s breadth of women’s soccer talent is selected from the nation’s collegiate coffers every winter, with first-round picks often moving into starting or key roles with their clubs on arrival the following season. 

From the outside looking in, it might look strange. 

The 2023 NWSL Draft went down in Philadelphia. Given proximity, I was able to corner some among the eight English coaches then acting as lead gaffer in NWSL and pry them for their thoughts. 

When I asked San Diego Wave’s manager and former England captain, Casey Stoney, if she thought the draft was a good system, here’s what she told me: