This week, we review Megan Rapinoe's new book One Life, which was released late last month, and examine some NWSL news, including the Utah Royals franchise being shut down by the league, and their players and coaches being moved back to their former home of Kansas City, Missouri, where an expansion franchise has been granted. We have some player moves to discuss as well.
Megan Rapinoe—One Life—A Review
Megan Rapinoe's new book One Life is a rapid read and she does an artful job of explaining her political activities, which has included taking stands for LGBTQ rights, Black Lives Matter, equal pay for women and expressing deep concerns about President Trump and his policies. She was the first white athlete who took a knee for the national anthem after U.S. gridiron football player Colin Kaepernick began to do it in 2016 at his games in protest of police brutality towards minorities. She justifies her outspokenness on issues and willingness to stand for 'unpopular' causes because she studies about the history of the cause and ultimately feels that she is right; she is a role model for pursuing political and social activities, which is needed in the States now more than ever. For that reason alone, this book is well worth purchasing.
My Life by Megan Rapinoe (Author), Emma Brockes (Author), Penguin Press, New York, 2020 (224 pages).
Rapinoe discussed when she was considering coming out as LGBTQ+ on a national scale and states that only U.S. National Teammate Lori Lindsey (now a women's soccer television announcer after years in the WPS and NWSL, mostly with Washington D.C. franchises) came out as gay to the general public following the 2011 Women's World Cup as she did, "The only regret was that with the exception of Lori, who came out shortly after me, no one else on the team came out. They were all very supportive and lots of players tweeted in my favor, but when I talked to the other gay players, they mostly said the same thing: 'I just want to live my life. I'm not the kind of person who likes to scream about my sexuality from the rooftops, if you come out, you have to be an advocate, which isn't me.' I got it. And I got that if in women's sports being gay wasn't a big deal, then you could live quite comfortably half in the closet. If no one cared, why go through the hassle of formally coming out? They missed the point. If you're a prominent athlete, coming out isn't for yourself but for others. Until everyone can come out without it being a big deal, nobody gets to 'just' live their lives. And the more people who come out, the more we break down the stereotypes of what it is to be gay. I would love it, for example, if an athlete on the level of a LeBron James of a Derek Jeter came out. It would mess with the stereotypes about masculinity and femininity, just as if more women on my team came out, I'd hope it would show there was more than one way to be gay….We're supposed to respect people's timetables for coming out, and I try, I really do. But guys, come on; people are still being beaten up for being gay, it's illegal in over seventy countries, and it's punishable by death in at least ten. Can you maybe hurry things up a bit?" (Pages 102-103). This type of reasoning provokes inward reflection in her audience and is extremely powerful.
Rapinoe discusses her creativity as a player, "I think back to what I'd learned as a kid, which was how to be successful without being physically the best. My creativity comes out in my vision and in my passing ability, in the fact that I'm willing to try things and fail. Taking a calculated risk and being a little unpredictable fall under the banner of creativity, as does knowing the game really well. As my training improved, I tried to find opportunities—an unexpected cross, a long pass up the field to someone so out of range no one was paying attention to them—before other players did." (Page 83).
For a soccer fan who, if someone wants to learn more about other USWNT or players in the leagues she played with in the WPS, the NWSL and France, there is very little of that. A better book would be Caitlin Murray's book: The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer, which came out last year (see: https://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/the-week-in-women-s-football-caitlin-murray-s-the-national-team-the-inside-story-of-the-women-who-changed-soccer-4306442). Rapinoe's book is definitely not soccer literature—it focuses on her social movement advocacy and struggles that she has faced in that effort. There is fascinating insight from her perspective of some key games in U.S. Soccer history, notably the Brazil quarterfinal in the 2011 Women's World Cup in Germany, in which her last second cross led to the tying goal from Abby Wambach in the 123rd minute to send the game to penalty kicks, which the Americans triumphed in. She also writes about the 4-3 win over Canada in the Olympic Games semifinals in London in 2012, in which she scored twice and former University of Portland Pilot teammate Christine Sinclair recorded a hat trick for Canada in an amazing game. Her thoughts on her first major tournament with the U.S. at the U-19 Women's World Cup in Thailand in 2014 were interesting as well. Unfortunately, these soccer-focused aspects are quite limited.
Her coaches are typically not portrayed well—particularly Jill Ellis with the WNT, Patrice Lair of Olympique Lyon—except for Laura Harvey with the Reign [She reportedly has a very good relationship with her former Reign head coach and now U.S. women's national team head coach Vlatko Andonovski]. For her first season in Chicago in WPS in 2009, she said, "We had a young inexperienced coach and for some reason we never meshed as a team." (Page 83). She is talking about present Chelsea manager Emma Hayes. Interestingly, I met Emma the year before when she was scouting FC Indiana's successful team in the W-League and interviewed her multiple times during her season and half stint in Chicago. [When England's FA WSL was launched in 2010, Hayes spent almost an hour with me on the phone to explain the mechanics of the development of the FA WSL to this States-based reporter.] I think Emma, who had coached college in the States at Iona College and had been an assistant at leading side Arsenal before joining Chicago, was plenty experienced at the time. Hayes was burned by Brazil's Cristiane, who is brilliant at World Cup times when she gets into shape, but has bounced around club teams the world over and is typically in poor form and a bad influence. Cristiane did nothing for most of the season. She scored a hat trick in a meaningless late season 3-1 win over St. Louis and celebrated like she just won the lottery, which seemed odd to me at the time, when the team finished second from the bottom. She had five of her seven goals in the last seven games of the season—she scored in three of them and they were all Chicago victories. Other times she seemed disinterested. There were a few other players that also fell into the prima donna role on the squad. Rapinoe, who was just out of college, was not seen in that boat, but she did admit that in training, "I was inconsistent and had, until then, the supreme confidence of the young that you could float through training sessions and make up for it later."(Page 82). One could argue that the Red Stars players mostly floated through their games and Emma Hayes was burned in the process. I thought it was telling that Chicago sat out the 2011 WPS season, focusing on their WPSL youth side. Arguably that decision was made for financial reasons, but was the inability of the team to mesh over two seasons was part of the rationale of skipping the 2011 season an opportunity to clean house and begin again, which they did in 2013 in the NWSL?
Of all the high profile former USWNT players, thinking of Abby Wambach, Julie Foudy and Mia Hamm at the top of the list, Rapinoe has the ability to maintain a public audience to a higher extent after her career. Her Political Science degree and interest in policy change could see her enter the political realm and be quite effective. As with the others, she would need to sharpen her public speaking skills to be more on point and less meandering as well as cutting back on her cursing, which is fairly ample throughout the book and may be off-putting to some readers, though her message of human rights is still vibrant.
Rapinoe had some very interesting insight on individual marketing agreements for players, something which the women's game has particularly lagged in globally, "For example, I think many often assume that a Nike sponsorship deal for an athlete like me is worth hundreds of thousands [of dollars]. In fact, my Nike contract was a four-year deal negotiated in 2016 right after I'd injured by ACL, and was worth around eighty thousand dollars a year. As far as I know, even those of my teammates who struck sponsorship deals at the tops of their games never made far into the hundreds of thousands. This is a nebulous part of the pay equity problem: Female athletes in my experience, are paid for what we've already done, while men are paid for what they could do in the future. We have to prove ourselves; they only have to show promise. And then when we outperform expectation, we're asked, "Well, are you going to do it again?" We're always playing catch-up." (pages 187-188). Continued effort by players, their representatives, clubs and federations will drive change in this area. As a long-time market researcher, I think branching out into other areas beyond traditional fast-moving products targeted to females definitely warrants attention and could drive increased value in individual sponsorships.
Overall, One Life is a worthwhile book profiling a current American leader that has used her high profile from women's football to speak intelligently and forcefully on important social issues and is worth reading.
Note: Interestingly, the current President of the NWSL Media Association—Meg Linehan—who covers women's football for the Athletic and is a gifted writer and reporter, has a book coming out next summer with Rapinoe called: Secrets of Success: Insights from Megan Rapinoe's World-Class Soccer Career. The book has helpful advice from Rapinoe for readers for digestible leadership lessons. We will review it after it launches next year.
NWSL News
Utah Royals Franchise Is Replaced by a New Team in Kansas City
The Utah Royals, without an owner after Dell Loy Hansen made racist comments in July and his organization has come under fire as being hostile for women employees, was effectively ordered to give up ownership of the Royals, Real Salt Lake of MLS and Salt Lake City Monarchs of the USL Championship by the leagues. Royal players were informed on Saturday, December 5 that the franchise will be moved to Kansas City ahead of the 2021 season. Though the sale is not yet finalized, reports are that Angie and Chris Long of Palmer Square Capital in Kansas City were leading the new entity. Former former professional soccer player Brittany Matthews, who played collegiately at the University of Texas-Tyler and in Iceland with UMF Afturelding/Fram in 2017, is also part of the ownership structure, Matthews owns an online fitness training and apparel company. She is the fiancée of NFL Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who led the Chiefs to their second ever Super Bowl title last season, after winning the first time in 2019—50 years ago.
Significantly, the Kansas City franchise will be the first majority-woman-owned team to actively play in the NWSL, with Angel City in Los Angeles upping that number to two when they join in 2022. The Royals franchise roots are in Kansas City, where they won two NWSL titles (2014 and 2015) under now U.S. Women's National Team head coach Vlatko Andonovski. In a slight of hand, the FC Kansas City franchise was wound up and Salt Lake granted an expansion franchise for 2018, but all of the FC KC players were allocated to the Utah club. The league is doing the same thing now as Kansas City will be technically an expansion franchise but the Royals players and coaching staff will be transferred to the new organization. The club will play at minor league baseball stadium T-Bones Stadium. (Sporting Kansas City of MLS does not want to share their stellar Children's Mercy Park purpose-built stadium that opened in 2010 and twice in the past have turned down overtures to acquire the women's side.) A new soccer–specific stadium that the NWSL side will use should be ready in 2022. Hue Williams, the original general manager for FC Kansas City—he was outstanding for FC KC and would be a strong edition in the front office—has been selected by the Long's as the head coach for 2021 and knows the local market well.
Spare a thought for the fans in Utah who were stellar from the beginning and are robbed of their team by a self-centered owner. Utah had the second-best attendance in the NWSL in 2019 to the Portland Thorns at well over 10,000 fans a game, 4,000 more a game than the Washington Spirit in third. Utah has been mentioned as a possible expansion franchise once suitable local ownership is uncovered. The MLS side in Utah has not found a buyer and the league will operate the team in 2021 if they have to. Ryan Smith, the billionaire CEO and co-founder of Utah-based survey research company Qualtrics, was reportedly interested in Real Salt Lake, but spent over a $1 billion in October for a stake in the Utah Jazz of the NBA.
This is a second chance for the Kansas City market, which in five seasons drew a record high of 8,489 at their first game in 2015 in Sporting K.C.'s Children's Mercy Park and 8,022 in the season opener in 2016 at the same location. In the franchise's first home match in 2013, they drew 6,784 fans, the third best attendance in Kansas City women's soccer history. They were hampered by poor stadium options and ended up at Swope Soccer Village, which is basically a youth soccer stadium with seating for a few thousand and expanded to 3,500. Average attendance caved from 4,626 in year 1 in 2013 to an anemic 2,004 in 2017. In Utah, the team averaged 9,466 in 2018, including a record sellout crowd of 19,023 for the franchises' first ever home game. In 2019, they averaged 10,774 with 2 crowds over 16,000 and 3 others in the 10,000-11,000 range. Kansas City is a good MLS market but it will take some time to build up to what Utah was drawing. It's good that the league salvaged the franchise but we hope the NWSL returns to Utah, which proved a vibrant city for women's football.
NWSL Player Movements
Earlier in the week, Kelley O'Hara, who started at right back for the U.S. on its 2019 World Cup championship team and also won a medal in 2015, has been traded from the Utah Royals to the Washington Spirit. Utah receives $75,000 in allocation money plus additional consideration contingent on the number of NWSL regular-season matches O'Hara plays for the Spirit in 2021. She won an Olympic Gold Medal in 2012 with the U.S. and a WPS league title with FC Gold Pride in 2010.
The Washington Spirit has also signed Japanese international Saori Takarada to a two-year deal from Nadeshiko League side Cerezo Osaka Sakai Ladies. Spirit Head Coach Richie Burke said, "Bringing another young international player of Saori's quality to the Spirit for our 2021 season was a huge priority for our club and being able to get this deal done at this time of year has been absolutely brilliant. We can move ahead with our other plans, safe in the knowledge that we've added a tremendously talented player to our squad for the upcoming season. I believe Saori (21) will certainly improve us in the final third, and she undoubtedly brings an added component that will provide plenty of options in that area of the field." She joined Cerezo Osaka Sakai Ladies in 2013 and has played there ever since, recording 44 goals in 110 appearances. Takarada is also a member of the Japan National Team and has represented her country at the U-17, U-20 and full team levels. Most recently, Takarada joined the national team at the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in France. At the U-20 level, Takarada was selected as the Silver Ball and Bronze Boot winner of the 2018 World Cup. Her five goals in six appearances, including a goal in the final vs. Spain, helped lead Japan to the title that year in France.
Racing Louisville FC signed Swedish midfielder Freja Olofsson to a two year contract, their first international signing from abroad after trading for Yuki Nagasato (Japan) with Chicago before the expansion draft and Cheyna Matthews (Jamaica) and Jennifer Cudjoe (Ghana) via the expansion draft. Olofsson (22) is currently training with Sweden's U-23 squad and has played with first division side KIF Örebro in Sweden since 2015. Racing Louisville FC coach Christy Holly said, "Freja's a very dynamic central midfielder who can cover ground. We feel her physical attributes fit the profile of the type of player that will be successful here. She's someone who we feel has tremendous upside. We expect to see her representing Sweden fairly soon. We know she's part of their plans. As a young player, she's hungry. She's got developmental work to do along with many other players we're bringing in. We feel like this is a great platform for the next stage of her career." She appeared in 21 appearances this past season (18 starts) scoring two goals to go with an assist for the seventh place side (7-5-10 W-D-L for 26 points in the 12 team league in the recently completed 2020 season. She was in the pool for the national team ahead of the 2019 WWC before she tore her ACL but is now fully recovered.
Louisville has signed close to 3,000 season ticket holders for its 2021 debut season.
In a trade earlier this month, North Carolina acquired Taylor Smith and the rights to English international Jodie Taylor from OL Reign in exchange for Ally Watt. Smith played for Courage head coach Paul Riley in Western New York in 2016—where she was part of the Championship side—and moved with the side to Cary, North Carolina for the 2017 season. She was traded to the Washington Spirit in 2018 along with Ashley Hatch in exchange for 2019 Women's World Cup winner Crystal Dunn. The U.S. full and youth international tore her ACL while on loan to the Newcastle Jets in Australia in the 2018/19 season. Smith was acquired by the OL Reign but did not appear in any games in 2019, and played in 7 matches for the club during the two tournaments this year. Paul Riley said about her, "She has the speed, willpower, and technical ability to regain her top form. She knows that we expect relentless and persistence consistently every day. I know Taylor and I truly believe she will be a massive addition to our squad." Smith is currently playing with Olympique Lyonnais, where she has played in four of the ten league matches this season; Lyon sits second in the table—one point behind eternal rivals PSG.
Riley coached Jodie Taylor (34) for a season in Portland (2015) and this could be a savvy move—Taylor went to college at Oregon State, but prying her away from a club in which she won a Women's Champions League medal might not be easy. However, her original loan was due to end at the end of 2020—COVID 19 does make a lot of loan transfers flexible, but she could return to the league in 2021, and if so, this was an inspired move by Riley.
OL Reign acquired NC Courage forward Ally Watt, who was selected sixth overall by the team in the 2020 NWSL Draft. The Texas A&M University graduate played 13 minutes in one match of the NWSL Challenge Cup before suffering an ACL tear. Watt had surgery in July and is currently in the recovery process. Watt scored 3 goals in five matches last winter for the 2019/20 W-League Premiership and Grand Final winners Melbourne City in Australia. She also played for the U.S. in the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup in Papua New Guinea in 2016, where the U.S. finished in fourth place.
In other North Carolina Courage news, defender Jaelene Daniels has retired after 6 years in the league. She started in the league with the Western New York Flash in 2015 and has one three league titles for the Flash/Courage. Riley said about her career, "Jaelene is unquestionably the best left-back in the world. The complete modern fullback; tremendous engine, speed, delivery, brilliant going forward and tough to beat one-on-one. It's been amazing to see her growth and development into a fabulous player. She has won three of the last four NWSL Championships and the last three NWSL Shields [regular season title and a Women's International Champions Cup Championship in 2018]. She knows how to win and I'm sure she will continue to do that in the next step of her life. She is a courageous, strong, and brave woman that I am privileged to have coached. You can't replace Jae, but you can look back and know that she had a marvelously successful career." She also ended her soccer career with eight caps with the United States Women's National Team with her first call up to the team coming in 2015.
Orlando Pride defender Emily Sonnett won the 2020 Damallsvenskan title with Kopparbergs/Goteborg FC while on loan this fall, appearing in 10 matches.
Tim Grainey is a contributor to Tribal Football. His latest book Beyond Bend it Like Beckham on the global game of women's football. Get your copy today.
Follow Tim on Twitter: @TimGrainey
