Capital, Scapegoats, and Global Realpolitik: Deconstructing NWSL’s Structural Reckoning

You got a big birthday coming up and it coincides with a hurricane. Welcome to every day of my life. Hello and welcome to Expected Own Goals. In hindsight, this was always inevitable addition. I am your host, Eric Morgan. And I'm Evan Davis, so profound a thought. We will dig into the biggest news of the week. That is namely the firing of Seb Hines by the Orlando Pride on Monday. But most importantly, we've got an interview with Abigail Siegel, our friend and guardian and defector columnist who wrote about the other biggest news in recent weeks, which is Estetagonzales moving to Saudi Arabia. And what that might mean for a great many things regarding the NWSL's contract and transfer process. Really quick though. We'll just hit a couple of notable things from the weekends action. Mainly the playoff line is, I think, probably more solid than ever. Maybe even if the picture wasn't cleared up, necessarily, you know, Angel City split results lost to North Carolina midweek and then Claubbered Boston on the road, at least on the results. Denver did the same at home to Chicago, but again, fell as it's Chicago. And then Kansas City and Seattle also won. Seattle in the most Seattle way possible by winning 1-0 while also being the wildly better team, but also it was in home to Houston. So what can you really say about that? But the projections and also just by the raw per game top line numbers. The playoff field seems pretty set. And the only question now for me is like, can Angel City get themselves over the line? Yeah. This weekend really could have tightened the picture, but Louisville blows a two goal lead to San Diego in pretty spectacular fashion that reveals who Louisville are. We saw in that game the best and worst of them. Orlando can't get over the line against Utah. So that sort of knocks them out. Houston and a six pointer really generate nothing. And now we're losing, you know, Linda Olmark and friends to the U-20 World Cup. We saw a lot of those cuspier teams, even a bay, even even a Boston, just take the loss that sort of will make this hard for them to recover. And at this point, I think both the models and I think you and I would agree that the field is really for that eight spot. It's Angel City, it's Denver, and it's the current eighth place team Seattle. Yeah, we talked about this issue before. What we wanted to impress upon people is that like the playoff field at this point in the season, when you're a little over two thirds of the way through the season is more fixed than you might wanna believe. And so if you were just looking at kind of the raw table, you might say, oh well, Louisville's only five points out or Houston's only four points out. But these things actually don't really shift all that drastically. And then when you look at the underlying performances and you look at the remaining strength of schedule for these teams, it makes more sense that Houston Bay, Louisville really did not have much of a shot here. And then their losses this weekend, I'm not gonna help anything. Denver I think is still within shouting distance literally, but if we think that the playoff line's gonna be 42 points, which is about right, normally. The traditional playoff line in past seasons and it's also what the projections are suggesting, they gotta play at like a 1.7 point per game pace in order to get there. And that's the biggest gap between that pace and their current results compared to Seattle and in Angel City. So there's just a lot of ground to cover. If people think that Kansas City or North Carolina are in danger at all of missing, you look at the pace that they're gonna have to play at and the strength of their schedule, it's pretty soft. They don't actually have to do a whole hell of a lot in order to stay above that 42 point line. Seattle also seems to have banked enough points right now that they probably can get it done unless they really, really crash and burn. For each of these teams, what's sort of proving to be true is Seattle, who have had uneven performances throughout the season, are sort of rising to the occasion and starting to look a little bit more like a team that can put it together. And that plus points in hand is very, very useful. Angel City, they're wudgeoning of Boston aside. I think that they are a team that will need something to break right and to take points off Seattle in six pointers. And that's gonna be the line. And for Denver, Denver basically just need to be a much better version of the team that they have been all season. And for all of the six one-dropping of a Chicago team that might go down as the worst in league history, they kind of just, they'll need their home results to really hold. And they'll need to flip some results that maybe they aren't expected to win to eclipse those two teams on their way in. All of that's possible, but those outlier teams, those teams that we're not discussing anymore. You know, the only one that's really fallen off since we talked about this a couple weeks ago is Orlando, but everybody else just kind of wasn't that good. Got some results that flattered to deceive and are also revealing themselves to sort of be who they are. Now, one interesting thing, MSSers spotted the Denver game over the weekend. Yeah. If MSSers ends up in Denver, does that move the needle for you anymore? Cause I, maybe it would for me. I mean, why not Seattle of these three teams have the softest schedule coming up, but still Denver, it's pretty comfortable. And MSSers is a kind of game breaking attacker that they don't really have, depending on your opinion of Melissa Coastler. So if you throw Sears into that mix, that could be, that could be very exciting, but they're still just in terms of like raw points. They got a hill to climb. Seattle has cushion. And Angel City is a coin flip, like the point, the pace they're playing at now and the pace they need in order to climb over Seattle is basically the same number, which means unfortunately they could play as well as they've been playing in aggregate all season and still not make it. Or they could get themselves over over the hump. They feel to me sort of like 2022 North Carolina, 2023 Orlando, 2025 North Carolina for that matter, a team that like may have played well enough to deserve a playoff spot, but maybe just dropped enough results where it can't happen. But they are the biggest black box for me. I don't know if Denver plus or minus an MSC can make it happen. And I think that as you say, Seattle has probably risen to the occasion enough where they're safe. It's just the Angel City question mark. And they might be getting a new head coach soon if the rumors about Dario Vitticic moving over from Brighton are to be believed. So will they carry over yet another new manager bounce into a playoff birth? But do not forget, as we have laid out before, there's only ever been one team at this point in the season, not over the playoff line to get themselves into the post season. And that was 2023 Angel City. Otherwise it doesn't happen. So we'll see, again, 30 game year, it could throw some wrenches in the mid way. We don't know. But I put it to just to underline your Seattle point, since August 1.9 expected points per game, that's best in the league. Yeah, they've been good. Not adjusted for opposition, but like that's really impressive. The young nucleus that we've been talking about sort of coming together for a long time, finally, is showing signs of coming together. Matty Dulleyn is just having a great season and scored the winner at the weekend. And they don't lose Jordan Bug to the U20 World Cup as some people suspected. So their depth isn't taking a hit for the next month. But there is one team that we do need to focus on that is no longer in the playoff hunt, at least by our estimations. And they just fired their head coach. Seb Heinz is no longer a member of the Orlando, broader Orlando City or Orlando Pride organization for the first time in what a decade. Vince is playing days. Yeah, exactly, you know, at the time of his departure was the second longest tenured head coach in the NWSL having been the head coach for over four years. Obviously won the shield in the title in 2024. He and Hayley Carter together kind of really transformed what we think of the Orlando Pride. But things were not going their way this year. And we think that there are probably some external factors to that. We don't think that it comes down to the coaching. Yeah, this is a classic. Like the coach is the easiest person to fire, but maybe not the most responsible for his own firing. Yeah, there's a combination of injuries and front office behavior with regard to recruitment that I think has gotten them to this point. Now GM Caitlin Carducci disagrees because in her press conference regarding the firing, she said, quote, our expectations for this club is to compete for championships year in and year out. We're given the resources with which to do that. And we felt like the resources in the talent that we have would allow that, allow us to do that not only this year, but as we look and plan ahead and think about what the future holds for us and how we can become the West best women's football team in the world. This is a decision we ultimately felt. We had to make and quote, yeah, Seb Hines isn't the difference between where you are now and where you could have been. It's just a fact. They are a team that is sort of Banda or bust. You could say that they were Banda or bust plus a pretty spectacular defense when they won the title and they had Banda the whole way. And last year when they didn't have Banda, they weren't very good. They've also probably weakened themselves as a team defense through some combination of aging and natural regression and injury and family leave. Yeah, family leave, yeah, all of that. And it's just not that surprising where they're at. There may be a little bit lower than we expected them to be at the beginning of the season, but this was definitely like a reasonable outcome for them. And I feel like Seb Hines, who did a really good job cultivating talent and then maximizing the talent he had on hand to win a title, he's kind of doing a bang average job with the talent he had this season. And that just simply wasn't enough. And if you're looking for a miracle worker, rarely as a manager going to be the person who does that for you. And that's what it would have taken for Orlando to be one of the best teams in the league right now, a legitimate miracle worker. The projection models, when you average the learner, Elon Model and the ASA model together, Thunder Orlando is going to finish fourth season. And now they're sitting tied for 11th. That's a really, really big swing. One of the biggest them, it's them and it's Louisville in terms of like the biggest gap, negative gap between their current results and their preseason expectations. So it's a big hit, but also the preseason model didn't take those injuries into account. Probably thought Jackie O'Vay was going to be better than she was or has been. And maybe that's like the biggest kind of chin stroking concern. And that certainly doesn't fall at Caitlin Carducci's feet either. That was a daily Carter signing that cost a lot of money. And you needed to get more out of a player like that than you have. But again, it's just hard for me to argue that this falls at, this falls at Heinz's feet. I mean, besides Banda, like Julie Doyle and Summary Eights had like 95th percentile seasons in 2024. They were never those players before that year and they've never been those players since. So why did it work in 2024 and then stop working? Again, I don't think that comes down to Heinz. I think that just comes down to Kismet in very serious overperformance. That that 2024 season always represented as good a team as that was. They were never quite the like brain busting squad that their results made them appear. And again, I don't over credit Heinz for their success in 2024 and I don't blame him excessively for their failures this year. But like you say, the head coach is always the most disposable individual in situations like this. And it should also indicate that they probably matter less than you think because they are so disposable. Sure. Well, that's the that's the Heinz of it all. We have Abigail Seagull coming up. We'll touch on the Esther situation and maybe touch on the Rose Level resigning with her a little bit because I think that's a knock-on-effective Esther going as well. But look forward to our interview with Abigail Seagull. Have you ever decided that Riyadh would be a better environment for you than New Jersey? Well, you're not alone. Recently, a static Gonzalez star striker for Spain and Gotham FC asked for a mutual termination of her contract with the defending NWSL champs only to just to turn around a month later and sign a brand new deal with Alcazia in Saudi Arabia. This is all struck us as a little strange since she said she wanted to move back to Europe for quote. Personal reasons, it seems like starting a new job isn't the most personal thing, especially given all of the context. Surrounding a deal we are going to discuss with someone who wrote about it in the Guardian. You can check out all of her women's football writing there at Defector, at the Nine Sports, as well as the Cutback and the Equalizer. Our old friend has returned. Hello, Abigail Seagull. Hi, thanks for having me and letting me redeem my preseason optimism about Orlando. Oh, yeah. We literally just talked about Seb Heinz firing. So yeah, you got any thoughts on Heinz? It's tough. I feel like as we did discuss, his roster was not built to succeed, but it also felt like they probably could have been doing a bit better. So I don't know. I just hope he lands at a good spot where he seems. Yes, seems like a good guy. Always like talking to him. It's just a bummer that when you spend over a decade in an organization for it to end this way. I mean, it's a great taste in their mouth, but didn't one of his assistants just also go to Saudi Arabia? There's some synergy going on here. Isn't that the coach of a star's new team? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jell's Barnes, who has been, I think he's been, Seb Heinz is like best friend for over 20 years. Like they're very, very close. So yeah, it's all weird, but even weirder is the situation we're here to talk about today. You were at the 1-1 draw that Gotham put up against the Portland Foreign Disports Illustrated Stadium. This is the first game that's been, that was played in the wake of the Asterre news. Not to mention that Rosalvelle also just resigned an extension with the team while she's dealing with the head injury. So you're all, you're in the Gotham soup at the moment. For those who might not know the nitty-gritty about what happened with Asterre, can you walk us through how we got to this point with her? Yeah, so yeah, I mean, Asterre joined Gotham right after she won the World Cup with Spain in 2023. And from there, it's kind of said in the article, it was almost like a fairy tale. They had the Cinderella story of just squeaking into the playoffs and then they win the final and she scores in the final. And then they're often running and it's going so well. And she sort of is one of the first high-profile international players in the last era of the end of the year. So it's like praise the quality of the league. And then she also talks about how much she loves like living in New Jersey. And it just feels like, oh, like this is such a great fit. Last year she was, correct me if I'm wrong, runner up for the Golden Boot in the league. And then she, you know, and then this year she, she beat Sam Kerr's club scoring record and stuff. And then very shortly after that, she and the club announced that they had mutually terminated their contract. She had signed contract extension in 2025 that was set to run through next year through 2027. But yeah, so but then the contract was no more. It was mutually terminated, which basically means, you know, there's no transfer fees like she's not going somewhere else. And the reason was that was given was because she had personal matters to attend to in Spain. And you know, this was sort of met with man, like this must be really bad, you know, there's some, there must be something in her life that like is really urgent. And like really needs her, her presence for in Spain, where her family is for her to like leave soccer. And you know, it was, it was said that she was going to temporarily step away from the sport. So everyone, you know, kind of met this with like, oh, like I really hope anything that's going on is okay. Like we hope she's okay. And then, you know, not even a month later, I think three years to the day that she originally signed with Gotham August 23rd, it was announced by a Saudi club, Al-Qad-Sea that she had signed with the club. And pretty soon after that, Jenna Tonelli reported that the club did not expect her to sign with any other club this soon. So yeah, that's where we are. Yeah, as a as a lawyer friend of mine brought up, like there's a, there's like a semi-series case for fraud here potentially. And I guess the question is, and it, you know, shed light on this as best you can. It's like, who knew what when? What is your what is your take on how this went down? Yeah, I mean, I think the thing that sort of just sticks out to me about this whole thing is we actually know so little about what really went down like we don't know what the conversations between her and Gotham looked like that led to the mutual contract termination. You know, we have an idea that never in those conversations did she say that, you know, she was intending to sign with the club that soon, just based on Jenna's reporting. But other than that, we don't know what those conversations look like and we don't know when like she became in contact with Al-Qad-Sea, like we just don't know any of this. And so a lot of this is like very much speculation. We don't know, I mean, their reports of what her salary, you know, was at Gotham and will be at her new club, but there's just so much that we don't know. But it certainly seems like, you know, even if there was an intentional deceit that there was sort of, you know, a big change of plans that was like a big surprise to a lot of people. Well, let's, let's start there. Can I present a darkest timeline and you just tell me what you think about it? Sure. Yeah, this is my, this is my least generous reading of what occurred. Esther sees the writing on the wall with Sam Kerr, months in advance of the Sam Kerr signing. She doesn't want to play second fiddle. Her agent gets on the phone to just take feelers about what's out there and she then approaches the club about potentially departing, wondering if there's some sort of transfer that they're willing to sanction. They're not willing to sanction it. She tells a personal story, they do sanction her departing. And Al-Qad-Sea, this is again, darkest timeline. Al-Qad-Sea and her agent are happy to not pay a transfer fee and happy to pay her whatever that not transfer fee was and agent fee. And she ends up in Saudi Arabia 27 days after departing Gotham. Does that feel like not the least generous, does that feel like the darkest timeline but also a possibility? Is that what you get the sense from Gotham at least that it feels like? Yeah, I mean, it's certainly possible. I think, I don't know, so much of this is just a black box. I think it's possible. I also, I don't know, I think there's also a chance that she left Gotham, all of a sudden the family situation cleared up and then she got approached by Al-Qad-Sea. Like, I think that's also possible. I have no idea. I think that part of it is what makes me pause on being so cynical about this. I mean, the Occam's razor version is sort of a version that Eric laid out because how could we get to this point when there are, it wouldn't have been hard for a stair and Yael Averbush West like work out a deal where they could put her on the transfer market and have Gotham get a fee. Like that wasn't going to impede a stairs ability to move necessarily unless Gotham had really done their heels in, but it just doesn't make any sense why that wouldn't have been the path if they were, if Esther was really out, Esther and her agent were really out to screw Gotham over. Like, just get, if you don't, if you're not happy anymore, like go home or go get a transfer fee. And if that's not the issue, if there really was a personal problem, suddenly this kind of like makes a lot more sense to me that like it's just a really bizarre case of timing. The one thing that maybe backs up the idea that this was a cynical ploy was that, you know, I believe it's in your piece Abigail where Yael Averbush West, you quote Yael Averbush West, is saying like, no, we had a whole plan for like how Kerr and Esther could work together. And we didn't think that it was necessarily gonna be a situation where Kerr was gonna start taking a status minute. So if we have this plan, then what's the reason for moving Esther on? But also in generally speaking, like teams don't do that. Like if there is a player that has like suggested that maybe they are worried about their playing time and this won't be the right environment, you try and accommodate a transfer for them. So with that knowledge in mind, I wonder if it is really just a really bad case of timing with whatever family issues she was dealing with and then the al-Qudsya thing showing up. Maybe I'm being a bit polyanna about this, but I think the reason that like my polyanna read and Eric's very cynical read can both exist in the same timeline is because there's just so much ambiguity and so much strangeness. Like this just doesn't happen very often, especially in the NWSL, you know? Yeah, yeah, it's a very bizarre situation and it is like almost like a Schrodinger's box where like yeah, anything can exist. Like we just don't know. Like there are so many hypotheticals and like unless there's more reporting or she doesn't interview or something, like we just won't know what actually happened. Let's talk about this through a couple of lenses because I think what your article really did a great job of is illuminate the various sort of like what the fallout means here. So first to the NWSL, it looks really bad that one of your large star players and we'll deal with her personal aspect of this has opted to leave, you know, a championship caliber team to go to a country where she cannot live openly. Largely it seems due to money issues. Do you feel like it sort of tells us the story of like what this says about the NWSL to you? Yeah, I mean, I think like, you know, you have to think of players as people who need to make money, who want to make money and especially, you know, athletes are, you know, they have really short careers like at least careers in which they can, you know, use the skill that they've been, you know, working on since, you know, they were out of the womb basically. And so, you know, you think about she's ending the near, she's nearing the end of her career and like, she's probably, she could be thinking like, I want to maximize the amount of money that I can make before I, you know, I have to retire because of how time works. And because of the NWSL's salary cap, and I think this is, you know, not the case for all teams in the end of yourself, but I do think that got them what we know about, you know, and what you guys have, you know, talked about with how they, they operate, like I do think that if there was no salary cap or if the salary cap was higher, like they would probably, they would be paying a stair more, like they maximize the confines of, you know, what they're able to do, but they're still limited by all the same. And so, because, you know, at the end of yourself limits how much players can make, you know, her, you know, choosing, you know, making whatever sacrifices she needs to make to go play in it, in this different league, where she, again, Ockham's razor is probably making way more than she was making in the, than she was making at Gotham. It, you know, it's like the NWSL isn't, they're, like, not allowing most players to be paid, you know, as much as they can be, like certainly not all of the players can be making enough to, you know, live comfortably after they have to retire. And so, you know, I think like it's, you know, in some ways it would be a similar story if she, you know, went to a club that, you know, in England or whatever, that also had like a much higher salary cap and was paid a lot more, which is just NWSL, you know, if money is, you know, a primary decision, you know, a part of players decision-making, which I think it is, you know, they are hamstringing themselves. Yeah, I mean, the financials for WSL clubs for the 2024-25 season came out a couple of weeks ago and it was brought up to us actually the other day that the wage bills that are listed on those, on those team payrolls will often fold in staff costs as well. And even if you, like, use a very generous, like, I don't know, 40% deduction to like separate staff from players just as an estimate, I mean, Chelsea's payroll for players in the 24-25 season was almost $13 million. That's almost five times or four times the amount of the NWSL salary cap at the moment. And even if you fold in allocation money and all the other like mechanisms that you can use, hip money to like increase an NWSL team's payroll from that $3.75 million flat number, how can you compete with getting the best talent at a certain point? And instead of being 33 years old and at the end of her career and out at the beginning, like, Chelsea and Arsenal aren't gonna come calling most likely. And so like, where do you go to set your family up for long-term financial health? I mean, the great irony of all of this is that if her primary motivation was long-term financial security for her family, then she's about to go apply her trade where by all accounts, it seems like she felt compelled to suppress any evidence of the fact that she is a married gay woman with a kid in order to like smooth things over to go play in a place like Saudi Arabia. And I cannot even begin to fathom the emotional turmoil that she must have gone through in order to make that decision. I mean, it's horrifying. Like, but what other choice has she been given? Yeah, again, it's like, players talk about all the time, like choosing to play in different leagues. It's like they're weighing so many different factors. And I think I agree. Like I think it's, you know, if this is like a purely money motivated thing, like I also think it's sad. And it's sad that, you know, she felt like that NWSL wasn't, you know, a financially plausible, you know, like, you know, like, it's sad that she felt like she couldn't stay her, that she shouldn't stay because of, you know, her prospects. I think it's fair to say that even if she was making the absolute top end of what we've sort of seen reported about what she could have been earning, let's say she's making $400,000, $500,000 a year in the United States and has doubled that. Just the, yeah, as you stated earlier, the earning window, I'm not that angry at her because like the shelf life on her career is really, really short at this point. And we talked about this a little with Alyssa Thompson. I think any of us, if offered the opportunity to double our salary, would very seriously consider doing that and go anywhere in the world to do that for a period of time, particularly if you assume that you only have three or four more years left of your career. The possibility of like doubling your net earning over time would make a person do and make people who have like strong values do all kinds of weird things. The compromise that I think she made is one of like, I can suck this up, I can participate in some measure of sports washing, I can suppress my identity for like some stab at generational wealth from myself and my family. And the difference between like when she joined Gotham and now she has a kid and I think that that very reasonably changes the calculus there. And at the end of USL is like, unable to match that kind of salary or compensation because of rules that are really regressive. It's just really disappointing. Yeah, I mean, when you combine, I hate the decision, I hate that she's playing in Saudi Arabia now. Oh, of course, for all the obvious reasons. But like, it's not on her to fix it. Like she has played as a professional for well over a decade now. She knows the types of hell that she's had to survive in a country that ostensibly is tolerant quote unquote of her sexual and gender identities. That you know, yeah, there's literally like three or four years left before she's got to make some form of career pivot. And like, what is that going to be? And how stable is that going to be? Like, go get your bag, dude. But like, what is that going to do to your soul? And the end of USL seems to care very little about attracting top talent both from a competitive perspective but also from the perspective of not wanting to or not caring about being, you know, a leader in soft political power in what women's soccer can represent because the thing that the industry has not really been able to get a grip on in this like post-private equity era of the last few years is that how do you make money and make your investors money and also not forget that you are a cog in a very, very large political machine that women's sports and women's professional athletics represents across borders. And so if you have decided that you want to make sure that your owners and your investors' short-term ROI is comfortable enough for them that they're not going to go spend a lot of money to get like really big, really famous players, well not only is that going to affect the on field product, but it also signals that like you are not interested in being a moral and political leader in the space. Like a player like Esther, very possibly looked at her options and realized that the best one available to her was to go to Saudi Arabia. Like you are not, you are not part of, you do not realize like where you sit in the broader political ecosystem. And it's very obvious that Jessica Berman doesn't give a shit about that, you know. It's very obvious that like Nikki Ducet probably doesn't give a shit about that in the WSL either. Like there's going to be a breaking point and it feels like that Esther's move might represent at least some small part of that breaking point. I don't know, that's a bit of a rant, but that's just, that's the bad taste that's left in my mouth after all of this. Yeah, I mean, and I, yeah, I also think it's worth, like I think reactions to this kind of thing and I've been reflecting on this in myself is like, I feel like a lot of reactions are also projections of, you know, like things that we say like are wrong with the Saudi League. Like those are also problems in the end of the WSL, in the WSL, like two WSL two teams are owned by, like one is owned by the PIF and then another is owned by like one of the prints or something, prints Abdullah bin Mossad, the own Sheffield United, the 2025 Women's Champions Cup, sponsored by Aramco, Conka Caff has a deal with the PIF, which includes a program to like help, you know, female players plan their like post-retirement careers, you know, like the call is coming from inside the house. Like we can't like, you know, just like blame, like point our fingers and blame like over there and then, you know, sort of individualize the problem of like specific players going over when actually all this money is wrapped up into the leagues that we see as like, you know, morally better and like, you know, we can, we could debate it all day, but like the truth is, as sort of a world system of, you know, a global women's soccer ecosystem, like there's not a lot of black and white, there's a lot of gray and I feel like it's less useful to discuss like individual players, like, and people like making their own decisions within that than it is to like talk about, okay, what are the forces at play here? And, you know, like what, and what can be done? Like who, what decision makers actually need to like have a vision that, you know, allows these athletes to have both, you know, healthy financial lives and then also like their security and their values and, you know, to feel fulfilled at work. Another really cynical and I, this will sound bad. Another sort of cynical look at this is like, the United States is not exactly a paragon of democracy and acceptance right now. Are you moving from a, you know, like a semi-autocratic place to a very autocratic place? If you are a Spanish citizen, does it look, does, playing in the United States look a lot different than playing in Saudi? Like who knows? I think that, I think that we sort of forget inside the insular space of North America that like we generally accept a lot of the freedoms that we have as like good and great and morally superior to other places. But I don't think that if you looked at the political landscape right now from an outside perspective, I still think you'd land on the side of the United States of America, but I'm not sure the degree is that extreme. I do think that some of this, some of the hand-ranging really doesn't take into account the country that we live in. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about for years that like I don't understand why gay players would go play for the Houston dash or the Orlando pride, you know, because one step wrong and all of a sudden you could be running a foul of some like very, very, like deeply entrenched homophobic political systems and states like Texas and Florida. Frankly, I don't know why straight players would do it. The point is to just back up what you're saying, Eric. It's fucked from every single direction in like to use another sport. It's insane that Kathy Engelbert and the WNBA's power brokers have allowed the transphobic hysteria in that league to get to where it is. And it's, but for the grace of, you know, some very, very lower profile stakes in soccer in America has the NWSL been to like largely sidestep that circus. But it wouldn't shock me if the NWSL ever got to that point. Yeah, it's fucking barbaric. And and so like, I mean, Abigail, I mean, you've hit the, you've absolutely hit the nail on the head like this is, this is not about ester in isolation. This is about how ester represents some very, very broader, very troubling forces. At the end of us all does not seem interested at all to countermand either from, from a financial, a competitive or a moral political path. Let's, let's talk about the Gotham side of this now because I think operating as a club inside this system is really challenging. And obviously they just had a problem retaining a player for whatever reason that won them two titles and it was largely the face of the franchise in a productive scoring league. What is, what is Gotham's recourse here for potentially being defrauded? And, and like, what is, what is next for them? I'm sure bladgets lawyers are on it. Yeah, but the answer might be very little. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, you say lawyers, but like, like, okay, Orlando got 500,000 transfer fee for Adriana, right? Like our lawyers fees gonna just be that amount kind of thing. We don't know, but yeah, I mean, I feel like even if this specific transaction situation can't be, you know, remedied, I do think that probably in the future, clubs will make sure to have, you know, some sort of protections against this kind of thing in contracts going forward. But yeah, you might be right. The juice might not be worth the squeeze on paying your lawyers to recoup 300k. But also, you know, like, yeah. Never forget the petty vindictiveness of a billionaire when their pride is on the line. And they might spend more than what they would end up getting back just to prove a point, you know? But true. But, but I mean, we'll see, I mean, I think, and then from like an on field perspective, I don't think it really matters all that much, especially with the way that Sam Kerr has been playing, doesn't seem like they've really skipped a beat. And though they might have wanted that transfer fee, is the, is the, is the amount of wages, and we can't really know this for sure. Like, how much, how much does the added financial burden of Sam Kerr coming in, get balanced out by the amount of money that they're no longer paying is there? I don't know. But this is a team that loves to spend and loves to spend in any way they can possibly find. And they probably don't have a lot of money left to spend. So if there's any savings there, maybe they say, let's just wash our hands of it. I don't know. But the, the quote unquote, lead sources that lead to, to Tinelli that they were surprised she signed so soon did seem like a weather balloon to test like what public reaction might have been and whether, how belligerent they would get. And we don't know quite where everybody lands on that. But yeah, I don't know. Do you want to talk about Levelle a little bit? I don't know. It's like obviously not a great like, you know, one game with her gone. It's not enough of a sample size, but I gotta say it. The game I was at, they missed her. I don't know. Everything just like looked a little disconnected and I think Gotham is the kind of team where things can look a little disconnected but they still win because they have, you know, a million other superstars. But I think, you know, Rose Levelle is the kind of player like Trinity Rodman who you wanna keep in addition to the fact that they're really good, but because, you know, they are like a very recognizable name and face for your franchise. Yeah, and then she'll be around for a while. I mean, the new deal attaches three years to the current contract. And so that deal won't expire until she's 34. And Eric and I have been having debate with some of our Patreon subscribers about this. Like just to what extent is Rose Levelle irreplaceable? She has a skill set that kind of nobody else has. But she's injury prone. And yes, the head injury that she's dealing with right now has nothing to do with a lot of those past injuries. But she is injury prone and she's 31. And how much can you get out of her in terms of productive minutes going forward? Cause that contract could not have been cheap. And theoretically, Jaden Shaw is there to fill the gap. Obviously, they've been using her out wide a lot this season because you're trying to figure out how to play her in Levelle together. But I don't know. Marketability, great. That is a big box that she helps check. Immediate production, if she can get back onto the field for their playoff run, great. What's this deal gonna look like in 2028 and 2029? And how much of that is gonna be taking up your salary cap? Now, salary cap's going up. There will be a renegotiation of the media rights deal and how much money teams get from that and players get from that in a couple of years. And we've seen a lot of backloaded contracts in the last couple of cycles in anticipation of that. And so maybe it will not be as serious a financial burden as it could be right now if we were looking at it in real dollars. But I just don't know how much she's gonna play in those last year, two years of the deal. And then what does that money ultimately mean to your broader approach? I don't know. But then there are just some players where you just kind of don't feel like you have a choice but to keep bringing them back over and over again. And LaVelle seems to be one of those players since she arrived. I don't know, Eric, what's your angle? She's having another productive season. When she's on the field, she is a productive player. She's never not been a productive player. Yeah, my hesitations are about like what minutes are you getting out of her? But I think from this is a particularly interesting time to resign someone A, because we don't understand completely how I impact player, how the high-impact player rule is going to work. So maybe this deal looks like a steal. Maybe this deal is just absorbing some of the money that would have gone to an ester. I also think that, and I want to judge, I really want to be good about judging player moves through the lens of what the team values. Gotham clearly just don't have concerns about age curves the way we do. And like what that team looks like in 2028, 2029 moving into Queens, a different question. But right now, based on what where Gotham is valuing their talent and based on what they're doing on the field, it's pretty hard to argue unless this was some sort of exorbitant amount that they were paying Rose Lavelle, that this is like overtly to me a bad decision. It might not be a good decision financially and it might look like a bad decision in two years, but also if the salary cap upon renegotiation of the media rights deal jumps to eight or $11 million. I'm sure this deal will look great. So I, if you're gonna give a lot of money to a player, you could do a lot worse than giving it to Rose Lavelle. Like if you're gonna take a bet on a player who will continue to be productive. Again, we talked about this with Sam Kerr when she came in, Rose Lavelle's high is so high that even as she regresses, she's still above a league average midfielder in terms of output and creativity. How many minutes you get of that per game, per season, different question, but I think certainly we've seen enough in her post age 30, like in her last two seasons to be able to say, okay, the drop off, the cliff hasn't come yet and it doesn't, we aren't really seeing signs of it either. So we'll take a gamble and it is a gamble, but I also think the raised salary cap, who knows what high impact, who knows if high impact ends up being worth four or $5 million, who knows if it ends up, because we just don't know that I feel like we have limited enough information and I'm willing to just say, Gotham, you are in a great place to win a double this year. You make pretty solid decisions. I just don't, I can't hate this move. You spent the money on a real good player, even if I'm concerned about what that player might look like. And as we have always have to remind people, yes, high impact player contracts are being signed and it seems like that was used for Level, but that rule, that rule is still being arbitrated via the player's union's grid with the league. That has not been resolved yet. And so yes, you wanna talk about black boxes. The box just gets bigger and bigger and darker and darker. Yeah, I also think it's worth mentioning two things about 2028 on For Gotham, they're moving to Queens. And so I feel like having some marketing continuity with a player as, you know, marketable as Level is really helpful for them as they like try to like grow and, you know, expand up fan based into a new area. Also 2028 Columbus joins the league. Rose Level from Ohio. So I almost wonder if, you know, she said, yeah, I'll sign this contract. And there's a chance that in 2028 or 2029, I might wanna go to Ohio and then, you know, Gotham says, okay, well, in that case, we would get a great transfer fee. And then we would have the, you know, sort of mammoth of a contract, not in our hands anymore. So it could be a win-win or a win in some ways, you know. It's a really great point that there is still some measure of flexibility in what Gotham can do with this as circumstances change in the coming years. As a smart GM said to us, that's next year's problem and we'll figure it out next year. Yeah. And it's just, I think, I think the, it's just funny timing just given the injury that she's dealing with right now that this happened. But of course, they've been working on this extension for months and this is just now the moment that they've decided to announce it. Anything else about Gotham that we want to praise or damn before we go? The youth movement seems to be gone. They seem to be, Boston seems to be the Gotham Triple A team at this point, which I'm sure people from Boston love to hear. Yeah, but I don't know. Abigail, like right now, do you see a better team in the league than Gotham? No, because I think they win games, you know? Like, like seriously, like, I think. By the way, great team. Like other teams play pretty or soccer. Like, I think, you know, the spirit is, you know, more fun when they're winning. I think San Diego is fun to watch. But I think Gotham, like, they grind it out, but they get the results and like, I don't know, this is kind of a league where like, that kind of thing is, you know, even if it's, you know, kind of annoying, they win. I mean, a question about it. If you're looking at, you know, our projection model for just the games that are yet to come for the rest of the season, like, they're on pace to be the second and third best team on talent and performances. And then with all the points they've banked, you fold that projection in together. And like, they're nailed on shield favorites at the moment. And it's like harder than I that, you know? Defense is so good. And then they get just enough goals to get three points every week. Yeah, I do think one thing that I think was a weird move was, and I get it, I get it for the player, but for Gotham to trade away Shepanski. I think she, you know, because she was basically Lavel's, like, understudy, right? And Lavela, as discussed, is like, you know, a precious baby bird who gets hurt every other week. And so, and now, you know, they trade away Shepanski and then Lavela goes down to the concussion. And like, and now, you know, Gotham, you know, if they didn't have at like that sort of similar vein of playmaker and they struggled to score. And like, I don't know, I just think that was, I don't know, I wonder if that could come back to bite them in the butt. I suppose the question is like, if they, if they've seen enough of Shepanski to say, like, this isn't good enough for a Lavela understudy, let's make the money on this player while we can. That's one value judgment. Another, and I think about this with just where they are in sort of the standings and kind of having the shield largely wrapped up, it's not certain, but like, it will take both really good performances from the teams behind them and sort of a real hiccup for them to cough the shield. This year, there's real value in having the one seed because the, whoever comes in as the eight seed will be a significantly worse team than either North Carolina or Kansas City. So like, I kind of, I think that they, if you wanted to hold on to Shepanski for depth reasons, sure, but I think they probably have enough and a concussion can be months and months and months or it can be, she's back to, yeah. Yeah, in a week or two. So who knows? Yeah, I mean, who knows? But also, they didn't get money for Shepanski. They got like 80k. Yeah, in the 2026 market. That's, that's okay. Yeah, there's nothing. Yeah, and I think, you know, I said earlier that like, Shaw is supposed to be the understudy for Level, and I still think that's largely true, but like, when you move Shepanski on and you have Level injured, like, somebody needs to take up the other wing that Jordan Dudley isn't on. And so given their depth right now, it still kind of has to be Shaw. And so you're still, you still have a gap at the 10 with Shepanski missing. So yeah, I think Eric's argument is the only one that's kind of logical. It's like, there's very limited window to cash out on a player who hasn't been getting a lot of minutes, despite the fact that you need, might have needed her for injury cover. And so maybe you just had to move at that moment and take your lump says as they come. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, boy, it'd be really useful if they had a stare to help me attempt. Yeah. Like, this is the paradigm, like, I do think that the one thing that this whole sought, like this sort of, and this is turned into just sort of like, oh, what is Gotham episode? The one thing that we've seen here is the best laid plan, you know, where Gotham has like real forward depth and then real midfield depth and is going into the playoffs with like an 18-deep roster, that reality has shifted a little bit. And they are thinner than they were. Will that matter? Different question. But as there was sort of the first domino in me, you can only prepare so much. We've got all these players under contract, under salary cap and it should be harmonious and instead, it has been anything but, and they find themselves still in a good position, but reeling a little bit from their present circumstances. Still rooting for the funniest outcome. KC slips to eighth, Gotham wins the shield and KC bounces them in the quarterfinal. That would be awesome. Good, by the way, very possible. It is possible. Yep. What a wonderful league that we cover here. You can read all of Abigail Seagull's work on the NWSL and Women's Football at the Guardian, over a defector as well as the nine sports, the equalizer and the cup back. Abigail, always a delight to see you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me on. Well, that was our conversation with Abigail Seagull always a pleasure. Evan, why don't you take us out? Thank you so much for listening as always to expect at own goals. If you're not yet a member of Patreon, click the link in the show notes. Six dollars a month gets you four exclusive bonus episodes every single month as well as access to our discord server and a lot of other fun tidbits. If you are already a member of our Patreon and are thinking about upgrading to our cultured number 10 tier, only $10 a month. Click the link in the show notes to upgrade today and you'll get XOG after dark. 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