Frank Giase - the soccer writer for the Star-Ledger newspaper - provides some insight into the WPS allocations in an article in today's edition. Among the notes of interest are:
- The US Women's National Team players have submitted their preferences for which team they would like to be allocated to in the new league. These preferences will be shared with the teams, which will submit a preference list of their own to WPS. The league will then award three players to each team to complete the process.
- Carli Lloyd shunned New Jersey in her selections for preferred locations choosing to pick just two teams instead of the three allowed to each player. Her top choice was Chicago, followed by Washington DC.
- As a result of Lloyd's picks, Heather O'Reilly and Christie Rampone will almost surely be allocated to Sky Blue since NJ is their top choice.
- The final list of allocations will be revealed on Sept. 16 at a press conference in New York.
While Lloyd's decision to omit New Jersey is a pretty big surprise, Sky Blue can't lose if it gets two out of the three NJ girls. Lloyd may have scored the winning goal in the gold medal game at the Olympics but O'Reilly had a very consistently strong tournament and Rampone was the leader of the US defense that shut down Brazil and made Lloyd's overtime goal possible. Now for Sky Blue's third player ........ let the spectulation begin!
Lloyd's choice to leave NJ surely won't be the only surprise as far as allocations go. As Sky Blue owner Thomas Hofstetter says in the Giase article, there are so many considerations in the process and what may seem obvious to some is not always the case. Besides the player preferences and the team preferences, the league also has to take into account competitive balance and marketing advantages as factors in which players go where. Nevertheless, the excitement is starting to build for WPS fans that can see more and more the reality of the new league as we get closer to kickoff in 2009.
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