FC Kansas City Schedule Released

The NWSL unveiled their schedule for the 2015 season, the league's third, a telling year for the league as a whole. The prior two women's professional leagues, the WUSA and WPS both lasted just three seasons before going under. So it's a big test for the league to make it past the failures of the other two. They'll do it this year by having to play around the Women's World Cup this summer in Canada. The league is set to take a 12 day break from June 7th to June 18th during the group stages of the World Cup.

The teams will play 20 games, home and away against every team, with a third match against four other teams, for FC Kansas City, that includes playing Washington and Western New York at home twice, while traveling to Houston and Boston twice.

Previously announced, the Blues kick off their season on Sunday, April 12th at Sporting Park against Sky Blue FC. They'll also end the season against Sky Blue, this time on the road. The team's first game at the Swope Soccer Village will be Thursday, April 23rd, a matchup of the NWSL final last year as they'll host the Seattle Reign. That's the first of three Thursday night games at home for KC and one of five week night games (they have two Wednesday night games as well). They break down as having three Saturday home games, three Thursday home games, two Wednesday games, one Friday, and one Sunday. Not an ideal schedule with only three Saturday home games for the Blues. The good news for the Blues is that four of their last five games at the Swope Soccer Village.

Here is the full schedule, times are all Central.

vs Sky Blue FC - Sunday, April 12th 3pm - Sporting Park
at Washington - Saturday, April 18th 6pm
vs Seattle - Thursday, April 23 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
at Houston - Saturday, May 2nd 7:30pm
at Western New York - Friday, May 8th 6pm
vs Western New York - Thursday, May 14th 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
vs Chicago - Saturday, May 23rd 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
at Boston - Saturday, May 30th 6pm
at Portland - Friday, June 19th 9pm
at Seattle - Saturday, June 27th 9:30pm
vs Washington - Friday, July 3rd 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
at Boston - Saturday, July 11th 5pm
vs Houston - Wednesday, July 15th 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
at Houston - Wednesday, July 29th 7:30pm
at Chicago - Saturday, August 1st 7pm
vs Western New York - Saturday, August 8th 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
vs Portland - Wednesday, August 12th 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
vs Boston - Saturday, August 22nd 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
vs Washington - Thursday, August 27th 7pm - Swope Soccer Village
at Sky Blue FC - Sunday, September 6th 5pm

FC Kansas City Released Protected List for NWSL Expansion Draft

The NWSL today announced the list of protected players for each of their eight existing clubs ahead of Friday's expansion draft for the Houston Dash. Being one of the four teams that made the playoffs last year, FC Kansas City was allowed to protect nine players currently on their roster.

With the news that Desiree Scott was leaving for Notts County and Lauren Sesselmann also now looking likely to leave, both of KC's allocated Canadians end up on the unprotected list. This allowed KC to protect a couple other players that they likely would have been unable to protect previously. Overall though I wasn't too far off on my guesses that I made the other night.

KC was able to protect three of their four US allocated players, and went with Lauren Holiday, Amy Rodriguez, and Becky Sauerbrunn. They also protected their two players that had recently been called up, in Leigh Ann Robinson and Erika Tymrak. With Scott gone I said they'd definitely protect Jen Buczkowski and that was true. The other three players were Melissa Henderson, Nikki Krzysik, and Merritt Mathias.

That goes leave US goalkeeper, Nicole Barnhart available, but the Dash did trade for Canadian goalkeeper, Erin McLeod yesterday so that could take them off the market of grabbing a starting caliber goalkeeper Friday. A back up like Bianca Henninger though wouldn't be out of the question. The Dash could also look to grab someone like Sinead Farrelly.

Here's the full list.

Protected

Jen Buczkowski    

Melissa Henderson             

Lauren Holiday (USA)

Nikki Krzysik         

Merritt Mathias   

Leigh Ann Robinson           

Amy Rodriguez (USA)

Becky Sauerbrunn (USA)

Erika Tymrak

Unprotected

Nicole Barnhart (USA)

Elizabeth Bogus   

Sinead Farrelly    

Jamie French       

Bianca Henninger               

Katie Kelly            

Casey Loyd           

Cecilia Santiago (MEX)

Desiree Scott (CAN)

Lauren Sesselmann (CAN)

Nia Williams

Discovery Player #1

Discovery Player #2

Discovery Player #3           

Discovery Player #4           

Discovery Player #5           

Discovery Player #6

NWSL Announce Player Allocation for 2014

The NWSL today announced the player allocation for the 2014 season. As of right now, FC Kansas City is allocated seven players from the US, Canadian, and Mexican federations. Two of those players are new from last year, Amy Rodriguez, who the club traded Kristie Mewis to Seattle for, and Cecilia Santiago, a goalkeeper for Mexico. The other five are all returning players, Nicole Barnhart, Lauren Holiday, and Becky Sauerbrunn from the US and Desiree Scott and Lauren Sesselmann from Canda.

The questions on Scott's move, and Sesselmann's rumored move to Notts County are still hanging in the air, but the two as of now are expected to be in camp with FCKC. That will be something to keep an eye on in the days moving forward, especially with the expansion draft for the Houston Dash coming up soon.

Speaking of the expansion draft, it could have big implications for the Blues. Today, the Dash were allocated their first three players, one from each of the participating federations. Word is that the team's other two allocated American players will come through the expansion draft. With KC being one of two clubs (Seattle the other) with four Americans currently allocated to the club, it's easy to deduce that KC and Seattle will be the two clubs losing an allocated American.

For FCKC, with Barnhart Holiday, Rodriguez, and Sauerbrunn it's hard to decide who they'd lose. With Holiday being the league's reigning MVP, I can't see the club letting her leave. Rodriguez was just acquired from Seattle in the offseason and is another that I don't see KC being pushed to give up. That leaves Barnhart and Sauerbrunn. Currently with the addition of Santiago, KC now has three goalkeepers on their roster with Barnhart and Bianca Henninger. I can't see KC carrying three keepers this year, so one of those three will be departing. Now whether that's Barnhart or Henninger is another question.

It's going to be a big loss for FCKC either way. Whatever happens, the Blues could end up with a big hole up the middle of the field somewhere. Or it could be multiple holes if Scott does not return to the club.

Here's the rest of the allocated players.

Boston Breakers
Meghan Klingenberg (USA)
Kristie Mewis (USA)
Heather O'Reilly (USA)
Chelsea Stewart (CAN)
Kaylyn Kyle (CAN)
Dinora Garza (MEX)

Chicago Red Stars
Shannon Boxx (USA)
Amy LePeilbet (USA)
Christen Press (USA)
Adriana Leon (CAN)
Erin McLeod  (CAN)
Rachel Quon (CAN)

Houston Dash
Whitney Engen (USA)
Melissa Tancredi (CAN)
Teresa Noyola (MEX)

Portland Thorns FC
Rachel Buehler (USA)
Tobin Heath (USA)
Alex Morgan (USA)
Christine Sinclair (CAN)
Karina LeBlanc (CAN)
Jackie Acevedo (MEX)

Seattle Reign FC
Stephanie Cox (USA)
Sydney Leroux (USA)
Megan Rapinoe (USA)
Hope Solo (USA)
Carmelina Moscato (CAN)
Arianna Romero (MEX)

Sky Blue FC
Jill Loyden (USA)
Kelley O'Hara (USA)
Christie Rampone (USA)
Jonelle Filigno (CAN)
Sophie Schmidt (CAN)
Monica Ocampo (MEX)

Washington Spirit
Yael Averbuch (USA)
Ashlyn Harris (USA)
Ali Krieger (USA)
Robyn Gayle (CAN)
Diana Matheson (CAN)
Renae Cuellar (MEX)

Western New York Flash
Carli Lloyd (USA)
Abby Wambach (USA)
Selenia Iacchelli (CAN)
Veronica Perez (MEX)

FC Kansas City Game Postponed

FC Kansas City and the National Women's Soccer League announced today the postponement of tomorrow's game at Shawnee Mission North High School against the Boston Breakers.  With Boston basically still in a lockdown state and the situation there the way it is, it was decided there were more important things to worry about than a soccer game.  A rescheduled date has not been decided on yet. 
Honestly this is an easy decision to make.  The Breakers hadn't left for Kansas City yet, instead they are all outside the city, in a "safe location" according to reports.  Except one player who is in "lockdown." With the situation as a whole in Boston, better to let all that settle down.

FC Kansas City Announce Roster

FC Kansas City today announced their 18 player roster for the start of the inaugural NWSL season.  The roster certainly on paper should make the Blues one of the candidates for the best team in the league this year.

Here's a look at how FC Kansas City built their current roster.

The team has their three US allocated players in Nicole Barnhart, Lauren Cheney, and Becky Sauerbrunn. They also have their 2 Canadian internationals, Desiree Scott and Lauren Sesselmann.  And their single Mexican international, Renae Cuellar.  That gets the team up to 6.

Through the NWSL college draft, FCKC added three more, Krisitie Mewis in the first round, Erika Tymrak in the second round, and Nia Williams in the fourth round.  This gets you half the roster, at 9.

In the Supplemental draft, added four more to their roster.  The team added Courtney Jones in the first round, Bianca Henninger in the second round, Merritt Mathias in the third round, and Casey Loyd in the fourth round.  That gets the team to 13 of the 18 players.

Four more of KC's players came to the Blues from the team's ability to sign 4 free agents.  In that list were Melissa Henderson, Jen Buczkowski, Leigh Ann Robinson, and Sinead Farrelly.  That gets to 17 of the 18 rostered players.

The final spot on the roster went to local product, Katie Kelly to round out the team's 18 roster spots.

FCKC will kick off the season on Saturday night when they'll host the Portland Thorns in the league's first game at Shawnee Mission North High School.

FC Kansas City Allocated First Players

FC Kansas City has some players.  Today the NWSL released the locations where the 55 national team pool players would be allocated.  And while they didn't have the "best" allocation at least from initially eye-balling the list (that award goes to Portland which lands both Alex Morgan and Christine Sinclair), the Blues picked up a decent core of players. 

FCKC got the US number two goalkeeper, Nicole Barnhart.  The 31 year old Barnhart has been a regular with the US national team, usually as a back up to starter, Hope Solo. But Barnhart does have 46 national team caps, and should give KC a good strong start in the back.  In Lauren Cheney they got a midfielder who should be able to do a decent job of pulling the strings in the midfield for the Blues and has already appeared 82 times, scoring 18 goals for the US team.  The final US player allocated to KC was defender Becky Sauerbrunn.  This move made sense in the fact that Sauerbrunn is from St. Louis so this is a short trip from home for her.  Sauerbrunn has 37 caps currently for the US national team.

From Canada, KC picked up midfielder Desiree Scott.  Scott was on the Canadian team that took the bronze medal in London and has appeared for Canada 53 times.  The other Canadian on the roster is defender Lauren Sesselmann.  The 29 year old is actually from Wisconsin but has appeared 26 times for the Canadian team.

KC's two Mexican players are also US citizens.  Renae Nicole Cuellar is a forward who actually just finished her senior year at Oklahoma and has participated in the FIFA U20 World Cup with Mexico.  She was an alternate for the 2011 World Cup.  Marylin Diaz is a 21 year old defender who played for Mexico in the Women's World Cup.

On first glance, KC has the beginnings of a good defense with Barnhart, Sauerbrunn, and Sesselmann to anchor the defense.  With Cheney in the midfield, KC will have some attack from the midfield, while Scott, "The Destroyer" will probably cover more of the defensive duties.  Cuellar though is the only forward on the roster now.  So expect that to be a place for Vlatko Andonovski to look to improve immediately either through free agency or the draft next week (or both).  Definitely a good start and "back bone" for the team.

FC Kansas City's New Logo

When FC Kansas City unveiled their new logo back in late November, the response to the logo was fairly underwhelming.  I called the logo generic, and I was probably one of the kinder comments in response to the logo.  It reminded me of a rec league logo, not one of a professional sports team.  The logo as a whole probably hurt them with it's generic, and overall poor look. 

FC KC though listened to the comments that were made regarding their logo and today they remedied it in a very big way.  Today they showed off a new logo that looks much better.  It has a much more professional feel and look to it.  Plenty of the comments that I saw today were much more complimentary of the logo.  I really like it, it has a bit of a ying and yang look too it. 

NWSL Announce 55 National Teamers to be Allocated

The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) has announced the list of 55 U.S., Canadian and Mexican National Team players that will be allocated to the eight clubs.

All 18 U.S. players on the gold medal-winning 2012 Olympic team are included in the allocation, while 13 of the Canadian players were part of the bronze medal-winning team.

Once the allocation process is completed, the club location for all 55 players will be announced on Friday, Jan. 11.

The allocation process will be conducted with assistance from a panel of experts familiar with the player pool, including individuals from the collegiate level, recent professional and semi-professional clubs, and the youth and senior national team level in North America.

Along with the panel’s collective input on the technical ability of the players, in preparation for the allocation, players have selected their preferred destinations and the clubs have provided their preference with regard to specific players and qualities of players desired. Based on the input from the panel of experts and teams, players will be assigned numerical values on quality and desirability.

“The allocation will provide each club with a foundation of talent to build a competitive roster,” said NWSL Executive Director Cheryl Bailey. “Ultimately, the goal is to pair the teams and players in such a way that we achieve a fair distribution of talent across all eight teams. This is another important step as we continue to build towards the inaugural season of the National Women’s Soccer League. We are looking forward to sharing this news with our fans in the coming days.”

U.S. Soccer is subsidizing the salaries of 23 players, while the Canadian Soccer Association and the Federation of Mexican Football will each do the same for 16 players. With 23 U.S. players available for the allocation, all but one of the eight teams will receive three U.S. Women’s National Team players. Each club will also be assigned two Canadian National Team and two Mexican National Team players.

The NWSL is an eight-team league organized and administered by the U.S. Soccer Federation that will begin play in the spring of 2013. The eight founding clubs are the Boston Breakers, Chicago Red Stars, FC Kansas City, Portland Thorns FC, Sky Blue FC (New York/New Jersey), Seattle Reign FC, the Washington Spirit and the Western New York Flash.

USA PLAYERS
Pos., Player Name
GK, Nicole Barnhart
M, Shannon Boxx
D, Rachel Buehler
M, Lauren Cheney
GK, Ashlyn Harris
M, Tobin Heath
D, Ali Krieger
D, Amy LePeilbet
F, Sydney Leroux
M, Lori Lindsey
M, Carli Lloyd
GK, Jill Loyden
D, Heather Mitts
F, Alex Morgan
D, Kelley O'Hara
M, Heather O'Reilly
D, Christie Rampone
M, Megan Rapinoe
F, Amy Rodriguez
D, Becky Sauerbrunn
GK, Hope Solo
F, Abby Wambach
M, Keelin Winters

MEXICO PLAYERS
Pos., Player Name
D, Alina Lisi Garciamendez Rowold
M, Veronica Raquel Perez Murillo
M, Teresa Noyola Bayardo
F, Maribel Dominguez Castelan
F, Monica Ocampo Medina
GK, Aurora Cecilia Santiago Cisneros
M, Lydia Nayeli Rangel Hernandez
F, Renae Nicole Cuellar Cuellar
M, Teresa Guadalupe Worbis Aguilar
F, Anisa Raquel Guajardo Braff
M, Dinora Lizeth Garza Rodriguez
D, Jennifer Marie Ruiz Brown
D, Luz del Rosario Saucedo Soto
D, Rubi Marlene Sandoval Nungaray
GK, Pamela Tajonar Alonso
D, Marylin Viridiana Diaz Ramirez

CANADA PLAYERS
Pos., Player Name
D, Melanie Booth
D, Robyn Gayle
M, Kaylyn Kyle
GK, Karina LeBlanc
M/F, Adriana Leon
M, Diana Matheson
D/M, Bryana McCarthy
GK, Erin McLeod
D, Carmelina Moscato
M/F, Jodi-Ann Robinson
M, Sophie Schmidt
M, Desiree Scott
D, Lauren Sesselmann
F, Christine Sinclair
D, Rhian Wilkinson
D, Emily Zurrer

FC Kansas City to Play in NWSL

Tonight during half time of the USA vs China game, US Soccer unveiled the name and logo for the new professional women's league.  The new league, the National Women's Soccer League, will begin this spring.  All but one of the teams, the Seattle franchise, have announced their name and logo. The logo is simple in it's design and looking at it immediately makes me thing of simple, classic logos like those of the NBA and MLB that have a player silhouetted.

According to a report from Thad, the league also looks set to begin it's first player allocation before the end of the year.  So we should have our first FC Kansas City players by the end of the year.