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Posted by
Emily Dulhanty,
October 27, 2015 |
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Emily Dulhanty
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@emidul
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There are eight Canadian women available to be selected by the Orlando Pride in next week’s National Women’s Soccer League expansion draft.
Orlando Pride was unveiled as the NWSL’s tenth franchise on October 20th, and have the same owners as Orlando City SC in MLS. In less than a week, they have sold over 1500 season tickets, a great number when you consider NWSL’s average attendance of 5046 per game for 2015. Another MLS-backed team will be a positive addition to the NWSL as the league enters its fourth year, a milestone never reached by either WPS or WUSA, leagues that both folded after year three.
The list of protected and unprotected players for the expansion draft came out on Monday, with Orlando able to pick 10 players from the unprotected side in next week’s draft. Just three Canadians in the league were protected by their clubs: Christine Sinclair, Diana Matheson and Allysha Chapman.
Of the eight Canadians left unprotected and available to Orlando, the only two to have consistent playing time in the 2015 NWSL season were Erin McLeod and Rachel Quon (who was not on Canada’s World Cup roster). After the World Cup, playing time was hard to come by for the other Canucks, who were fighting to regain spots in the starting eleven of their clubs after such a long absence from the league. Both Rhian Wilkinson and Lauren Sesselmann were recovering from injuries after the World Cup. Nkem Ezurike was not on Canada’s World Cup squad, but played at the Pan Am games.
Kaylyn Kyle was unveiled on Monday as one of Orlando’s first players after being traded from the Portland Thorns, who she played significant minutes with in 2015. Kyle was a part of a trade that brought Alex Morgan to Orlando.
The Canadian national team is expected to reconvene the Centralized Development Program (aka residency camp) in November, as they look to prepare for Olympic qualifying in February. Though still unconfirmed by Canada Soccer, it is rumoured that Canada will play in this December’s Torneio Internacional de Futebol Feminino, the annual women’s international tournament in Brazil.
The full list of protected and unprotected Canadian players for next Monday’s NWSL expansion draft is below:
Protected
Christie Sinclair (Portland)
Diana Matheson (Washington)
Allysha Chapman (Houston)
Unprotected
Nkem Ezurike (Boston)
Rachel Quon (Chicago)
Melissa Tancredi (Chicago)
Adriana Leon (Chicago)
Lauren Sesselmann (Houston)
Erin McLeod (Houston)
Rhian Wilkinson (Portland)
Jonelle Filigno (Sky Blue)
Full rules of the draft can be found here.
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