NWSL champion @FCKansasCity acquires #uswnt vet Heather O'Reilly from Boston for Morg

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That is actually funny. How big a joke are the Breakers when the top man needs to make a few grand on the side coaching teenagers? At a minimum it is a 20 hour commitment on a weekly basis.

Leroux, O'Reilly and Devanna all traded. Idiot.

Without the aid of Google can anyone name 3 players on the Breakers?...........that's what I thought.

You will be using Google a lot for the 2015 season. Those national players involved in the women's world cup will only be available for 7 out of 20 games!!! Plus, they will be in and out of their club teams for national team training. Seems not having so many for 2015 is not a bad thing.

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That is actually funny. How big a joke are the Breakers when the top man needs to make a few grand on the side coaching teenagers? At a minimum it is a 20 hour commitment on a weekly basis.

Leroux, O'Reilly and Devanna all traded. Idiot.

Without the aid of Google can anyone name 3 players on the Breakers?...........that's what I thought.

Leroux - Boston were forced into a trade by US Soccer so Leroux could be closer to her sick family

O'Reilly -30 years old, will not be around in 2015 due to Womens World Cup and may have one more year at "the top" after the World Cup. Good deal 'cashing in' and bringing in two younger U23 national players.

Devanna - if you follow women's pro soccer you will know DeVanna is trouble. Boston took a chance in hope she would produce on-field. If I recall she never scored and only assisted once. Traded to Chicago who took her off their playoff roster due to her bad attitude.

I follow womens pro soccer, have done since launch of WPS (second installment), and Breakers have been the most active so far during this off season. I did not know LB coached a high school team, but it is not impacting Breakers making trades.

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Here is an interesting analysis of the trade as well as a number of others.

The Lowdown: Assessing the flurry of NWSL trades

http://womens.soccerly.com/2014/11/0...f-nwsl-trades/

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"The club is in need of a complete overhaul and there is nothing wrong with doing so with younger players."

On its face, true. But for where this franchise has been and where it needs to go, as well as the league, you need to have and market stars. In its formation, with the 3 North American soccer federations partnering with NWSL, the league offered fans the promise of world class talent spread across the teams with the idea of providing stability to the business and the product. It's evolving into haves and have nots and Boston is on the losing end. If that doesn't change, the league might not immediately or ever fail, but the Breakers might.

[Unregistered]

"The club is in need of a complete overhaul and there is nothing wrong with doing so with younger players."

On its face, true. But for where this franchise has been and where it needs to go, as well as the league, you need to have and market stars. In its formation, with the 3 North American soccer federations partnering with NWSL, the league offered fans the promise of world class talent spread across the teams with the idea of providing stability to the business and the product. It's evolving into haves and have nots and Boston is on the losing end. If that doesn't change, the league might not immediately or ever fail, but the Breakers might.

Completely disagree. Relying on aging superstars to fill seats (aka Oakland Raiders) is a well documented path to disaster. It just shows lazy and unimaginative ownership and management. Unfortunately the Breakers appear to just have a weak management group and that is the reason they are going to end up folding. First, they need to put a product out on the field that people want to pay to see. That team last year wasn't even close. Next they need to take the corner stones of that team and build a public image for them so fans can form a personal attachment to them and the team. That is how pro franchises sell tickets. When was the last time you saw any kind of PR from the Breakers never mind something trying to connect their players to a potential group of followers. It is this basic, no one around here even knows who the players are let alone their numbers so they can buy their jersey to wear to games. They might as well be promoting a no name circus.

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Completely disagree. Relying on aging superstars to fill seats (aka Oakland Raiders) is a well documented path to disaster. It just shows lazy and unimaginative ownership and management. Unfortunately the Breakers appear to just have a weak management group and that is the reason they are going to end up folding. First, they need to put a product out on the field that people want to pay to see. That team last year wasn't even close. Next they need to take the corner stones of that team and build a public image for them so fans can form a personal attachment to them and the team. That is how pro franchises sell tickets. When was the last time you saw any kind of PR from the Breakers never mind something trying to connect their players to a potential group of followers. It is this basic, no one around here even knows who the players are let alone their numbers so they can buy their jersey to wear to games. They might as well be promoting a no name circus.

You had recognizable talent and traded it for no names. Now you want to build no names into household names? In addition, the only people that go to Breakers games are little girls and their parents. It has nothing to do with the quality of the soccer.

[Unregistered]

Completely disagree. Relying on aging superstars to fill seats (aka Oakland Raiders) is a well documented path to disaster. It just shows lazy and unimaginative ownership and management. Unfortunately the Breakers appear to just have a weak management group and that is the reason they are going to end up folding. First, they need to put a product out on the field that people want to pay to see. That team last year wasn't even close. Next they need to take the corner stones of that team and build a public image for them so fans can form a personal attachment to them and the team. That is how pro franchises sell tickets. When was the last time you saw any kind of PR from the Breakers never mind something trying to connect their players to a potential group of followers. It is this basic, no one around here even knows who the players are let alone their numbers so they can buy their jersey to wear to games. They might as well be promoting a no name circus.

Who said "aging superstars"? Everything that followed is exactly what I'm talking about. And as a former season ticket holder, I think actions reflect those words.

It's simple, again, no one said "aging" as if to imply all name but can't play - there needs to be icons, NT players (actual, but also of that caliber), that deliver quality on the field and market the fan experience off the field. The interaction my kids had with world class soccer role models is what motivated them to have me buy tickets more than anything else.

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Who said "aging superstars"? Everything that followed is exactly what I'm talking about. And as a former season ticket holder, I think actions reflect those words.

It's simple, again, no one said "aging" as if to imply all name but can't play - there needs to be icons, NT players (actual, but also of that caliber), that deliver quality on the field and market the fan experience off the field. The interaction my kids had with world class soccer role models is what motivated them to have me buy tickets more than anything else.

Smart management doesn't put all the time, effort, and money into building name recognition for a player who has no ties to the community and will likely only be playing a few more years then leave once they are done. The simple fact is there are only so many players on the national team and even less so that have big name appeal. The ones that do have been around for quite a long time and are getting a little long in the tooth (which is one of the often expressed problems with the NT, no) at this point so it really doesn't make all that much sense to leverage the franchise's future to hold on to 1 of them. Leroux would have been the one to build up as the face of the franchise but there was clearly something behind the scenes with her. The inference has been that she just didn't want to be on the east coast. Contrary to what some fans like to believe, pro athletes are not indentured servants so if a potential star doesn't want to be a part of the plan you are better off dealing them and trying to find someone else to build around.

There are two real questions with the Breakers. One, are they assembling a quality roster and two, are they marketing their product well enough to build a fan base to sustain the franchise. All of us can do the stove top thing and discuss their roster building efforts but when you get right down to it they are supposedly the pros and presumably have a plan they are following. As the Pats have shown, fans never know how all of the pieces actually fit together so anything that gets said here is nothing more than fan angst. The bottom line is if their management team can't evaluate talent and put together a sustainable roster that is capable of winning then no one will want to go to their games. The one obvious thing to even the non professionals though is the Breakers certainly are not out in front of their plan selling it to their fan base nor are they doing much to create a sense of excitement about the franchise. Even if they still had Leroux and O'Reilly, those marketing failures all by themselves would doom the club to failure at the box office.

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There are plenty rising young name players in the USWNT, never mind veterans who can play for years to come and would help winning and marketing. The Breakers have moved to having fewer and fewer from their WPS years. Boston was a model and flagship then, other regions west are the league's future and they have those players in much greater numbers.

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There are plenty rising young name players in the USWNT, never mind veterans who can play for years to come and would help winning and marketing. The Breakers have moved to having fewer and fewer from their WPS years. Boston was a model and flagship then, other regions west are the league's future and they have those players in much greater numbers.

Who should they get and why?

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There are 9 teams in the NWSL. They may have an active roster of 20 players per team and no more than 3 international players per team. Most teams would allocate their rosters like this

GK - 2
Defender - 6
Midfielder - 8
Forward - 4

So if you really want to do this right, you really need to understand who the top pro level players are in the country at each position or more specifically

Who are the top 18 goalkeepers?
Who are the top 54 defenders?
Who are the top 72 midfielders?
Who are the top 36 forwards?

and then see first how many of these players are on the Breakers roster and then how many of those that are rank near the top of those individual lists. That will give us an indication of the strength of the team's current roster. Unfortunately that task is near impossible because women's soccer doesn't have anything that tracks our country's pro level soccer players once they leave college.

One of the problems with women's soccer is as the Breakers basically just found out with Reeves, the best women's college players don't always move onto the NWSL and play for a long time and that dilutes the talent pool quite a bit. So it is not only a matter of finding the too 180 players, it is finding the ones that want to stay around long enough for you to build a team around.

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The Breakers have some real problems. Between losing O'Reilly and Reeves they just lost 16 goals or 43% of their scoring. Last year they were 5th in scoring but the real problem was on the defensive end. They gave up a whopping 53 goals which was worst in the league and 33 goals beyond league leading Seattle. They had better hope they have sured up those defensive issues because it looks like they are going to search for goal scoring this year.

[Unregistered]

The Breakers have some real problems. Between losing O'Reilly and Reeves they just lost 16 goals or 43% of their scoring. Last year they were 5th in scoring but the real problem was on the defensive end. They gave up a whopping 53 goals which was worst in the league and 33 goals beyond league leading Seattle. They had better hope they have sured up those defensive issues because it looks like they are going to search for goal scoring this year.

Pretty amazing considering their GK was such a bright spot.

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There are 9 teams in the NWSL. They may have an active roster of 20 players per team and no more than 3 international players per team. Most teams would allocate their rosters like this.

The Thorns only have 3 internationals on their roster?

[Unregistered]

The Breakers have some real problems. Between losing O'Reilly and Reeves they just lost 16 goals or 43% of their scoring. Last year they were 5th in scoring but the real problem was on the defensive end. They gave up a whopping 53 goals which was worst in the league and 33 goals beyond league leading Seattle. They had better hope they have sured up those defensive issues because it looks like they are going to search for goal scoring this year.

They have recently signed three new defensive players. Breakers posted more announcements coming this week. Seems they have fixed the defensive frailties of this past season. I suspect, hopeful for, goal scoring/attacking announcements.