Ian Fleming

And there it is

I know it's been years since I was a GM in the NWSL and I'm self-aware enough to know that fewer people care what I have to share on this than ever, but I genuinely love this stuff. Complete nerd. I love helping athletes as an agent now, but I miss being the one digging for competitive advantages.

Personal opinion: going back to the system of having unbound actual salaries but max cap hits would go a long way towards solving the issue. Used to be $250k, with recent growth something like $500k is fair. Would allow higher individual salaries, yet still force cap mindfulness and league parity.

This particular issue was also inevitable when the CBA set out specific salary cap growth over the entire duration of the agreement but didn't put guardrails on individual salaries (e.g. the NHL setting min/max amounts of both team spend and AAV of contracts).

In the moment, though, the league can't allow for any team to essentially declare that it's bending/breaking a rule and that everyone just needs to deal with it. It can't work that way because, as mentioned before, teams love to push boundaries and this would incentivize *breaking* rules.

Teams, working under the fundamental principle that winning is everything, will always innovate and push/bend/break rules faster than a league can adjust and amend them to keep up. That's not inherently a bad thing and often leads to more efficient outcomes and better-designed rules after the fact.

No matter where you land on the issue of compensation (I'm absolutely in favor of higher wages across the board), no league can allow for a single team to unilaterally force rules changes at a league-wide level. It sets a suboptimal precedent that playing fair is optional, no matter the topic.

Yes, the league has the CBA-mandated ability to raise the cap so that this isn't an issue. Media rights growth will likely lead to that, but the league won't allow itself to be strong-armed into it today by way of a single club pushing through a contract that doesn't work until the change is made.

Might be correct, might not be, but it's the Occam's razor solution to why the contract can be seen as problematic by the league while still being CBA-compliant at the individual contract level.

I don't have any inside info here, but if we're looking for a functional reason why the league would take issue with a backloaded contract, the safe bet would be on the salary being high enough that, based on the CBA minimums for '28/'29, there wouldn't be enough money left to field a full roster.

Atlanta has long been a hub for high-level youth soccer in the southeast, which translated incredibly into strong support for men's pro soccer. I see no reason why, with the right investment, it shouldn't immediately become a premier club in the NWSL in both sporting and commercial capabilities.

Unless Kouassi, Monday, and Santos were on minutes restrictions (unlikely given when they were subbed), it was a Decision to pull all three of them from the game

I don't pat myself on the back often but $75k and a 2nd-round pick was good, clean business

I think maybe it's a good idea to have an understanding of how large language models work before we ask them to solve problems that they aren't designed for. But that's just me.

Eddy's op-ed is a rallying cry against a problem that doesn't exist, blatantly exclusionary, and a thinly-veiled show of hatred toward people who already endure enough of it for simply trying to be who they are and live their best lives.

We don't need this in our league, our sport, nor our society.

Teams 1-7 all have >95% probability to make the playoffs with 3 matches remaining

Still a lot of room for movement between spots 3-7 (maybe even 8 if San Diego can start picking up points again)

Officially setting the NWSL playoff line over/under at 34.5

I also recall seeing a post a while back On Here that essentially said that there was now finally a nerd boss in a GM position in the NWSL and I find that to be just deeply, deeply disrespectful lol

What I mean by this is that in 10,000 sims, Chicago and Utah don't find a way into the playoffs.

In 100,000 sims, Utah makes it in 14 times and Chicago 12! Terribly unlikely, but not impossible!

Had an idea for a 5-game rolling form chart and gave it a whirl. It's a bit busy, but there's something about the aesthetic that I like.

The probability of each team finishing in each final standings position.

The most likely playoff cut line is now 34 points.

Point projections by season's end and there is just a bit of separation at the top.

Transfer windows are mostly closed now and it's time for a long overdue update on my NWSL season simulations. We're (I'm) increasing from 10,000 to 100,000 sims to give more opportunities for very unlikely mathematical outcomes to nibble their way into existence.

NWSL clubs can still trade with one another until the roster freeze, but the transfer window is now closed in the US, so bringing new players into the league is no longer possible in 2025.

Thus there's no reason to take money now and increase your transfer threshold when it will be lost by January.

Given the time value of money and the rapid increase of transfer values in women's football, the logical thing to do is get all of the money up-front and reinvest it quickly into incoming transfers.

But unlike allocation money, positive threshold amounts don't roll over year-to-year. It disappears.

Here's the silly thing about the NWSL's transfer fee threshold system that forces an otherwise irrational move:

Unless they have a trade lined-up with another NWSL club to replace her, It would be best to take $0 this calendar year and completely defer the payments, possibly over multiple years.

And a small selection of interpretable inputs that help to inform the model

Been a very long time since I've been able to make these with new data 🙂