Photo Copyright Kirby Lee for USA TODAY Sports
The college draft has long been one of the marquee events on the National Women’s Soccer League calendar. But times are changing. In the years since the league changed the rules that required American players to use up their college eligibility players like Jaedyn Shaw and Alyssa Thompson have gone directly to the NWSL as teenagers and become stars. That combined with a more robust international market for clubs has combined to reduce the impact of the draft.
“What we’ve learned and observed probably over the last year or so is that there has been a leveling up of the games globally that is serving as a forcing function for us to recognize that we compete in a global landscape for talent,” commissioner Jessica Berman said Friday during her annual draft-day chat with media. “With that comes a lot of analysis about our approach and our policies and the best ways that we can compete for that talent.”
With that answer, Berman did not address the direct question of whether…
