LA Sol Disbands After Inaugural Season

LA's WPS club calls it quits after only one season. And this with the game's best player on its roster.

LA Times story:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/sports_blog/2010/01/los-angeles-sol-folds.html

WPS website:

http://www.womensprosoccer.com/la

Former Pilots Lisa Sari and Stephanie Cox, along with their teammates, will be dispersed via a special draft to the remaining eight teams, who will compete in an even single-table format for the 2010 season.

It's sad that Phil Knight or someone couldn't have stepped in and brought them to Portland. With three Pilots already on the team (including Michelle E.), the team could have drawn well here. If they had put together a couple of trades for one or two of Megan, Christine, Tiffeny, etc. I'll bet they could have drawn 5 figures consistently.

SoreKnees wrote:It's sad that someone couldn't have stepped in and brought them to Portland. I'll bet they could have drawn 5 figures consistently.

This.

I hope this isn't the first of many teams to fold. As much as I love watching her, I really don't know how any team is going to realistically going to be able to afford Marta's salary.

I love women's soccer, however, I'm skeptical about the survival of this league.
I don't think that having a women's team in Portland would be an automatic draw either unless the team was really good. However, it would certainly be a better bet if the league catered toward the fans of the strongest women's college teams.

From the NY Times:

Antonucci (the Commissioner) said the league had also held preliminary talks about placing teams in Dallas, Denver, San Diego and Seattle.

So it looks like Portland isn't even on the radar yet...

And from the WS Journal:

With some teams generating losses of more than $1 million last year,
pinching pennies is the order of the day in Women's Professional
Soccer. Entering its second season, five of the league's eight teams,
including last year's champ, New Jersey-based Sky Blue FC, are asking
local families to "host" players by allowing them to live in their
homes from March to September. Sky Blue host families get four season
tickets.

Host families for an entire season?? Yeesh...

Michelle and Stephanie both taken by Boston in the dispersal draft.

Jeez, this is sad. What is this -- junior hockey where players need to be hosted at a local family's house? What next -- sleepovers? Of course, any of the pros can stay at my family's place any time even if Portland doesn't have a team! All earlier worries expressed about women's pro soccer being able to sustain itself financially are still valid. Bad economy surely doesn't help. Think of all the money going elsewhere to support men's sports, even those with bad actors. Not fair, but also not likely to change soon.

It may or may not be "fair", but it's really pretty simple. LONG TERM, the money flows to the pro sports in which there is the most interest by the public. No one is deciding this other than the public, which is voting their interests with their dollars. This is as it should be in a free country.

You would think the fact that females make up 50% or more of the population in this country would increase the interest in women's pro sports, but I guess the logical conclusion is that women have less interest in sports than men, or that women still have more interest in men's sports. Here in central NY, I occasionally read letters to the editor about the lack of newspaper coverage of women's sports, and also of soccer. Well, the paper is just using their limited space to cover what most people in this area are most interested in. I personally love watching women's soccer, pro and college, much more so than men's soccer - I think the women's game is more exciting and played with a much better attitude - but I am in a small minority. I do think that is changing over time as more and more kids play soccer. The success and exposure of the women's national team has also helped greatly.