Daily News | NWSL expands to the Bay Area and opens the door for two more teams
The NWSL made it official Tuesday that the Bay Area of California will get the league’s next expansion team, joiningBut surprisingly, that wasn’t the only thing the NWSL announced on the expansion front.
When the NWSL brought its college draft to Philadelphia in January, a source with knowledge of the matter told The Inquirer that there had been “at least 10 formal bids,” with none for a team here. It isn’t ideal for a league to have an odd number of teams because it makes scheduling more difficult. NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman acknowledged that in a news conference last month when she was asked about the expansion timeline. But she also said the league wouldn’t go to 16 teams just to have an even number.
“We’re very much in a long-term strategic planning process,” she said. “We need to figure out what we want to be and when, and from that we’ll learn more about the short term. I don’t expect even after that process that we’ll be able to say we think we want to be only 16 teams. I think the growth potential of women’s soccer in this country is far deeper than that.”