Denver Summit FC, Boston Legacy usher in new era of NWSL expansion

In just a few short months, the NWSL will welcome two new clubs into the fold: Boston Legacy and the newly named Denver Summit. This round of expansion kicked off what will continue to be a competitive marketplace for the league, even as commissioner Jessica Berman hinted at NFL-sized aspirations.

This time around, Denver and Boston had the right combination of vision, capital, and tradition of women’s soccer. New era NWSL clubs are practically required to kick off as the anchor tenets of their training facilities and stadiums, with future bids only being considered if they have the potential to make those a reality, along with a strong vision as stewards for professional women’s soccer in their communities.

All of that to say, both clubs are preparing for an important summer. No expansion draft means that both need to recruit major firepower, with both needing to stick the landing after major missteps.

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The complete failure of Boston’s initial rollout will be told in marketing courses for years to come. BOS NATION was announced, with a companion “Too Many Balls” marketing campaign that focused on the future NWSL club’s role in a male-dominated sports market while ignoring that they were not, in fact, the only professional women’s sports team in the market. The name, identity, and branding were all subsequently pulled back as the club felt the backlash of a massively mishandled rollout that was more marketing slogan than world-class soccer club.

Boston had no choice but to revisit the drawing board.

Out of the ashes of BOS NATION, the Boston Legacy was born.

The Legacy will play their inaugural season at Gillette Stadium while the club’s White Stadium project works to renovate one of Boston’s most historic stadiums. They followed that up with the announcement of a $27 million training center in Brockton, MA, slated for completion by January 1st.

Facilities are quickly becoming the expectation throughout the league after the Kansas City Current kicked off the trend with their Riverside training facility, which will soon feature a 2000 seat stadium of its own, and Downtown Stadium.

Boston has met that moment, even with a few major roadblocks like opposition to their White Stadium renovation plans.

Fortunately, they have followed through with competent sporting hires.

Boston had the head start hiring Barçelona’s Domènec Guasch as the club’s first General Manager before Denver was ever officially announced. Guasch has called back on his Barça roots in describing how his NWSL roster will take shape.

“We want to build an attacking team, a team that’s able to be the protagonist in the game, that creates many chances, that’s playing close to the opposing team’s goal. That not only means obviously having the ball and trying to create those chances through a fast game, but also pressing high, high-intensity throughout the game, high competitiveness.” - Domènec Guasch

Filipa Patão soon joined from Benfica as the club’s inaugural manager, fresh off being nominated as a Ballon d’Or manager of the year. Patão won five straight Campeonato Nacional titles and managed to reach the Champions League quarterfinals this past season, the first for a Portuguese side.

The sporting department has had an exciting start, while the initial signings of Annie Karich, Aïssata Traoré, Emerson Elgin, and Laurel Ansbrow paint a picture of their initial player acquisition strategy. Traoré had 13 goal contributions over 20 matches in the French top flight. Ansbrow, the former Wake Forest defender, earned a spot on the USL Super League team of the month twice last season. Elgin was a staple along the UNC backline and signed a short-term contract with Gotham in April. Karich might be the most important signing so far, as the Santa Clara grad has been a fantastic defensive midfielder with Freiburg over the past two seasons.

Historically, expansion sides that establish their identity early can punch above their weight by the time they finally step foot onto the soccer field.

Denver, meanwhile, is also an ideal fit for the league.

Recently, a series of USWNT matches in Commerce City proved that the market is hungry for women’s soccer, and the area has produced many USWNT regulars, including Portland’s Sophia Wilson. The hunger for Women’s Soccer is there, along with the potential to capture the Denver soccer market in a way that the Rapids have stalled outside of the city. The Summit, with the club’s future $70 million stadium on the outskirts of downtown, performance center, and 12,000-seat temporary stadium – that will be repurposed into a 4,000-seat stadium and will be utilized by the Cherry Creek School District – should be riding a wave of momentum ahead of their inaugural season.

However, with their branding revealed, the Summit’s only sporting hire, so far, is General Manager, Curt Johnson.

Johnson was formally the General Manager the North Carolina Courage during their most successful time in the league. The Courage won three NWSL Shields and two NWSL Cups during the club’s first three seasons in Cary, but that

The lasting legacy of his time in North Carolina would become his culpability in the league-wide abuse scandal detailed in Sally Yates’s report to US Soccer.

Johnson was tasked with transitioning the WNY Flash roster into the North Carolina Courage combined with his role as president/GM of North Carolina FC. Johnson decided to keep Paul Riley in his role as manager despite knowledge of “an alleged incident in which Riley had players up to his apartment…” according to the Yates Report.

Moving forward with Johnson at the helm won’t doom the NWSL in Denver; the club announced a record 10,000 season ticket deposits in April. It simply marks another instance of the league eschewing due diligence for the appearance of a flawless, business-first, apolitical soccer league.

Denver president Jen Millet hinted at the club’s player search towards the end of Tuesday’s press availability. Saying, “That’s the primary focus for us on the sporting side, on the business side, we are super excited in figuring out how to welcome these players to Colorado, or back to Colorado.”

Until Denver hires a manager, it’ll be tough to see where their vision is taking them but they are doubling down on the Colorado-ness of it all.

That has to be a signal to a certain Lyon-based USWNT captain.

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