The NWSL’s new collective bargaining agreement, ratified in August, abolished the draft
In some ways, this NWSL offseason is playing out as usual. Player movement remains the main focus of the winter months, new signings fitting into puzzles that were months in the making for general managers, revealing the plans each team has for themselves in the coming year.
The needs change from year to year, but the routines do not. Coaching and technical staff still watch hours and hours of film of potential recruits, send scouts on trips and find out whatever they can about those players before talking to them and finalizing a deal. The ever-evolving league, though, is in uncharted territory of its own design this winter – the collegiate athletes they will sign this offseason will join the league as free agents rather than through a draft.
The NWSL ratified a new collective bargaining agreement in August that eliminated all drafts immediately, becoming the first professional league to rid itself of a practice that has been a staple of the American sports landscape since the NFL introduced it in 1936. The decision has created a new landscape for players and clubs alike, some changes more predictable than others.
“It’s the same amount of work. It’s the same work.” Haley Carter, the vice president of soccer operations and sporting director for the Championship-winning Orlando Pride, told CBS Sports. “I think, for me, the main difference is not around scouting. It is around recruiting and selling your clubs.”
New roster-building quirks
The amount of work that teams do to scout incoming collegiate players may not have changed, but some tinkers have become necessary. General managers were frequently in the habit of casting a wide net – the NCAA’s eligibility rules, which are the foundation of the NWSL’s rules in their new post-draft reality, mean college athletes with any amount of experience could turn professional. That net has become even wider this offseason, though.
“There not being a draft changes the nature of how we look at college players because before you’d have a very specific way you’d scout based on what draft picks you have and now it’s really just considering the player pool,” Yael Averbuch West, NJ/NY Gotham FC’s general manager and head of soccer operations, told CBS Sports. “It doesn’t change the structure of how we scout or the way that we’re establishing our team and our framework, but it definitely put a greater emphasis and a greater focus on looking at college players.”
NWSL teams are increasingly expanding their scouting networks, thanks in large part to greater investment in the league and recent rules making it easier to sign internationals and young players.
“Especially now with the end of the college draft, you really have to put much more resources, both person power and dollars, behind what your scouting looks like,” Kansas City Current general manager Caitlin Carducci said. “How are you finding players? How are you scouting them? Who can get on an airplane and be in Denmark over the weekend and then get back and hit a college game? What is your scouting network, where you have people you trust and rely [on] that allows you to find these players and bring them here, knowing that you don’t always have a draft of one to four players available to you each round to build your roster from?”
The scouting tweaks are secondary compared to the other changes teams have had to make in assembling their rosters, though. The increased intensity to leave no stone unturned in scouting and recruiting talent domestically and globally, though, has undoubtedly changed the calculus on how to structure rosters – and operate within the NWSL’s salary restraints. The salary cap rose to $3.3 million for the 2025 season, but having an essentially limitless pool of players to pick from – and roster spots hard to come by.
“I think, for me, the main difference is not around scouting. It is around recruiting and selling your clubs,” Carter said. “I think not having a college draft is going to be great for the top 10 or 15 athletes, athletes that would traditionally go in the first round. I think for the others, it might be a little more difficult … It’ll be interesting to see preseason, how preseason invites go.”
So far, Gotham lead the way with four signings from college, with Averbuch West arguing that a mix of veteran talent and younger players is an ideal way to set up a team. The 2023 NWSL champions also have some extra cap space to work with after U.S. national team players Lynn Williams and Yazmeen Ryan left via separate trades this winter. Teams with different needs will pull from the collegiate player pool at different rates, though, creating an interesting new wrinkle in player development in an era of rapid growth for women’s soccer.
New player development landscape
The NWSL roster building process is starting to closely resemble the model in Europe, where players are not beholden to drafts or trades. That switch comes as little surprise – leagues like the NWSL and MLS operate in soccer’s global network in a way that is fairly unique to other professional American sports. Teams and leagues around the world are not merely competitors – they are parties that U.S. counterparts have to work with, and make for easy reference points for players and clubs alike.
That’s especially true for NWSL players, who have spent the last several years successfully gaining more rights as laborers after an abuse scandal rocked the league in 2021. The players have since won unrestricted free agency and abolished all drafts, rights that now extend to incoming players. The new roster building considerations in the post-draft NWSL are considered a sign of progress by many including Domenec Guasch, the sporting director for incoming expansion team Bos Nation FC. The team will be the first in NWSL history to craft a full roster without the help of an expansion draft, which was also abolished with the new CBA, but his experience at Barcelona means the league’s similarities to the European model are familiar to him.
“That’s a step ahead to the growth of the game, the CBA and empowering, ultimately, the players to make their decisions on their life,” Guasch said in his introductory press conference last month. “That’s a great step for this league and women’s football in general. It’s like this in other parts of the world and now it’ll be like this as well, and obviously with that, we have to create an even more attractive club for the players.”
Though increased freedoms for players can be interpreted as fewer for clubs, fee agency comes with its own perks for teams.
“As a club, it is good business to sign players as free agents,” Averbuch West said. “The days of the only way to acquire players is in a trade where you give up assets is long gone at this point.”
The elimination of the draft also comes at an interesting time for players. College soccer remains the most obvious development path for American players since most NWSL teams do not have academies, even though the league does have the under-18 entry mechanism that makes skipping the NCAA altogether a real possibility. The increasing funds available to NWSL teams and the uptick in international roster spots means they are less reliant on domestic talent. NWSL teams may be inclined to let certain players use other leagues as a testing ground, be they international counterparts or the U.S.’ new women’s soccer set-up, the USL Super League.
The Super League, as well as its lower-league counterpart the USL W League, does not really compete with the NWSL for top talent but boasts a wide range of players, including those who are recently out of college and those with NWSL experience. Those leagues are of increasing interest to high-ranking people in American soccer spheres, though – U.S. women’s national team coach Emma Hayes called in Brooklyn FC goalkeeper Neeku Purcell for this month’s Futures camp, while NWSL teams are exploring the possibility of scouting talent from those leagues.
“I love that the USL Super League is [streaming games] because it gives opportunities for collegiate players,” Carter said. “It’s another space. It’s just another opportunity for women to be able to play the game.”
The NWSL’s post-draft era teases seismic shifts in player development in the U.S., an area in which Hayes believes the USWNT lags behind the rest of the world, but also serves as the first portal for the American sports landscape to explore the idea. The Supreme Court’s 2021 ruling that allowed college athletes to sign name, image and likeness deals marked a new batch of labor rights for players, one that consistently asks new questions about American sports’ structures. The NWSL is a natural fit as the first professional sports league in the U.S. to explore life without a college draft, but as athletes across different sports push for more rights of their own, the women’s soccer league becomes a notable space to watch in an evolving landscape.
