Episode 31 - FIFA's $20 Billion World Cup Plan Collapses in Three Days

Cold Open

Alex: Describing the proposal as a project of one person. Like this was not a group project. Do not put my name on this. I was not part of this. I did not do this homework.

Caitlin: Not at all.

Intro and Episode 31 Preview

Alex: Hi, I’m Caitlin. Hi, I’m Alex. And this is Raising the Game, a women’s sports podcast covering primetime performers, the business behind the athletes and the leagues, and what the growth of women’s sports means for the next generation of women’s athletes.

Caitlin: Welcome back everyone. Episode 31.

Alex: We have got a lot to talk about. International soccer. A lot of international soccer news. A ton of international. It was like a whole story.

Caitlin: It felt like 48 hours basically.

Alex: Yes.

Caitlin: It was a little longer than that, but I think we’ll dig into it a little bit later. And we got to talk about the WNBA and where things are headed here after the All-Star break.

Alex: Yes. And if you can’t tell, I have spent too much time with the WNBA this weekend. I lost my voice screaming for the Lynx in their game against the Fever on Sunday. We took our girls too. So we will be talking about that and more.

Caitlin: Yeah, we will.

Alex: We head into really the home stretch of the season. It’s the home stretch kind of for NWSL as well. So we’re going to start to tee up some playoff pictures a little bit. I think we’ll get into that in our next episode.

Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s, before we get into favorite thing…

Alex: Just a reminder to follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever platform you’re on, and whatever button they have, click that button and follow. It just helps to get us in front of more people and we get to meet more friends on Instagram and threads.

Caitlin: Yes.

Alex: Share us with your friends, share us with your family, share us with your worst enemy if you feel like that’s the appropriate way to use our content. We are down with all of it. All right, you want to get into favorite thing? I don’t think that we have to pretend like ours is different.

Favorite Thing: Lynx vs. Fever at Target Center

Caitlin: It’s the same thing as what you said already. It’s bringing the girls to the game. They got to meet Prowl, which was fun.

Alex: Prowl is the Lynx mascot. Right here if you’re viewing, listeners.

Caitlin: Viewing listeners. Yeah, it was a really good game. There were a lot of Fever fans at the Target Center this weekend.

Alex: Yeah, it was a fantastic game. It definitely had more playoff vibes to me, which makes sense. It was the top team in the West against the top team in the East going into that game. And yes, we are the closest franchise to Iowa.

Caitlin: A lot of Iowa plates in downtown.

Alex: A lot of Iowa plates in downtown. I helped a few folks navigate their way through the streets of Minneapolis, which was full of Fever fans. But I will say, once we kind of got in and got going, I love Minnesota sports fans, man.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: They showed up. We did what we needed and they showed up in all the right ways in my view. It was a really good time. We’re going to talk a lot more about the game itself in a little bit.

Caitlin: Yeah, we will.

Alex: The girls hung in. That was the most engaged I’ve seen them.

Caitlin: Yeah, I think so, from anything we’ve been to.

Alex: And it was just cute walking around with them in their little Olivia Miles jerseys, way too big on them.

Caitlin: Yeah, massive.

Alex: We posted a couple of pictures on our socials, so if you want to go check out how drapey those things are on our girls, you can. But they had a good time and we had a great time. On the end of our seat group, just biting his nails, super nervous, because it was close. And also, as Minnesota sports fans, a 15 point lead in a basketball game is not comfortable, right? You’re like, oh, they’re going to throw it away, just watch. They hit a couple threes. And a team like the Fever can do that. But overall it was great. Great to get the W. We got a lot of shows and we’ll talk about all those once we get to our WNBA segment.

Caitlin: Absolutely. All right. Let’s dig into headlines.

Alex: Let’s do it.

Headlines: WPBL Opening Weekend and Record WNBA Viewership

Caitlin: Opening day of the inaugural Women’s Professional Baseball League sold out.

Alex: Yeah, this seemed really, really fun over the course of the weekend, just the hype that the league put up from a social media perspective. ESPN also announced shortly before these games that they were going to be partnering with a streaming service on ESPN Select. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I looked it up.

Caitlin: It’s like 12 bucks a month or something like that.

Alex: So you can watch all the games there, but you also can watch all of these games on YouTube, which is probably a little easier to access for most of us. In game one, the LA Queens came from behind to beat the New York Heights 10-8. We also had our first WPBL home run by, I think, Danae Benitez. I believe that’s her name. She’s one of the faces of the league for the New York Heights. And then in game two, on Sunday, the San Francisco Firebells trounced the Boston Hunters 11-3. If you want to learn more about these team names in this league, our next episode we’re going to do a little bit of a deep dive on the history of women’s professional baseball, because yes, it’s been around a lot longer than just last weekend. And we’re going to talk about the origin of some of these team names.

Women’s USA baseball team punched their ticket to the 2027 World Cup finals, going 5-0 and scoring 102 runs. Featuring a lot of the women who you can also see play in the WPBL. So good for them.

2026 is already the most watched season in WNBA history, reaching 73 million viewers, 10 million more than all of 2025. And we are two thirds of the way through the season right now. The point being, there was a huge broadcast deal signed and, lo and behold, when you put this stuff out there for people to see, they will watch it.

The Dallas Wings will temporarily move in 2027 to the American Airlines Center in downtown Dallas. This is the same arena that the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Stars play in. Their capacity increases from 6,300 to 20,000 max. Now, I imagine they’re going to do something similar to what the Lynx do, because Target Center is also about 20,000, where some games they don’t make the upper bowl available, things like that. Awesome for the Wings that they’re showing sustained attendance and that they feel like this move is worth it. I know they’ve played a few games there so far this season. They are playing their next home game, I think I saw the next one this week, against the Valkyries. So that should be a good one to watch.

Headlines: WNBA Expansion, PWHL Hires, Flag Football Growth

Caitlin: Expecting an announced team name for the new WNBA Cleveland franchise by the time you hear this.

Alex: As of course all of these media things tend to happen on Tuesdays. Tuesday, Monday. We release on Wednesday, so oopsies. But this team is going to debut, just a reminder for all of our listeners, in the 2028 season. The Cleveland team will. That’ll be followed by the team in Detroit in 2029 and the team in Philly in 2030. Next season we will have a new team, but it’s based on the relocation of the Connecticut Sun to Houston. And they’ll be called the Houston Comets. So the Connecticut Sun will kind of cease to exist at all. That’s the shuffling that’s happening for 2027.

Marina Mabrey of the Toronto Tempo pledged $500 for each make during All-Star Weekend’s three point contest to the Black Women’s Institute for Health in Toronto. This is awesome. It ended up being a total of $6,500. She had some quotes when she was asked about it about how she just feels really strongly about giving back to the community that she’s in, but also recognizing that there’s huge disparities in health coverage and health treatment that Black women receive. So I love to see that.

Alex: PWHL hires five new business directors…

Caitlin: …which are women, to lead for each expansion team and the New York Sirens.

Alex: Yeah, I think this is awesome to see. We complained a lot about the lack of female coaches coming into the league when that was announced. Still think that that is a bit of a gap, but awesome to see women in leadership positions to help guide and direct these teams as they really start this year. The New York Sirens was the only one that was part of this group that isn’t part of these expansion teams.

Vancouver Goldeneyes announced that former GM Cara Gardner Morey will step into the head coaching position. So this is cool. She’s stepping out of that leadership role there after their first season into that head coaching vacancy. Remember Brian Idalski, their inaugural season head coach, was fired a couple months ago now. And they are searching for a new GM. So Gardner Morey has decided not to wear both hats like Troy Ryan. I think we had talked, that might be a possibility there. But she decided she wanted to stay focused on coaching and leaning into that role as opposed to trying to do both things.

Caitlin: Last weekend, the 2026 girls high school flag football championship game drew 1.12 million viewers.

Alex: So the LA Seahawks won a thrilling OT victory over the defending champs, the Austin Texans. This is the third annual flag football championship. They hosted it in Westfield, Indiana. There were 350 boys and girls teams, 15 international teams. Flag football is very much on the rise. Huge investment coming from the NFL in particular, but with this slated to be an Olympic sport in 2028 for the LA games, there’s sort of a mandate out there that there have to be a certain amount of opportunities for people to compete. So you’re seeing this at the high school level here. It’s offered now as a high school varsity sport in 38 states. And then at the collegiate level, NCAA announced 40 schools are currently sponsoring teams with an additional 20 to be added by next spring. And Nebraska became the first Power Four conference school to make women’s flag football a varsity sport.

Caitlin: Come on guys, we got to get some more out there.

Alex: You can’t let Nebraska be the leaders on this. I will say Nebraska is a leader in the women’s sports and advocating for women’s sports space. Like their volleyball team, soccer. I just think that they tend to lean into that.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: It’s not surprising to see them early to the table.

Headlines: Netflix, Stadium Investment, and the Victory+ Collapse

Alex: Netflix is reportedly paying $200 million for broadcast rights to the 2027 Women’s World Cup. What’s interesting about this, and I couldn’t find more information quickly, but they had actually already paid, I think, to broadcast in the U.S. and Canada for 2027 and 2031. I think this is upping the ante to get full rights to it. What I’m wondering about is, are you broadcasting it for free?

Caitlin: Yeah, is it part of your normal plan?

Alex: Because that’s kind of silly if now you’re going to hide it all behind… I mean, everything’s hidden behind the paywall nowadays, I guess. Cool to see. And I actually think they’ll do a really good job with it. We’ve got L Duncan, who went over there to do commentating for basketball primarily, but I feel like they can draw some talent.

Caitlin: Yeah, they can.

Alex: KC Current unveiled a $1.4 billion plan to expand CPKC Stadium and develop the riverfront area by the stadium. Say that five times fast. So they’re going to go from an 11,500 seat stadium to 18,000. Remember that this is a stadium built…

Caitlin: Specifically…

Alex: Purpose built for women’s sports and women in general, right? We even talked about how the sight lines are thought about differently. They’re also looking, I’ve seen some cool renderings of what they’re planning to do in the surrounding area. That stadium sits right on the river there. And so they want to build a pedestrian bridge over the river so that it’s easier to access. And then I’ve also seen they want to build out infrastructure for bike lanes and buses and stuff too. So again, the accessibility piece. We talked about this with Gotham moving into Queens, New York, right? And how that will actually attract more fans because it’s just more accessible by lower cost means of transportation.

The NWSL has terminated its streaming contract with Victory Plus…

Caitlin: With the streaming service reportedly behind on payments, prompting other leagues and teams to terminate contracts.

Alex: Yeah, so we got Netflix picking up the World Cup. We got Victory definitely fumbling the bag. I’m waiting for the Lynx to announce they’re dropping them. I’m worried about it. To be honest, the user experience hasn’t been great. It’s kind of weird when you get in there. It can be a little glitchy is what I would say. And I saw this and I was like, oh.

Caitlin: Makes sense.

Alex: Maybe explains a lot. So unfortunate, but really there’s the call for more investment, more sustainable access to view these teams.

Caitlin: The NWSL also announced the 2027 season will begin in February to accommodate the 2027 Women’s World Cup.

Alex: So this is a month earlier than a normal season would start. Their plan obviously is to take a break probably during that group stage play. They did not do this last World Cup to my knowledge because there weren’t as many international players playing in the NWSL. And so they’ve probably hit that critical mass to a degree. What I have seen interesting from the soccer heads around this is, are they starting to creep towards that schedule shift we talked about a while back? As of right now, I’m like, no, I think they’re just trying to make sure that they can actually take a break, as opposed to in the past where they’ve just played through it. And it’s a different game when you pull out the senior side international stars, right?

Athletes Unlimited announces pause on pro basketball and volleyball for the 2027 season. Their quote for both kind of encapsulated it: we’re assessing the changing landscape and we want to make sure we have the long-term future of this in mind. Reading between the lines, I think the competition is too high in the space. I do think they need to reassess. I hope they don’t go away. On the basketball side, you’ve got Unrivaled, Project B, you’ve got Upshot League now. There’s a lot there. And then on the volleyball side, you’ve got LOVB, which is expanding, and Major League Volleyball. I think we’re getting a team for both leagues here in Minneapolis this coming season. So I have a feeling this is going to start to become normal in these spaces where there’s some good competition looking to vie for the best product.

Venus and Serena to join forces in Cincinnati next week for the doubles competition. We knew they were coming back. Alex Eala becomes the first Filipina to win a WTA Tour title, defeating…

Caitlin: American Jessica Pegula in the DC Open over the weekend.

Alex: Yeah, this was cool. I was reading a little bit about it, and I learned that she’s 21 years old, and at 21 she’s now accumulated nine wins against top 10 ranked players. Seven of those nine have come this year.

Caitlin: Wow.

Alex: So she is definitely someone to watch. She’s been someone to watch for a while, but it seems like the momentum of the flywheel is starting to catch. So we’ll be keeping our eyes on Alex Eala as we go deeper into the WTA season here.

WAFCON: Malawi Stuns Nigeria and Barbra Banda Scores Four

Alex: All right. Should we kick it off with some soccer? Let’s see if I can get through it. So talking a little bit about WAFCON, which started last week. This is the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations. Basically their qualifier for the World Cup. Top four teams will go. The next two teams up will go play in that interconfederation…

Caitlin: Yeah, that championship, whatever that’s called.

Alex: Yeah. The playoffs. So there have been some great highlights from a play perspective so far, and I’m going to go through a few of those. Some of our NWSL stars, names you will know if you listen to this podcast, certainly shining. But I also want to talk about a glaring issue with this tournament in particular, and that is coverage and the ability to get to information about it, the ability to watch it. I’ve read that the commentating is awful, almost unbearable. You put it on mute if you’re going to watch. I tried to get into the What to Watch and it took me about 10 minutes to figure out where in the U.S. you can actually watch it. And it seems you have to, potentially if you have beIN Sports you can watch it. You might have to get Sling TV. They have a special soccer only thing you can get, and that might be the only way. So we’re going to talk about that.

But it kicked off last week. We talked a lot about some of the NWSL players who are playing in the tournament. The big names that you will recognize are Temwa Chawinga, who is playing for Malawi. Malawi is playing in the tournament for the first time, I think. And then Barbra Banda of Zambia. And then we talked a lot about the Nigerian team because they literally win this thing every single time. I think they’ve won it ten times or something like that.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: They are the defending champions. I have to assume if you’ve won it ten times, you’ve probably won all of them recently. At this point. So they’re in Morocco playing these games. Malawi is in a group with Nigeria and Zambia. I did not realize that when we were talking about it last week. So one group is Malawi, Zambia, Nigeria, and Egypt. This is Group C, like super stacked.

Caitlin: Yeah, right.

Alex: And Malawi of course draws Nigeria in their first game ever in WAFCON. They’ve never been there before. Nigeria has won it ten times. They’re like…

Caitlin: Oh, here we go.

Alex: Guess what Malawi does?

Caitlin: They beat them.

Alex: They win. They win behind the Chawinga sisters. So if you didn’t know, we talk about Temwa a lot because she plays in the NWSL. We don’t talk about her sister Tabitha, but they came out and they were like, we’re both going to score. Temwa scored two, Tabitha scored one. They ended up winning over Nigeria, taking down the champs. And then they moved on to play Egypt, won that game. Sets them up for this clash with Barbra Banda.

Caitlin: Yeah, Zambia.

Alex: Yep. So Zambia in their opener have to play Egypt, right? It’s Malawi and Nigeria over here. They come out and they just stomp them six nil. Barbra Banda scores four goals. So she’s doing the same thing she’s doing in the NWSL, right? She’d be way ahead in the Golden Boot race if those were happening in NWSL play. But then they turn around and they lose to Nigeria, one to nil. And Nigeria had gone down to 10 women. They lost a player to a red card and Zambia couldn’t figure out how to find the back of the net.

So that moves us to, like I just said, Malawi has to play Zambia. Malawi is top of the table. You’ve got Zambia and Nigeria just battling to be that next team up, because you want to make the quarterfinals. If you don’t make the quarterfinals, you’re not going to the World Cup no matter what. So those games are going to be played on Wednesday in that group. So release day for us. So you might know what happens.

Caitlin: They’re both at 3 p.m. I think it’s Central time.

Alex: Okay. Nice.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: So then all of the group play for WAFCON wraps up end of this week. I think they have a break day on Thursday, Friday the 7th, and then they launch into quarterfinals. So pretty exciting stuff.

The WAFCON Visibility Problem: No Broadcast, No Scores, No Scouts

Alex: Again, we’ve got our NWSL stars showing up the way that we expect. But the problem is that the world can’t see it. So if you remember, we talked about this back in March. This tournament was supposed to be played in March. And then it got canceled like 12 days before it was supposed to start, or rescheduled. No explanation. I could never find an explanation as to why that was. But unfortunate, right? These women are over there, they’re playing in front of no one. If you see the clips and stuff, there’s no one there.

Caitlin: No one’s in the stands.

Alex: Likely because it got moved and because, again, it’s hard to know what’s going on with it. You can’t get live scores on Google. This was also really annoying me about the Women’s Professional Baseball League, as Alex saw right before this. Normally if you go on Google and you search WAFCON scores, it’ll pop up scores. And so what Google will do for WAFCON right now is it’ll show you the games that are playing, but it will literally say cannot get live score. Whereas if it’s a different game, even overseas, like a Premier League game or a WSL game, you can see the live scoring updates.

So there’s definitely a gap. And we can acknowledge, I understand why the gap is there. I think there’s less development in Africa, things like that from a technological perspective, let alone just their football prowess. But these women are showing us that they have the football prowess. We just can’t see it. And this brings us to my point, which is that we don’t know, or investors don’t know, to go invest there because they can’t see the product.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: And it’s unfortunate for that federation as a whole. But it’s really unfortunate for these players, because this is how they get better contracts. This is how they get bigger teams to want to sign them. Not talking about the NWSL players now, but the other ladies who play on these teams and don’t get an opportunity.

Caitlin: They have zero visibility to any scouts that might be there.

Alex: The only way you get that is if your team makes it to the World Cup. And so it’s limiting. Whereas if you look at some of the other confederations, UEFA for example, you could play on a pretty small country there, but you get seen. And so it’s just something that I think broadly speaking, we need to talk about, we need to raise attention to, and we need to ask for that to change. And just like we talked about in headlines, if you show it, people will watch, and people are online begging to watch.

Caitlin: They can’t get to it.

Alex: And then too, once you do get the coverage, you have to be intentional about that as a product as well. We saw that. We tried to watch the Women’s National Football Conference games and their broadcast is so awful. And we said, if you want people to watch, it has to be quality commentating. This weekend the WPBL, people were complaining about the commentary because it was kind of like, I don’t know, not as excited, not as excitable as people wanted. People noticed. It’s important. And I think that you need to be thoughtful. You can’t be an afterthought of, oh well fine, we’ll cover it. It’s who you’re going to get to do it.

Caitlin: Yeah. Absolutely.

FIFA’s $20 Billion Proposal and the Federation Revolt

Caitlin: All right. Let’s dig into some of the FIFA news that happened last week. I need my notes because this is a whole timeline.

Alex: It was a whole thing.

Caitlin: Last Tuesday, FIFA president Gianni Infantino announced plans to create a $20 billion subsidiary to run the World Cup and other events, and would…

Alex: Offer stakes up to 20% to external investors. They were going to call it FIFA Forward Enterprises.

Caitlin: And immediately everyone’s like, no we’re not. No, this is not happening.

Alex: Absolutely not.

Caitlin: UEFA called an emergency meeting.

Alex: Yep. 55 member nations voted unanimously to boycott all FIFA tournaments…

Caitlin: Until the proposal was withdrawn, saying that the World Cup, quote, cannot be treated as an investment product.

Alex: Yes.

Caitlin: Then CONCACAF, 41 member federations for North America, Central America, and the Caribbean, rejected the proposal during a meeting on Thursday.

Alex: Yes.

Caitlin: Friday, the Asian Football Confederation, which has 47 members, issued a statement saying it stands in solidarity with UEFA and CONCACAF. So if you’re doing the math, that’s 143 out of 211 member nations of FIFA. And then additionally, this is where it gets kind of nasty. Infantino’s senior advisor Carlos Cordero resigned with immediate effect, calling the plan a bad deal for football. And FIFA chief operating officer Kevin Lamour said the staff had been deceived by Infantino.

Alex: Describing the proposal as a project of one person. Like this was not a group project. Do not put my name on this. I did not do this homework. Not at all.

So I think the interesting thing, as I was researching some more of this, it was actually funny. We were sitting at dinner telling your parents about this last Friday, and literally on my watch we got the alert that they weren’t doing it anymore. They’re not moving forward.

But I think the interesting thing was that one of the immediate things is that before the World Cup, it was basically a lock that Infantino was going to be reelected as the president of FIFA. For the most part. It seems kind of crazy given the press around him. And now it’s kind of like, I think UEFA has actually even said, you are out or we will…

Caitlin: Do a vote of no confidence. And you have potentially the Asian Federation, CONCACAF, everyone that would probably vote against him.

Alex: Yeah. Well, if these reports of some of his deputies and whatever are true, you broke trust even with your inner circle. You do deserve a vote of no confidence. I think it’s wild too, because UEFA was quick to be like, absolutely no.

I was reading a little bit and I learned that moving that quickly into that decision was actually driven by a pair of women, believe it or not. So UEFA vice president, let me make sure I get her name right here, Laura McAllister. She was the one who initially was like, uh-uh. And we need to figure out how we’re responding to this right away. And the answer is no, always. And then the Norwegian Football Federation leader, Lise Klaveness. She was also quick, I think, to move forward with that and rally the troops a little bit. But so, yeah. Women.

But I think even if just UEFA had done it, you’re talking about Spain…

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: Right? Defending world champions, both men’s and women’s. You’re talking about England. You’re talking about Germany. You’re talking about Norway. Erling Haaland is one of the faces of professional football right now. Italy, Portugal. That alone should have sent a very strong signal. Then CONCACAF got on it. And CONCACAF getting on it is interesting because we’ve seen Infantino get cozy with President Trump.

Caitlin: Yep.

Alex: And so for U.S. Soccer amongst its compatriots and, like you said, the rest of North America, Central America and the Caribbean to say no, that almost sends a really strong signal to him specifically that, hey, your buddy old pal who you thought maybe could help you navigate this…

Caitlin: Is not there for you.

Alex: Honestly, who maybe gave you the idea for it. Because I’m just saying, it smells like Trump. Make it a business, right?

Caitlin: Well, and I mean, to tack onto that, one of the big investors was Jared Kushner’s firm.

Alex: Oh, well, there you go.

Caitlin: Makes a lot of sense.

Alex: I didn’t even know that. That was not a plant. I had not read that deep into it.

What the Boycott Would Have Cost the Women’s Game

Caitlin: But going back to the women who called this out, I think the interesting part, and it makes sense, is here is what would have been affected by a UEFA boycott.

Alex: Yeah, and this is why we’re talking about this, frankly. The U-20 Women’s World Cup in Poland starts September 5th. So with a boycott, that’s not happening. European qualifying playoffs for the 2027 Women’s World…

Caitlin: Cup are in October. And the U-17 Women’s Tournament in Morocco in November.

Alex: Yeah. And then not to mention the next major tournament, which is the Women’s World Cup next year in 2027.

Caitlin: So you want everyone available.

Alex: Yes, exactly. Because you would not be making the money you think you’re going to make if those countries and nations are not participating. So good on the federations for putting their foot down. And basically the sentiment is that football, soccer, is for the people. This is not meant to be a for-profit enterprise. It was always designed to be a nonprofit governing body. And if you’re going to go in this direction, you are violating the values and the principles of what this was intended to be.

Now, you can have a debate about it. Things cost a lot of money. We want to keep expanding. We do want to keep being able to generate revenue so that we can provide these opportunities. But it’s not supposed to then become a money-making venture for some buddies on the side, or people who have money. That starts to create the same K-shape divergence that we’re seeing broadly. So I’m glad they jumped in.

I think the other interesting thing there is that from everything that I’ve read, Infantino’s actually been very good at…

Caitlin: Doing that, is bringing in the revenue. But…

Alex: Similar to the WNBA, I was going to say, we’ve heard this story before. You might kind of be looking for somebody else to be a different leader at this time.

Caitlin: Potentially, yeah. We’ve heard this story before.

Alex: All right. Very interesting. I am very glad that we are in one week able to say it happened and it’s done. Because I think I would have been stressed out if this had gone on too long and been like, well, my World Cup is…

Caitlin: In jeopardy.

Alex: In jeopardy. No, thank you.

NWSL Playoff Race: Four Teams Separated by One Point

Alex: Okay. Let’s talk about a little bit of NWSL to close out our soccer football segment today. Man, what were we talking about right before we started recording? It was like the top six teams basically seem to be okay. Unless, barring some massive dropout. But then you go to seven through, what was it? Seven through 10. You have North…

Caitlin: Carolina, LA, Seattle, and Orlando all within one point of each other.

Alex: And they all just keep leapfrogging each other back and forth. I think the biggest faller this last week was Orlando. Orlando dropped from seven to 10. North Carolina and LA kind of leapfrogged over them. Frog leaped.

Caitlin: Frog leaped.

Alex: Making stuff up now. And then you’ve got the two expansion teams just lingering on the outside of that cluster. We are going to go see the Denver Summit this coming Saturday take on the Utah Royals, which should be interesting, in good old Centennial Park there in Denver.

Caitlin: The altitude isn’t an advantage when they’re playing Utah.

Alex: No, not at all. Oh well.

A couple of things that I noted right off the bat, outside of the team movement, just over the weekend. I did ask, what is happening to Portland? They score a lot of goals, but they have given up a lot of goals in their last couple of games. They lost five to one to Utah after Sophia Wilson scored in like the first minute of the game. And then they just couldn’t. I thought it was funny. I think you were upstairs. Our eldest daughter, she goes, man, they’re cruising. They’re cruising. She’s just kind of watching it. She’s like, what’s going on here?

Other highlights from the weekend. Jess Fishlock returns to the pitch. She gets on the pitch for the Reign. I think she scored in like 30 seconds. It was ridiculous, and it was the game winning goal over Bay FC. They were tied two to two. Those prior goals for the Reign were courtesy of sometimes call-up Maddie Dahlien, called up to the U.S. women’s national team. So she had a goal and a goal contribution game, and the Reign, like I said, got the win over Bay. Bay just is… yeah. They need to regroup and figure out what next season is going to be for them.

Gotham won, which again I think puts them firmly atop the standings. Sam Kerr scored a goal.

Caitlin: I just think that…

Alex: So they are destined to stay right near the top. Especially with adding her. I did learn that Emily Sonnett, we had reported that she had been taken off last week, or shared, I should say. And it was reported that she ended up having surgery on her patellar tendon. Not expected back.

Caitlin: I was going to say that’s a fully… yeah.

Alex: Okay. Yeah. So, tough. And then lots of goals this week. So we had a five nil win by North Carolina over Orlando, which Orlando, you can’t do that.

Caitlin: They don’t have Barbra Banda.

Alex: I know. And we already know their defense is bad. So that was a perfect example of that. Also North Carolina has been scoring while Ashley Sanchez is third in the Golden Boot race. So good for them.

We talked about the 3-2 victory by the Reign. I always want to call them Seattle Reign.

Caitlin: Yeah. It’s just, that’s not what they were.

Alex: Yeah. Over Bay, and then 5-1 Utah over Portland. So goals galore.

There was a battle of the bottom of the standings this weekend. Racing Louisville took on Chicago. Chicago couldn’t pull out the victory. They couldn’t. I think they scored a goal, but they lost two to one. I saw the second half. It got real rainy in that game, which is unfortunate because those condition changes definitely impact the play, but it impacts both teams.

And then our expansion sides played each other, drew 1-1. I saw in that game highlight that Casey Murphy, the goalkeeper for Boston, had the rare goalkeeper assist on a punt out to a striker. So that was cool to see for Boston.

We’ll talk, I think, in our upcoming episode that we’re going to record early, we’ll do a little bit of a like, who do we think might end up in there? We’ll take a little look ahead at the schedule and things like that. But like we said, I think those top six are pretty… there’s a five point spread.

Caitlin: Still close, right?

Alex: But it’s starting to kind of form.

Caitlin: Yeah, we’re starting to see what…

Alex: This playoff picture is. Those last two spots are going to be a battle. It’s going to be wild. You’re not watching the top six, really. You’re going to be watching seven and eight.

Caitlin: Yeah. See where that goes. 100 percent.

WNBA Standings, Strength of Schedule, and the Trade Deadline

Alex: All right. Let’s take a look at WNBA.

Caitlin: I think we’re going to talk a little bit of strength of schedule and some other things here. I was just looking at the standings before we got on here. Minnesota, 10 win…

Alex: Streak. I think their biggest one is 13. So they’re knocking on the door of breaking their own record here. Like we said early in the season, they were a little bit lower. Golden State, they are right there. Eight and two in their last 10. Number three in the league.

Caitlin: Like I said, do not sleep on them. Atlanta kind of pulled out of that tailspin they had a little bit before they…

Alex: All started to just get smothered by the Aces tonight.

And then I don’t know if we said in the headlines, but Phoenix picking up KP. They are in 11th place right now, six games behind New York, maybe seven now after tonight. But they’re also playing…

Caitlin: They have a chance. They could get up there.

Alex: Yes. Yeah. So the trade deadline was on Sunday, which Alex just referenced. We’ll talk a little bit about that. Got some highlights from last week’s play. I had some notes on strength of schedule because I think that’s really important. We’ve got about 15 or so games left in the regular season, give or take a few for each team just depending on how their schedule fell.

But yeah, let’s talk about the trades really quick. So trade deadline was this past Sunday. Honestly, that was basically it. Aneesah Morrow got traded from the Connecticut Sun to the Toronto Tempo. That was really the only other notable one. There were a few other random pickups and contract signatures and things like that, but KP from the Sparks to the Mercury.

I actually think this is pretty game-changing for the Mercury. And the Sparks were starting to define what’s our identity without her because of her injury. She was frankly carrying them, I think, and covering a lot of maybe bad habits. I don’t think the Sparks are going to make the playoffs. I still think this is a good move all around potentially for right now. I did not go deep dive into the draft pick situation. I’ve seen some people online being like, what, the Sparks gave up what for? Or Phoenix gave up what? But they’re playing right now. I do think the Mercury could make a push. They have great veteran leadership in Alyssa Thomas, DeWanna Bonner, Kahleah Copper. And so with another scoring threat, facilitator, distributor, they could be dangerous.

Caitlin: As we record, they are winning by four, about a quarter and a half to go.

Alex: Over the Sky. Yep.

Sydney Taylor’s Game Winner and the Wings’ Late Game Problem

Alex: Which actually helps me transition into my highlights, because you guys, Sydney Taylor.

Caitlin: Yes, that was awesome.

Alex: She hit a game winning three pointer in their game over the Aces. And so this was huge. I mean, if we just look at the table even right now, Chicago’s jumped up to 10th. I think they were in 12th when that game was played. Las Vegas was in second or third. So huge upset. And she hit this big shot after missing their first game winning shot situation right before. So to come back and hit that, that is clutch.

We’ve talked about her. She’s an undrafted rookie. She is playing out of her head. She used to be coming off the bench for them. I think she’s now regularly, I don’t know if she’s fully consistently in the starting rotation, but regularly starting. And I was looking at her points per game splits by month. They’re going up by like five points. August is a little skewed because I think she scored 28 or 29 in one game. But it’s just incredible to see somebody like that. And again, I think she really is filling the void that Rickea Jackson left when she tore her ACL.

We also saw Allisha Gray called game over the Wings last week, which was fun. And also, what were the Wings doing at the end of that game? I feel like they’ve had a couple games like that where it’s kind of like, why aren’t you calling a timeout? Why do you not have your All-Stars with the ball in their hands to take that shot? Whether it’s Azzi, I’m going to call her an All-Star because she was in the three point shooting contest, right? Paige, Jessica Shepard. You got Arike, who makes game winning shots all the time.

Caitlin: And I think from what I saw, their coach, I can’t…

Alex: Jose Fernandez.

Caitlin: Jose Fernandez. He, I think he took…

Alex: Someone asked him about it at the end of the game and they were like, you know, everyone can play…

Caitlin: You know, quarterback from their house.

Alex: Yeah, we will.

Caitlin: And you’re like, yeah, we will. Because you kind of messed the end of that game up.

Alex: I don’t know how you don’t call a reset. You had a reset timeout. So they wasted time bringing the ball up before, right? Of course. Oh, Atlanta. Of course Atlanta is one of the top defensive teams in the league. You don’t want that. Draw something up, man. Arike was heated if you were watching that game. She sprinted off the court. She was yelling at the refs, yelling at whoever. She can get a little feisty and fiery. But they turned it around. They stomped the Connecticut Sun last night. Man, that’s a game where you just don’t want to lose that one. They were up a good amount…

Caitlin: Yeah, they were up a good amount in the fourth quarter.

Alex: Right. And then it just goes right through your fingers. So we had to do better there.

I feel like we hexed the expansion teams.

Caitlin: We might have.

Alex: Because I feel like a couple weeks ago, maybe right before the All-Star break, we were like, they’re doing okay, right? And now they’re not. 12 and 13. They’ve kind of tumbled. It didn’t help that the Lynx beat Toronto twice. Toronto is like one and nine in their last 10. They’ve lost six in a row, maybe. Portland’s lost five in a row. They’re three and seven.

Caitlin: Yeah, I don’t think they got it this year.

The Top Eight, the Bottom Seven, and a Five Game Gap

Alex: But maybe they can hang around. Something we didn’t say really about the standings. I think we have sort of established this clear top eight and bottom seven. There’s a five game spread between those two right now. So you really need, if you’re going to crack into it… in the top eight right now are Minnesota, Las Vegas, Golden State, Atlanta, Dallas, Indiana, New York, and Washington. If you’re going to get into there, you have to go on a bit of a run. You just don’t have enough games left.

So if we’re talking about the Mercury, it’s like they have to win tonight. They have to beat Chicago. Well, Chicago is like, I have to beat you because I’m a little bit closer. The Sparks play the Lynx on Thursday. They’d have to go out and beat…

Caitlin: The best team in the league.

Alex: It’ll be interesting to watch if that spread gets wider the next time we look at this next week, or if it starts to tighten up. Because right now, since last week, this has gotten wider. It was four games, now it’s five. I think if you’re the Sparks or Chicago or…

Caitlin: Phoenix.

Alex: I think the one saving grace here is that New York is in eighth, or potentially in eighth, because they have been this team that for a while was kind of hiding in fourth-ish place, not being very flashy. They’ve kind of slowly dropped down to that eighth spot. And so they could go either way at this point. And they won tonight, they beat the Storm. You better beat the Storm. But the Storm actually put up a good fight. They were down nine with like a minute to go. Flagg was like, I’m going to do my thing. If you’re a Storm fan, I feel like you’ve got to be pretty happy right now with what you’re seeing, at least. You’re not winning, I get it, that’s never fun. But they’re fighting. They’re not rolling over on these teams.

Anyways, I think we’ve said this a lot, any team can beat anybody on any night. You just have to stay locked in.

So let’s talk about that strength of schedule a little bit. The Minnesota Lynx have the toughest strength of schedule according to the statistics, remaining, which I’m sure we’re going to get people being like, eh, that’s why their record’s so good so far. It’s not by much that it’s the hardest left, but they do have some tough sledding against the Aces. They just played the Fever for the first time on Sunday when we were at that game. They play them two more times. I think they have to play the Liberty. Still have to play the Valkyries twice. So it’s sort of like that strength of schedule only became the toughest as the season went on. And so they happened to have gone through the lower tier teams at this point.

Indiana is the only other team that cracks the top five for strength of schedule remaining. They have a tough schedule coming up for them. I also, I say this every time, I’m like, they seem like they play at home a lot. And I also wonder if some of that strength of schedule for them is going to be more on the road, which is increasingly more difficult for them, I think, with everything going on around that team.

And then for easiest strength of schedule, or weakest schedule, I don’t know how you say it. Golden State actually has the easiest remaining schedule. They could bump up here. Followed by Dallas, Atlanta, Vegas and Washington. So I’m like, what happened here? You all didn’t already play each other? And so now you get to play. So my point is, based on these statistics, and we still have to play the game, but based on these statistics there could be some movement. Because something’s got to give with these higher ranked teams. And they’re not going to all win all of the games. So we shall see.

Lynx vs. Fever: Kelsey Mitchell’s 37 and Olivia Miles’ Welcome to the W

Alex: Should we talk about this? Yeah, let’s talk about it. Fever game. What have you got?

Caitlin: Olivia Miles was on something. In a…

Alex: In a good way.

Caitlin: Yeah, in a good way. She was on one. But also so was Kelsey Mitchell.

Alex: Yes. I think Liv said that that was her welcome to the W moment, was guarding Kelsey Mitchell. She’s just so quick. And I love the clip. They had Liv mic’d up for the game, which I think miking Liv up might be a mistake because I think she cusses a lot more than I do, actually. But she said something to Kelsey Mitchell during some free throws, like, God, you’re so good. And Kelsey Mitchell was like, thanks. And I think she said something like, keep changing the world or whatever. It was kind of nice.

And Liv even got interviewed at halftime by Holly Rowe. And Holly, I’m like, Holly girl. She’s like, how does it feel to be playing against Caitlin Clark? Like, basically is what she asked. Not exactly, but close enough. And Olivia Miles is just like, well, Kelsey Mitchell is the one that’s killing us right now. I think she literally said, it’s awesome to play against great guards. Kelsey Mitchell is the one that’s causing us problems right now. And I love that she’s like, no, this is what we’re dealing with right now.

Now, Clark had a decent game. Allegedly she was ill before the game, which I’m sure impacts performance if you’re dealing with something. So she had, I think, 17, 19 points. Tennis says she had a double double. But I’ve got to be really honest. I did not notice her.

Caitlin: No, not as much as you’d think.

Alex: Especially given how many fans of hers there were there. There just weren’t a ton of moments. Caitlin is very good at getting the crowd into a game. And I get, we’re in an away arena, but you guys, there were a lot of Fever fans there.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: And she just never could really. And that I suspect is probably because she wasn’t feeling great.

Caitlin: She did not make an impression.

Alex: No, the way that Kelsey Mitchell did. Of course, she scored 37 points. She was getting buckets wherever she wanted. And not the way Olivia Miles did. I even said, Courtney Williams for the Lynx had 27 points, and I barely noticed she did that because she does it in sneaky ways. But that was fun. We love Court. Our girls love Liv, Court and Phee. That’s what they know, right?

The Lynx are, speaking of Phee, four and oh since she came back. Which is awesome. You can definitely tell she brings another dimension. We talked about her gravity, right? It’s funny that they… I mean, she seems, she’s doing great, but she does seem like she’s trying to get her legs under her still a little bit, but she’s still…

Caitlin: Doing amazing for being four games in.

Alex: She had a few moments in that game where I was like, that’s classic Napheesa. The lean in, step back, fadeaway jump shot from about eight feet away or whatever. It’s just so her. And really fun to see those go down for her. She had some really timely three pointers for us, which, as a pretty big forward, it’s fun. It’s fun watching that step back that she does, because she gets in there and starts bumping and you’re like, oh, I know where this is going. So you better be prepared. And basically all you can do is hope she misses the shot. You can’t really defend it.

I was going to say the Fever threw some defense at Liv that we haven’t seen a ton of. So they doubled her frequently and would try to trap as soon as they got basically over half. And this caused a little bit of confusion, I think, for the Lynx. But that’s something that I think teams will watch for.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: I think I said this to you when we were driving home. I was like, yeah, that was smart. And it worked a few times. But I think Liv is just one of those players, and Cheryl’s one of those coaches, and we’ll get to Cheryl in a minute, they’re going to adjust right away. And Liv is going to figure out, okay, you got two on me, that means someone is open. And if you want to find a player that can find anybody on the court, it’s Olivia Miles. So I think it was interesting to see. I will be curious if we see other teams employ that tactic, and then I’ll be curious to see…

Caitlin: What happens if they do that.

Alex: Yep. That loss for the Fever snaps a five game win streak. I think it’s their fifth or sixth game in a row scoring 100 points or more. But this one adds to the record that they set so far this season that you don’t want, which is most losses when you score 100 points or more. So they consistently score. I think again, we said this many months ago, but the Fever continue to struggle. Their main struggles are defense.

Caitlin: Defense.

Alex: So still two more matchups. We’ll be looking forward to those. I think the next one’s in Gainbridge and then they come back to Minnesota. And I actually think both of those games might be after the FIBA World Cup.

Caitlin: Oh, that break. Yeah, we have.

Alex: So it could be completely different teams by that point in time.

Cheryl Reeve’s Leadership On and Off the Court

Alex: But overall it was super fun. Just a comment, or maybe it’s a shout out, to Cheryl Reeve. I continue to just be blown away by her leadership. Obviously there was a lot of the off court stuff hanging over this game, as there is with all Fever games, given some of the comments made by Sophie Cunningham. And Cheryl, as she is wont to do, is a staunch advocate for inclusion, is willing to lean in and try to understand and educate herself more. And I just think through the whole process, and folks who follow this will understand what I’m talking about, essentially Cheryl was asked about these comments last week, prior to this game. She had a conversation with Sophie that people kind of jumped on before the game. She was marvelous in being like, no, I’m not going to share that kind of conversation, but it was good to have a conversation. She just continues to show up in the way that I would want leadership to be demonstrated for me, for my girls. And I just really applaud her for that.

Caitlin: Maybe that’s our next shirt idea. I want to be like Cheryl.

Alex: Yeah. Well, you saw the one shirt that was like, Cheryl Reeve is always right.

Caitlin: Yes, yes.

Alex: And then I think I saw some posts today that was like, number one, Cheryl Reeve is always right. Number two, if Cheryl is wrong, go back to number one.

Caitlin: To number one, yeah.

Alex: And it’s like, yeah. It’s pretty impressive what she’s done here and what she’s built over the years and how she always does seem to be, maybe it’s hyperbolic, but on the right side of history. And how she shows up and how she leads.

Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely.

What to Watch This Week

Alex: All right. Let’s move on to What to Watch. As we discussed earlier, WAFCON: Zambia versus Malawi and Nigeria versus Egypt. Those are both Wednesday at 3 p.m. Central. Like I said, if you have beIN Sports in your cable package, you’ll have it. If not, you can subscribe to an $8 per month soccer package on Sling TV. This is not an ad at all. If you can create some aluminum foil…

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alex: Get on your roof just right.

Caitlin: The Gen Zs are not going to understand what you mean by that.

Alex: Oh, shoot. WNBA: Friday, Golden State Valkyries versus the Dallas Wings, 8:30 p.m. on ION.

Caitlin: Oof. Saturday, Las Vegas Aces…

Alex: Aces…

Caitlin: Versus Minnesota Lynx, noon on CBS. And then Sunday, I really…

Alex: Wanted to say the Lynx again because they play Dallas. But we also have Mercury versus Mystics, 2 p.m. on League Pass and local broadcast.

Caitlin: Dang, okay. So, great weekend. NWSL: Friday, Gotham versus San Diego.

Alex: Oh, all right. Look at this game.

Caitlin: 7 p.m. on Prime.

Alex: One versus four. Saturday, Denver Summit versus Utah Royals, 3 p.m. on ION. It’ll be 2 p.m. our time, because we will be there. In mountain time.

Caitlin: Yes. Sunday, Seattle versus Angel City, 8 p.m. on ESPN.

Alex: Ooh, that’s actually a really important game for both of those teams.

Caitlin: Yes it is, we just talked about this.

Alex: They’re right in that weird seven to 10 cluster.

Caitlin: Women’s Elite Rugby, Legacy Cup, Denver Onyx versus Bay Breakers for the championship on Saturday at 8 p.m. Central, Women’s Sports Network and YouTube.

Alex: Okay.

Caitlin: And then we have WPBL, like we said earlier, ESPN Select, I think it’s like 12 bucks a month or something like that.

Alex: I also think these are all on YouTube.

Caitlin: On YouTube as well, yes.

Alex: Friday we have San Francisco versus Los Angeles, 6:30 p.m. Saturday we have Boston versus New York at 1 p.m. And then Los Angeles versus San Francisco again at 6:30 p.m. And then Sunday is New York versus Boston again at 6:30 p.m. All right. So full slate. It’d be hard in Colorado. We could try to go to the Legacy Cup. It’s in Denver as well. I read some concerning things about, yeah, we’ll talk about that later. I’m feeling torn on my support of that league versus support of those players.

Setbacks and Momentum

Alex: That’s a setback.

Caitlin: Yeah, that’s definitely a setback.

Alex: Mine was the Victory Plus.

Caitlin: Oh yeah. I don’t want to lose it. It is relatively easy to just click in and the Lynx are on. So if we lose them on that, I’ll be pretty upset.

Alex: Yes, I agree. My setback, well, for a hot minute it was this whole FIFA mess. I was like, no, no, do not take this from me. Also, that got you thinking, like, will there ever be a World Cup again? Of course there will be. We’ll figure out some way to create it, but I don’t know. That was interesting.

Caitlin: It would have been a hard podcast for the next year.

Alex: That was an interesting moment for me. I was going to say too, just in the spirit of, you talk about Victory Plus, I’m just going to talk about the difficulty in finding access or scores or information. I searched for the WPBL scores right before this and had to click like three times through to get to an article that actually told me what the scores were. I get it’s a new league, I understand that, but we’ve talked about that data desert before. And I think it’s something with WAFCON, with WPBL, whatever. And then you have organizations like Victory that they’re relying on and then can’t foot the bill or whatever it is. And so we just need to continue to push for better infrastructure and better access. Because as we’ve seen with WNBA viewership numbers so far this year as an example, people will watch. So you just have to give them access. So that’ll be my setback.

Caitlin: Momentum. I have Sydney Taylor, undrafted rookie.

Alex: Good momentum.

Caitlin: Five 25 point games. That winner versus Las Vegas.

Alex: I just think it’s a great story. For rookie talent.

Caitlin: Like we have some good rookies in the league right now and coming up, right? So it’s going to be fun to watch.

Alex: I totally agree. I think she’s somebody who, when we’re watching Sky games, I get excited when the ball gets in her hands. I was thinking about the KP trade earlier and whatever the draft picks were, and…

Caitlin: It’s like, sometimes you kind of throw around draft picks because it’s like whatever, right? But I think some of the people coming up are going to be very interesting to watch.

Alex: Oh yeah. Hidalgo, JuJu Watkins. There’s plenty coming into the league. Let’s see. My momentum is… it’s so hard for me to pick the Lynx. They’re just always. I’m sorry, I’m shameless. But it’s on the Lynx, man. I’m going to go back to WAFCON. I think it’s Malawi. Like, they’re the debutants, so you know I’m cheering for them. I just could see them make a run. They very well might knock out the defending champions. Nigeria, if Zambia would have to beat Malawi, I think, in order for that to happen.

Caitlin: We’ll see.

Alex: So we’ll see. But that’s fun to know that that is happening despite that coverage.

I also was going to say, keeping it to basketball, my goodness, Kelsey Mitchell is a cheat code. She was wild in that game. She barely misses, for one, or it seems like she barely misses. Olivia Miles is too. It’s so cool to see her thrive in those big stage moments. But yeah, Kelsey Mitchell, I think she’s got to be on, it feels like, game number 17 scoring 20 or more. She’s had more 30 point games, I feel like, than anybody else in the league so far this year. So cool to see. Great game. Definitely will be tuning in for the rematch.

Caitlin: Yeah, absolutely.

Where to Find Us and What’s Next

Alex: All right. Instagram, threads, and YouTube, RTG underscore pod.

Caitlin: RTGpod.com, Substack, Raising the Game podcast, and email is raisingthegamepod@gmail.com.

Alex: That’s all for this week.

Caitlin: For this week.

Alex: All right. Keep in mind, next week we will be doing a prerecord. So we will not be doing our usual update week. We’ll record that, put it out at our usual time, but it’ll be a little delayed. We’re going to focus on women’s professional baseball, WPBL, and then we’ll do a little roundup of playoff paths, I think both WNBA and NWSL. Call it good for the week. We’ll see you back on our regularly scheduled program in two weeks, but next week we’ll have that for you.

Caitlin: Yes, two weeks. Yep.

Alex: Yep. We’ll have that for you. So thank you for being here. Bye.

Caitlin: Bye.