It’s time for the 2024 NWSL Expansion Draft, presented by Ally! The two new teams entering the league next season, Bay FC and Utah Royals FC, will select players from the existing teams to continue filling out their rosters. The draft, which takes place tonight at 4:00 p.m. Pacific time, will be broadcast live on CBS Sports Network.
Earlier this week, Angel City announced a trade that grants the club full protection in the draft, meaning it will not need to participate and won’t lose any players. That trade sent forward Scarlett Camberos to Bay FC in exchange for $50,000 in allocation money, and sent a 2024 international slot plus $100,000 in allocation money over two years to Utah. Despite the club not taking part in the draft, it’s still worth paying attention to for Angel City fans—read on to find out why.
First, let’s go over the rules. For the five teams who didn’t make trades for full roster protection in the draft (in addition to Angel City, Houston, Kansas City, Gotham, Orlando, Portland, and Washington traded for full protection), all players under contract, including those on loan and on the season-ending or 45-day injury lists, are eligible for selection by the two expansion teams.
Players not under contract whose rights are controlled by an NWSL team are also eligible for selection—something that can happen when a player retires or chooses to play overseas before their contract is up (fun fact: ACFC investor Abby Wambach’s playing rights are controlled by OL Reign).
Players currently in free agency, as well as U-18 players, cannot be selected in the draft.
All the participating teams have chosen nine selection-eligible players to protect, meaning Bay FC and Utah can’t draft them. During the draft, the two expansion teams will alternate making selections until each incumbent team has had up to two players drafted (Bay FC and Utah can also choose to pass on a round, forfeiting that pick).
A significant rule change from the last Expansion Draft, when Angel City and San Diego Wave entered the league, is that when a player is selected from a given team, that team can choose one additional player on their roster to protect.
You can read the full set of rules for the draft here.
To underline how significant tonight could be for the two new teams, let’s take a look back at what Angel City got out of the 2022 Expansion Draft.
In the draft itself, ACFC selected four players who have proven key to the team’s on-field success: Dani Weatherholt, Claire Emslie, Jasmyne Spencer, and Paige Nielsen.
Just as impactful, however, were the trades ACFC made with a handful of clubs ahead of the draft in exchange for those teams not having to participate in it. With Chicago, Angel City traded for Sarah Gorden and Julie Ertz; MA Vignola came to LA via Washington; Gotham traded DiDi Haračić; Portland gave up Simone Charley and Tyler Lussi; and Cari Roccaro arrived from North Carolina.
Last but not least, Angel City obtained Christen Press’s playing rights from Louisville—rights Racing had picked up in their expansion draft the previous year.
In short, expect to see Utah and Bay making big moves this afternoon as they look to build out their rosters.
So, with General Manager Angela Hucles Mangano having completed major trade deals to gain full protection in the draft, what does that mean for Angel City?
In short, not having to participate in the draft means losing allocation money, an international spot, and only one player instead of two—and both Angel City and that player, Scarlett Camberos, were active participants in the trade, rather than having to share a protection list and be at the mercy of the two expansion teams.
We won’t get into what a protected list might have looked like for ACFC, but think of it this way: the club would only have been able to protect a third of its 27 players. As we saw last season, Angel City’s roster is deep. We often saw great players like Camberos, as well as Alyssa Thompson, Katie Johnson, and Claire Emslie starting on the bench, simply because there wasn’t space for all of them in the lineup. Some of those players would have to have been left unprotected in the Expansion Draft, too.
Without full protection, Angel City would almost certainly have lost two players to the draft without getting anything in return, and without those players having a say in their futures. In engineering this trade, Hucles found arguably the best possible solution to a difficult situation.
The draft will be broadcast on CBS Sports Network starting at 4:00 p.m. Pacific. For fans 21 and over, Angel City is hosting a watch party at Hi Tops in Los Feliz.