NWSL-Boston Breakers 2016 Season in Review -2017 Will Soon Be Here

When one thinks of the 2016 Boston Breakers, the images from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts® characters immediately come to mind. Yes, they are the lovable losers.

Sadly, this quote from their head coach summarized much of their season:

Open Letter from Boston Breakers Head Coach Matt Beard

(June 8, 2016) – Obviously, we’re frustrated with the results we’ve had this season. We wish we were in a better position. We thank everyone for their patience and want to reassure that everyone is working as hard as they can both on and off the pitch to change the results and get themselves up the league table. The players had a positive response after a difficult performance against Western New York. We’re confident as a group that we can turn the season around and make progress up the standings and make sure we finish as high as we can.

In 20 games this season, the team earned 11 points from 3 victories, 15 defeats, and 2 draws.

Unfortunately for them, no one predicted that this team would be a playoff contender this year. Their futility was on both sides of the ball.

What went wrong with this team? In 2013, they had a respectable 30 points in 22 games, just missing the playoffs. In 2014, they had 20 points in 24 games.  Last year in 2015, they had 15 points in 20 games. And this year, they had only 11 points. Each year, they became inexplicably worse.

Let’s look at their strengths:

1. They have “heart” and did not quit on the season, even though 7 of their losses were by 3 goals or more.

Here are their weaknesses:

1. They were last in the league in terms of scoring with 14 goals scored.
2. They were last in defense with 47 ‘goals against’.

Thus giving a net ‘goal differential’ of -33. In relative terms with other NWSL teams, the next nearest ‘goal differential’ was at -10, the nearest ‘goals against’ was 30, and goals scored was 18.

It is difficult to blame this season on a new coach., he inherited this team. They cannot blame a lost season on an injury to a superstar player, or loss of key players to the Rio Olympics. So, I looked at their roster to decide whether the team had a “strategy” of acquiring local players to attract more fans. The answer is “no”. Only  Kristie Mewis, Jamie Kranich, and Katie Schoepfer are the only ones who are from the New England states.

So,  let us look at some of their trade history:

• November 18, 2013- Boston traded Sydney Leroux for Kristie Mewis from Kansas City.
• June 18, 2014 -traded Lisa DeVanna for Bianca Sierra and draft picks from Washington.
• October 27, 2014 -traded Heather O’Reilly for Kasey Kallman and Morgan Marlborough to Kansas City.
• On November 23, 2015-  essentially traded Alyssa Naeher, and received Whitney Engen in three-way trade with Chicago and Western New York
• June 14, 2016 -traded McCall Zerboni to Western New York for 2017 draft pick.
• June 22, 2016- Stephanie McCaffrey traded with Chicago, they received two second round draft picks, and  third and fourth round picks.

Do we think these trades worked out?

In all honesty, Kristie Mewis has not become the superstar that everyone thought she would be. But she still was the better player over the past few years with Sydney Leroux missing much more time to injuries and this year’s pregnancy.

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The “old Lisa DeVanna” might be worth Bianca Sierra and some draft picks.,However,  the current version shows that next year, she might be poised to be among the leading goal scorers on a young Orlando team.

Heather O’Reilly (HAO) is still one of the better players in the league. Even though Kasey Kallman is an underrated defender, she and Morgan Marlborough are probably not as good as HAO despite her retirement from the US national team.

My apologies to Whitney Engen as she is an “okay” central defender, but Alyssa Naeher is one of the best goalkeepers on the planet . I am not sure how Boston can make trade like this.

My comment about the McCall Zerboni trade- it looks like they removed a “toxic” player from their clubhouse. In a game with Western New York, shortly after she was traded, you can see how brutal some of the fouls were on Zerboni from the Boston players. There were seven fouls by my count, but not all were called by the referee., And somehow Zerboni received a yellow card on what appeared to be a foul caused by Eunice Beckmann. I will put a link to that game below.

For the Stephanie McCaffrey trade, it looks like the team was looking ahead to 2017.

For a game that summarized their season in one game, here is the heartbreaking controversial loss to Orlando Pride.

And finally, I will include one of their victories over Kansas City:

Next: NWSL -2016 Season in Review- Orlando Pride

In conclusion, there is hope for this team in 2017, they have plenty of draft picks. If they are able to pick up high quality college players such as Kadeisha Buchanan, they will become competitive in 2017.