Racing Releases Preseason Roster
Racing announced its 28 player preseason roster today. Here are some items of interest:
26 Players have reported, with the 2 players not yet reporting being Nadia Nadim and Cheyna Matthews. Nadia is still recovering from injury, and Cheyna is likely getting things in order after her husband Jordan’s deep playoff run with the San Francisco 49ers. I would expect them in Louisville soon.
Racing currently only has one fully rostered goalkeeper in Katie Lund, so Jordyn Bloomer, Gabby Kouzelos (University of Louisville) and Hillary Beall (Michigan) will be fighting for a spot, possibly two. Racing carried 3 keepers last year, so I would expect the same this year. My prediction is that the 3rd spot will come down to Kouzelos and Beall. Beall stands at 5-11 compared to Kouzelos’ 5-7 and had a better goals against average at Michigan (.74 compared to 1.65 in 2021).
Last year's draft picks that returned to school like Parker Goins are listed as non-roster invitees. There are 3 players whose rights have been held by Racing since last year’s draft. In addition to Goins, defender Emily Smith (California) and Taylor Malham (Arkansas) were selected by Racing but returned to school for an additional year. Parker Goins is still listed as a forward, so that puts the number of forwards at nine. Goins if definitely an attacking players but could be deployed in the midfield.
Since Goins is still listed as a forward, Racing has invited Sadie Sider-Echenberg to preseason to flesh out the midfield. If there is to be another story like Nealy Martin this year, it will be her. I couldn’t find much about her, but she scored 2 goals and had 4 assists in her “rookie” season with the University of Ottawa. Sadie’s inclusion in the preseason roster puts the number of midfielders at 7, but only 3 of those have any NWSL experience.
If the roster rules for the 2022 season mimic the rules for 2021, Racing will be able to keep 24 fully rostered players with an additional 4 players on the Supplemental Roster. Racing has open international spots to fill as well, so I would expect some cuts to come from this group of 28. If I interpreted last year’s rules correctly, a team must have a minimum of 22 players on the full roster. Obviously with the new CBA in place, the rules for this season will be different. If the players had to make any concessions, it might have been in keeping the roster size the same. I’m not really basing this on anything, but I expect the roster size to look the same as last year.
I predict that these 28 players will get narrowed down to 22 or 23 like Racing carried last year. The 3rd keeper will almost surely be on the Supplemental roster, so I expect Racing to hold 2 open spots for international players, similar to last year when they added Bonner, Salmon and Nadim in midseason.
The most exciting thing about this preseason is that half of the roster has played together for Racing compared to zero last year. Buried a little bit deeper in the press release was a confirmation of the Challenge Cup start date as March 19 which means that there are only 6 Fridays between now and the start of NWSL action.
