Hey Idk if you know but thought you’d be a good person to ask! I was looking at Orlando’s recent roster updates and they were talking about how they retain the NWSL playing rights of five Federation players, including sonnett, and I just didn’t know how that worked. Does that mean Emily will be playing with them for sure next season? Or how does it get decided with federation players?
Hey there!
You'd only be sort of correct about me knowing what's up, because reserve clauses are weird and only a thing for this league if I'm not wrong. I never actually dealt with it before. So I kind of understand it, bear with me and anyone correct me if I'm wrong about anything I say!
The NWSL has every player under contract except for federation players (ie. USA and Canadian players - formerly Mexican players too before they started their own league) whose salaries are paid for by their federation, teams receive a player's rights when they're signed to a team if they're federation players (formerly known as allocated).
Orlando currently has the rights to 5 federation players: Ali, Ash, Sonnett, AM and Zadorsky (CAN). 3 of them signed with other clubs for the 20/21 season.
Now the rights thing is the usual precursor to free agency. Since the players aren't under contract with their nwsl teams, the way to ensure Orlando gets first dibs when their contracts abroad expire is by keeping their "rights". It doesn't necessarily mean that the players will stay or play for them, but it does mean that Orlando can trade or sell them to other teams, or that on their return to the nwsl (like Sonny, Zadorsky and AM) they can't sign for any league team without Orlando trading them to that team first. It's more or less a contract except the team doesn't pay their salary. And they're not allowed to negotiate where they're going to play like in free agency, it all has to be done through the team that holds their rights.
If Sonnett wants to stay in the nwsl (even if it's not with Orlando) she has to ask for the team to trade her. If Sonnett wants to stay in Göteborg, she can negotiate a deal with them directly, but Orlando keeps her rights if she wants to return to the nwsl at any point***. However we're all largely assuming that once her contract expires with Göteborg she'll come back to the States (now whether she asks to be left unprotected for the expansion or not that's a whole other thing).
It's a good thing for the players because federation contracts are more lucrative than NWSL contracts (the highest contracts in the league are 50K a year if I'm not wrong) but it's also a mess because players rights can be traded on a whim by their teams, and that teams can keep their rights at contract expiration (like Sam Kerr's rights still being held by CRS even though she doesn't play for them anymore, or NC retaining Sam Mewis' rights even though she signed with Man City for the foreseeable future) so if a team has a bad relationship with a player they can make their life really hard, or if a league wants to keep their players where they are, the only avenue the players really have is to threaten retirement. Not a good prospect for young players. (it also means teams can trade rights for players even if that player probably won't return to the league, so it also makes for convoluted trading opportunities between teams in the league)
It's a double edged sword.
Hope that helps? If I got anything wrong feel free to correct me!