Multiple San Diego Wave players called up to international play in the She Believes Cup returned this week to preseason training camp in San Diego, finishing up their fourth preseason week as they prepare for the start of the NWSL season on March 25.
Head coach Casey Stoney spoke about the upcoming preseason matches including their second preseason match on March 5 against Houston Dash. The match will be closed to the public and no scores will be announced.
“I’m not really focused on individual performances too much at the moment. It’s about building relationships, building chemistry and building performances,” Stoney said. “Players have a long offseason here, and in my opinion it’s too long, so it takes them a little while to get back in.”
She also spoke about how the club plans on handling the return of the international players for their preseason match.
“Depends on what loads they've had since they’ve been away, what they’re dealing with and what we’re managing with them since they’ve come back,” Stoney said. “We’ll manage each individual, and it’ll be about some of them getting some play time, some of them won’t play at all.”
The She Believes Cup only featured four players from San Diego, but could be a preview of what Wave will have to manage this summer during the FIFA Women’s World Cup where several players will be called up to their respective national teams.
“There’s potential that if internationals do well they could miss four regular season games, three challenge cup games, that's seven games a year that they’ll miss,” Stoney said.
The USWNT won the tournament featuring San Diego’s Alex Morgan, Naomi Girma and Taylor Kornieck all playing important roles throughout. Canadian goalkeeper and 2022 NWSL goalkeeper of the year Kailen Sheridan played the most minutes.
Canadian players were one of the key storylines entering the tournament as the Canada Soccer Players Association announced they would attempt to go on strike, missing the training camp before the tournament for a multitude of reasons. In sum, it concerns a lack of faith in the federation regarding financial mismanagement and gender inequality between the Men’s and Women’s side on funding of the senior team, and youth programs.
“We (Canada) go into this world cup 100% guns blazing ready to win, we know we have a strong team,” Sheridan said. “With everything else that’s going on we just put that on the backburner and focus on what we need to focus on which is ourselves and what we need to do on the field.”
San Diego Wave will play their first match of the season at home in Snapdragon Stadium on March 25, taking on Chicago Red Stars. Many tickets are still available, with tickets starting at $10.