UPDATE: (01/25/2016)
Sydney Leroux-Dwyer and Dom Dwyer just announced that they are expecting a baby, due in September. I am happy for them as I would be for any couple who wants a baby. I am also more upset about the trade than I was when it was first announced. Don’t get me wrong, I understand people get pregnant all the time, I also understand that it’s a small percentage who get pregnant when they are trying not to get pregnant. I’m sure my bias against Leroux at club level feeds into this increased upset I feel. But let me ask you, if you were a player who already has a reputation for not being happy where you are and always wanting to change clubs for personal reasons, wouldn’t you make damn sure you were taking all possible steps not to screw up this latest trade? Not to disadvantage a club that by its own admission had been working to get you where you wanted to be for a year? Excuses can be made that mistakes happen, but maybe the biggest mistake was FC Kansas City having trust in Leroux to do just that.
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Leroux to FC Kansas City. 5 of the ugliest words I’ve seen today. Just the image it conjures is distasteful to me.
I am not a fan of Sydney Leroux Dwyer at club level. I think she acts like an entitled brat and has not performed for any club she’s been with on the level of diva status she thinks she deserves. That’s not to say she’s a bad player, or person in general and you could argue that she’s shined a little brighter on the national stage, but not of late.
A little club background; Leroux was allocated to Boston in NWSL’s first year, 2013. She played well, but Boston being Boston, that wasn’t enough. In 2014 she expressed a desire to be traded to Seattle “to be closer to my family in the Pacific Northwest” and the Reign obliged. Her play in Seattle didn’t reach the level it had in Boston as both her goals and assists diminished by half over 2013 even though her playing time increased. In 2015 after asking if she could again be traded, this time to FCKC, to be closer to her new husband, the Reign obliged her with another trade – not to FCKC, but to WNY Flash. This is not what she had asked for nor expected and she was “mad“. And her play in WNY was even lesser quality, and quantity, than it had been in Seattle. Leroux only played in 3 games for WNY and decided to have foot surgery when she returned from the World Cup ( she appeared in 4 of 7 games and recorded 1 assist). All in all not a stellar club career.
Which brings us to today. FC Kansas City announced that they had acquired Leroux by way of a trade with the Dash and the WNY Flash. Now, I’m a big FCKC fan and a bigger Vlatko fan, but this trade just smacks of pandering, both to Leroux and her entitled attitude and to a lesser extent to some possible connection between the MLS club Sporting KC where her husband plays and FC Kansas City. In general I am not a supporter of female players being given a pass because they want to play closer to their husbands, not for Morgan, not for Leroux and not even for a married same sex couple like the McLeods. I do think the negotiations are markedly different in a same sex situation since both players would have to benefit the club, not just the lonely spouse. To those of you who identify as feminists, I do not see how you could support this move on the spousal grounds at all. A male player. rightly or wrongly, who publicly campaigned to play closer to his spouse would be drawn and quartered in the public arena, but Leroux gets -I am happy that she got to play close to her husband, though – comments, like it’s OK because she’s a woman and that’s what women should get and it’s only NWSL and that makes it OK, too. Bullshit.
Yes, I called bullshit. No player, male or female should be traded or valued any differently because of their marital status or lack thereof. Nothing different should be expected or afforded to a person in a business environment based on their marital status. Period. I don’t for one minute think that FCKC would have traded for Leroux had her husband not been employed by Sporting KC. And I do not think for one minute that FCKC would have considered Leroux if she had not made a public plea to be traded to FCKC. I don’t think that Leroux fits the system Vlatko has instituted and I don’t think that’s even a thinly-veiled explanation. I have no idea why or what the FCKC organization hopes to gain by this move, but I’m not happy about it.
I’m not a fan and not even Leroux playing for FCKC will make me one. I will continue to cheer for and support FC Kansas City, but I won’t be a fan of Sydney Leroux Dwyer as a club player until she demonstrates on and off the field that she can be a team player and a loyal team player. What happens if she and her husband split or he gets traded? Will she still be happy and excited to play for FCKC, to represent the city and its fans on the field? Or will she want to move on to the next place that fits conveniently in her life? Or will she stay in FCKC and give a half-assed performance in hopes to force a trade? Or will she just whine publicly until someone gives in?
If you think I’m off base, tell me in the comments.
Post Script: I am a fan of Leroux as a NT player, her demeanor as a small fish in a big pond on the NT doesn’t allow her the latitude people give her as a big fish in a small pond at club level.
#WoSo 
It may be worth noting that, while there haven’t been any notable cases (that I know of) of hockey players wanting a trade to play closer to their wives, every year there are a number of NHL players who, in free agency, move to a team to play closer to where their wives are from, and desire to live. Tomas Vanek is the first example that comes to mind, wanting to play in his wife’s native Minnesota. Martin St. Louis publicly asked for a trade, and having a no-trade clause at the time, had the ability to dictate where, and basically said he would only accept a trade to the Rangers, so that his family could live in his wife’s native Connecticut. Mike Fisher went to Nashville because of Carrie Underwood. Perhaps a part of the issue is that there is seemingly no time upcoming that any of the originally allocated USWNT members who maintain their allocation status would be “free agents” or have the ability to decide where they’d like to play, something that is afforded to most players once they prove their worth in a league (which Leroux hasn’t necessarily done at a club level, per se, but there has to be some aspect to FCKC being wiling to take her as a player.)
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Of course there will be instances where that’s the case, but many people are giving her a pass on her sense of entitlement just because she wants to follow her husband. Like you said, she hasn’t necessarily demonstrated her worth at club level. I’ve since read that KC had been trying to work a trade prior to this season, so I guess they see some soccer value to having her. My hope is that she repays their efforts by playing like she means it and that KC doesn’t turn their marketing into the Syd & Dom circus.
As far as free agency, US Soccer or NWSL won’t support that anytime soon. Allocation keeps them in the league. I think it will/should come eventually, but the league isn’t big enough or established enough..yet.
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Yes. Your bias is showing in your update. It is not for me or you to decide when Leroux should get pregnant or whether it is convenient for club or country or whether or not it was planned. It is not appropriate for you to say that maybe her getting pregnant was a “mistake” that others wouldn’t do if traded to a new team. I understand you are a huge fan, and that’s fantastic. But to even bring her pregnancy into an argument as a reason to doubt her is something powers that be have done for ages to marginalize women. You either accept that it is a personal decision no matter what, or you don’t….up to you. I think you chose wrong here.
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I accept that putting yourself in a position to get pregnant is a personal decision. It is her decision making that I call into question. The fact that the decision involves pregnancy is Leroux’s not mine. Leroux has chosen on all occasions to put herself above her peers and teammates. It is that decision making I call into question. If she is pregnant while trying not to be, then in fact her pregnancy is a mistake under those circumstances.
I appreciate your reasoned reply. I just don’t think she gets a pass on her decision making because it involves being pregnant.
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I can see why you don’t like Leroux and her decision making outside this issue. But when you bring in her getting pregnant you are dancing in a land filled with mines. Who are any of us to judge whether it is timely for another woman to get pregnant? Isn’t part of you saying Leroux made a mistake, while not mentioning that Rodriquez got pregnant (which likely precipitated this trade along with other moves by the team) implicitly saying that it’s okay for some folks to get pregnant at certain times but not others? To me, that feels like the thinking that so many of us fought for for so very long to have not be a reason for employers to discriminate against a particular pregnant woman. It’s why laws are in place to this day.
From the little I know of you from scrolling around twitter to get more of a sense of the USWNT, I know that is not your intent, but that’s what I see here. I too appreciate that we can have this back and forth civilly.
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I use the example of Leroux getting pregnant in the context of her decision making being all about her and not about her teammates or her club (if this was a decision, as you seem to think). She is free to decide to try to get pregnant and to be pregnant, but I don’t think that relieves her of her personal responsibility to her teammates and to her club. She’s lobbied long and hard to get to KC, no, to play for KC and KC tried until they got a deal that made it work. I do not think, and I’m sure many agree with me, that KC would have made the trades they did to get Leroux if they knew they wouldn’t have her for the whole 2016 season. The least she could have done is to let them know she was trying. I don’t think it’s an invasion of her privacy or outside the bounds of decency when someone is trying to get you what you say you want. My blog was not about pregnancy, my blog was about Leroux’s sense of entitlement, one she repeatedly flaunts and I think her not being forthright w/KC just highlights that.
I didn’t bring Rodriguez into my argument because she has a relationship with KC on a different level than Leroux. And as I said, my blog isn’t about pregnancy.
Women and pregnancy and their employers can certainly be a mine field, but as far as I can tell, neither is being discriminated against. Maybe you don’t agree and maybe you think it’s wrong, but I think under the circumstances she could have mentioned that pregnancy could be a possibility. She is in a position where she still would have been under contract, still could have lived in KC since she cannot play and still could have lobbied for a trade when she returned to the game. As it is she got everything she wanted and KC got nothing.
I do not think it is incumbent on KC, or any team to treat every player like they will get pregnant. Teams build depth into rosters for many reasons and maybe the possibility of pregnancy is one of them, but teams seldom trade for a player who will not play for them. Should a pre-trade physical be instituted where a pregnancy test is administered? Or would that be discriminatory? What is the recourse for a team?
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I don’t understand how you have decided that my comments say something about whether or not Leroux intended to get pregnant or not, I have no idea and it is certainly none of my business, nor yours. I feel you are being disingenuous on this point, trying to make a strike against me. So be it.
And sure, maybe you didn’t intend this post to be about pregnancy, but here we are after your update. I choose to believe that it is none of my damn business to judge someone for the timing of their pregnancy. You don’t agree. Laws have been passed to make sure neither of us gets the final say as to when a woman can keep her job or lose it simply because she got pregnant.
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I in no way intend for any of my replies to be personal, or a strike against you. You have questioned my use of “mistake”, I took that to mean you thought it was intended. If it was not intended, what would you call it?
Yes, pregnancy entered the picture when Leroux announced it. And no one, not even me, has said that she should lose her job, as I mentioned in my previous reply. By virtue of being under contract to US Soccer, no matter where she plays she is still under contract. This isn’t about, and has never been about her or anyone losing their job.
This is and has always been about the decisions Leroux makes and her sense of entitlement. If one of her decisions involves pregnancy, then I will judge it as I have judged other decisions. It is how she handled it, or didn’t handle it, not the fact that it happened.
I hope that we can continue to have an open conversation.
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