The NWSL got the shot in the arm that it needed with a big, big intra-league transfer this week,

but there are still some issues bubbling below the surface, even as the league remains competitive in the global market.

I want to dig in even deeper to what we talk about when we talk about the salary cap and why player decision-making is starting to vary a little bit as to whether to stay

or to go. Welcome to this week's edition of The Late Sub. I am your host, Claire Watkins. It is Wednesday,

September 10th. And we're going to start by talking about Jaden Shaw's reported big move to Gotham

and everything that means for her, for the soccer element for teams, and just how we need to continue this conversation

of what league governance implies as players make decisions about their careers. Let's jump in.

So a new piece of transfer news hit the NWSL on Monday when Jeff Kassouf of ESPN reported that Jaden Shaw of San Diego and North Carolina Courage fame is being traded to Gotham FC in return for $1.25 million in intra-league transfer funds.

I say, hell yeah. Finally, a shot in the arm for the

actual NWSL transfer market after high profile departures that we were talking about last week,

left the American Women's Soccer World reeling a little bit, a lot of big picture conversations

about how the NWSL can compete. And we will get into that today even more as well.

The deal itself should more than double the record for an intra-league transfer fee,

beating out the $600,000 Kansas City paid for Ali Sentinel just a few weeks ago.

A brief moment on the soccer perspective for this.

If you're a listener to the show, you know that this is actually something that I pitched a couple weeks ago. I thought Shaw to Gotham was a really interesting idea.

Seemed fairly clear that North Carolina didn't really know what to do with her and also

probably should move kind of quickly to make sure that they had not devalued her, her value

level so highly that they were not able to get a good return. As people know, 20-year-old US-man's national team prospect, really talented kind of tweener forward midfielder, first onto the scene with San Diego, but has been kind of a drift since leaving the wave in January. Gotham's predilection to pick up big U.S. names continue.

They love a U.S. Women's National Team player or someone on the U.S. Women's National Team bubble. Another natural consequence of the deal seemed to play out on Tuesday when Gotham transferred out, very underrated defensive midfielder, Neely Martin, to Angel City. That was a requested trade. The churn in Gotham continues. It's hard sometimes to even

sort of get a foothold on what all of that means for them because they undergo so much change

all of the time. New project to undertake in New Jersey with more change possibly coming in the

...