European club players are back with the US Women's National Team, so I figured it'd be a good

time to check in and see how they've been doing across the pond. Hello everybody and welcome

to this week's edition of The Late Sub. I am your host, Claire Watkins. It is Tuesday, February 24th,

and I wanted to check in on how some of these big U.S. sighings over in England and France are doing, answer is mostly very, very good and kind of what they might be bringing in terms of momentum back to a U.S. environment. And then also a couple of players who are not in camp with the United States who are still kind of figuring their way in Europe. And what that means for players who are making that leap, who are taking that push and are

still trying to get those call-ups back in with the U.S.

Lots to talk about today.

Let's dig in.

So as we talked about last week, the U.S. is back this weekend for the She Believes Cup and much has been made of the

big returns imminent for players who haven't featured for the team since their December

games against Italy. Many of those players, as we know, compete in Europe. They were not available

for the January camp because that was only taking place during the end of U.S. offseason. It was not

an official international window. So you did not see those players who play in day in and day out for European clubs in that environment. So it's kind of been a minute since we've seen some of these top players who are returning to the team, a growing contingent, as we know, of U.S. talent in sort of this new era of the roster construction or sort of player movement in global women's

football. So this, now this, you know, this week felt like a good opportunity as we're about to see

some of these players return or even some of these players who are not on the roster. Maybe a good

idea to kind of have a touch point of what's going on in, in Europe and for especially these

U.S. players abroad. As we know, success in Europe really is not a monolith. I think it's possible that you watch a player go over, do a big signing to a team like Chelsea or Leone and automatically go, well, they're going to walk into the starting lineup and do incredibly because we know how good they are. Or you could say, oh, I don't know, they're walking into a pretty stacked roster. What is that going to look like for their playing time? I think it's good to keep an eye on, especially from a U.S. lens, where Emma Hayes has been fairly open about the fact that players do need to be succeeding for their clubs to get called in to a U.S. environment. She wants that real sense of competition, that sense that you need to be doing

what you need to do at the domestic level to be able to get called up to play for the national team. And in Europe, I mean, this is actually maybe what I'm about to say contradict some of these things, but I do think one of the nuances, especially if you are more of an end of U.S. fan or a U.S. fan is a lot about the salary cap, right? In the end of USL, but one of the kind of side effects sometimes of not having a salary cap in Europe is that they are able to kind of stack, like I said, these incredible rosters, they're deep rosters. They do play a lot of games, which sometimes means that a player maybe plays less in the

domestic lead, but they'll play in like the FA Cup or some of these other cup competitions. But there is a possibility at times for players when they fall out of favor to have the ability to kind of sit on the bench, even if they were an expensive player. We always just want to keep an eye on these things because there are sort of not different rules. Well, they're kind of literally different rules. But some of the norms in Europe are slightly different. And as the U.S. gets ready

and keeps working towards kind of better competition, honing this final group for World Cup

qualifying in November, what's happening over there is very important. So to start, I think we do

need to wade into Chelsea as a whole. I'm probably not the first person

to have discussed this in the last couple of weeks. Certainly won't be the last. I know much has

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