Portland and Chicago did not look good this weekend. There's just been a lot of papering over of

these rosters that just frankly are not as competitive as they used to be. And that is a much

bigger issue for these teams to tackle than just a couple absent stars.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to today's edition of the late sub. I am your host, Claire Watkins,

back from a brief hiatus. I had mentioned at the end of last year that we were taking a little bit of

time off, doing a little bit of retooling, re-kind of looking at the big picture, how we're going to

have the show operate in 2025. So definitely expect more information from us on schedule Caden,

stuff like that in the future. We will be telling y'all what you're going to be expecting

for the late sub this year. But I had to hop on and give some quick takes because we had

NWSL opening weekend. And we need to talk about, you know, I'm cheating a little bit here, as I love to do sometimes. We're going to do some early predictions. We're going to talk about what happened this weekend. And we need to talk about, you know, I'm cheating a little bit here, as I love to do

sometimes. We're going to do some early predictions. We're going to talk about what happened this

weekend, not go too long on it, but just sort of the quick takes, how I'm feeling after weekend

one. And I'm going to be able to use that to inform some of my predictions for the larger

scope of the NWSL season. And I'm going to say it, this first weekend of NWSL play, I think actually did a great job

of sort of confirming some priors, seeing some trajectories, confirming maybe some thoughts

here at the beginning of the season that do inform maybe how I think the season is going

to go, or at least with the themes of the first half of

this season before the big break for the European and elsewhere international, big international

tournaments will happen this summer. So I think everybody, if you're listening to this, you got a chance

to kind of probably look at the scores. We had three big wins from some of the top four teams of 2024.

There were a lot of one-one draws. We saw Orlando kind of get back

where they, where they were at the beginning, kind of kick things off back where they left off.

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