NWSL

On May 22, 2020, NWSL side OL Reign announced the signing of Japanese standout Yuka Momiki. The 24-year-old was born in New York City but grew up playing in Japan with Nippon TV Beleza’s youth side before reaching the senior team.

 “Yuka is a young, dynamic player with tremendous potential that we believe will play an important role in our club this season and far into the future,” said OL Reign CEO Bill Predmore in a team press release. 

The National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) will return to action in late June with a 25-game tournament in Utah that will be played in empty stadiums due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The NWSL, which delayed the start of its season because of the coronavirus, said it has worked with team doctors and public health officials to develop testing protocols to ensure a safe environment for its nine teams during the month-long tournament. 

The hosts for the 2020 ESPYs have been announced. This year, the ESPYs will shift its focus from outstanding athletic achievement to highlighting the impact athletes have made outside of sports. This shift in showing the world that there's more to athletes than just their performances on the field or court aligns with the current global situation we are in. While sports took a halt, many athletes did not.

Seattle Storm point guard Sue Bird, USWNT standout Megan Rapinoe and Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson will be the voice of this years ESPYs.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been widely praised for his handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic in his state, which has been hit harder than anywhere else in the country. While many leaders have done their best to ignore or even flout the experts, Cuomo has embraced science and proven to be an excellent communicator during this crisis. 

But the governor may have lost a lot of that good will with one poorly conceived graphic.

During his daily media briefing on Tuesday, Cuomo spoke about how eager he is to have professional sports resume play as soon as possible. 

FIFA has proposed that teams should be allowed to make up to five substitutions per match, instead of the usual three, as a temporary measure to help cope with potential fixture congestion in the aftermath of the novel coronavirus outbreak. 

Football has been at a standstill since mid-March but many leagues and federations are still hoping to complete the season but to do so they would have to cram fixtures into a shorter period than usual once play re-starts.

Carli Lloyd, like the rest of us, would prefer life would return to normal sooner rather than later. But the two-time Women’s World Cup winner, as she often does, is finding the positive aspects of being forced to shelter in place, with the NWSL season on hold and 2020 Olympics pushed back a year.

Ever since the dawn of the NASL in the 1960s, American soccer teams have tried everything under the sun to create iconic club names. From the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Dallas Tornado of the old NASL to modern-day Real Salt Lake and the short-lived Houston 1836, there have been some winners and many more losers. The new Louisville NWSL club might be going the Houston 1836 route.

The U.S. Soccer Federation said on Wednesday it was shutting down its youth development academy permanently due to the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

U.S. Soccer, the sport's governing body in the United States, said in a statement the decision to shutter the academy, which it founded in 2007 and included competitions across five age groups, was effective immediately. 

Many female footballers are at risk of losing their livelihoods due to the global soccer shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, a report by global players' union FIFPRO said on Thursday. 

The report said specific measures were needed to help women's football during the crisis, which has brought world sport to a standstill and caused the postponement of major international events including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Otherwise, it said, the women's game could be facing an existential threat.