NWSL Week 10 preview: USWNT stars play one more time before leaving for the Olympics

When U.S. Soccer announced in May that USWNT players wouldn’t be available to their NWSL teams for an extra week ahead of two scheduled friendlies with Japan in early June, it seemed a little ridiculous. Those friendlies fell during a window of FIFA dates, and the league had wisely not scheduled any games for that weekend. So, U.S. Soccer’s choice to run a camp for a full week leading up to those games was curious.

Allocated USWNT players, the league’s most important players for better or worse, were forced to miss an extra league game that they really didn’t need to. Other internationals, including those playing for Canada, which also had a game during that time and which also allocates players to NWSL teams, were available to their clubs for the same weekend that the USWNT wasn’t. Those players joined their national teams following the conclusion of the weekend’s NWSL games.

Indeed, the move by U.S. Soccer read more like another power play in the federation’s ongoing back and forth with itself about simultaneously running the NWSL and trying to undermine it, than something that was necessary for the good of the program as preparations begin for this summer’s Olympics.

It turns out now that it may have been necessary preparation for someone, though, and that’s the NWSL teams. Though nothing has been officially announced as of Tuesday night, there are several reports that the next USWNT camp, the one that will lead directly into the Olympics, will begin on July 1. The Olympic tournament, for context, kicks off more than a month later, on August 3.

That means that this week’s games -- and it’s an extra busy week, with six games instead of the usual five -- will be the last time we’ll see the USWNT players for long, long time. Internationals from other countries will slowly begin departing for their national team camps, too (Canada named its Olympic roster on Monday and it includes nine NWSL players).

The NWSL did build the Olympics into this year’s schedule, and will press pause on league play for the duration of the tournament -- or almost anyway, the rescheduled due to weather Houston-Washington game is on August 18, the day before the medal games -- but as The Equalizer’s Ray Curren points out, if past tournaments are any indication, even once league play resumes post-Olympics, we might not see those players back with their NWSL clubs right away, especially if the U.S. wins gold.

Some teams -- Chicago, Sky Blue, Western NY and Boston-- will feel the effects of the long-term absences only minimally. Others -- Portland and Orlando -- will be without large and/or important pieces of their rosters for at least five weeks. That is half of the season’s remaining games.

Five games, minimum, is a lot of time for teams to be without some of their best players, especially since no one -- not even Boston -- is out of the playoff race yet. Coming into this week, just three points separate the first place Red Stars from the fourth-place Flash. The Pride and Reign are both only three points out of the top four. There is, somehow, only a 14-point gap between first and last place.

Are the Breakers going to win out the season and end up in the playoffs? Probably not, because other teams aren’t singing gaggles of baby geese as replacements, but Boston will likely lose only one player in Whitney Engen, which could level the playing field a little bit as they take on teams like Orlando, who they’ll play twice in July. The Pride will be without Alex Morgan, Ashlyn Harris, and eventually Kyle and Australia’s Steph Catley.

Harris hasn’t just been the Pride’s starting goalkeeper in eight of the nine games Orlando’s played so far this season, she’s also, as of now, basically their only goalkeeper. Backup Aubrey Bledsoe fractured her fibula in training last week and is done for the season. The Pride does have Megan Dorsey, who’s an amateur player, on its roster.

At the opposite end of the table, Portland is probably the team that will be hit the hardest by this, and with the Thorns right in the thick of the playoff race the timing isn’t great. With 17 points, Portland is tied for second with Washington and just a single point behind Chicago.

They will likely lose four USWNT players (Tobin Heath, Meghan Klingenberg, Emily Sonnett and Lindsey Horan), but depending on how many players beyond the 18 that will be named to the Olympic roster Ellis calls into camp, could lose as many as six. That’s not counting Christine Sinclair (Canada) and probably Amandine Henry (France). Portland’s also already lost defender Meg Morris to a season-ending injury.

Among the teams on the Thorn’s July schedule: a meeting with a Seattle team that will suffer only minimal losses and has a bunch of very good international players from countries not going to the Olympics: Jess Fishlock (Wales), Kim Little (Scotland), Manon Melis (Netherlands) and Nahomi Kawasumi and Rumi Utsugi (Japan).

Other teams, like Chicago and Washington, proved a season ago when the league was in a similar situation due to the World Cup, that they’ve built enough from within to sustain the absences, while teams like Sky Blue and Western NY will likely lose just one UWSNT player each.

Whether you think an entire month of camp may or may not actually be necessary -- or a good idea either on the field or off as the league continues to try to build itself up into something truly sustainable -- that’s a debate that will ultimately have to wait. The reality for now is that after this week, NWSL teams are going to look a lot different.

Some teams will deal with that difference well, use it to their advantage and make a move up the table or pad a lead they’ve already got, while others might self-destruct. Either way, as we roll into the second half of the season, things are going to get very interesting.

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Orlando Pride vs. Portland Thorns FC, 5 p.m., Camping World Stadium (YouTube)