Kickin' Back

With the chaos of 2020 behind her, NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird joins Kickin' Back to recap a successful but challenging year, and teases what’s ahead for the league, including expansion strategies, the relationship with U.S. Soccer, and a league rebrand ahead of the 10th-anniversary season.

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You can thank Esmeralda Negron for the ability to watch live European women's soccer on TV each weekend in the United States. She co-founded Atalanta Media with Hannah Brown, together founding a company which is redefining the value of women's soccer media rights. Negron joins Kickin' Back to discuss jumping into a startup, the future valuation of women's soccer, and how her successful playing and coaching career led her to this role.

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What's it like to be a full-time women's soccer reporter? Very few people can actually answer that. Meg Linehan is The Athletic's women's soccer reporter who breaks news and tells in-depth stories across the sport. She joins this episode of Kickin' Back to discuss the job, from the long hours to the nuance of managing relationships, why paywalls exist, and what future coverage of the sport might look like. Follow Meg on Twitter @itsmeglinehan and find her articles here. Click here to listen to her podcast, Full Time.

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Lauren Barnes — better known by most as "Lu" — played professionally in three different countries in 2020 despite the global pandemic. She is a Reign franchise original since the inception of the NWSL in 2013, and one of the most consistent defenders in league history. She joins the pod to discuss her career and her especially wild 2020, which included a championship in Australia and Champions League qualification in Sweden.

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You know Heather O'Reilly as the fierce competitor who won Olympic gold medals and a World Cup title with the United States women's national team. Now, Heather is a mom, a coach at UNC, a TV broadcaster and an entrepreneur. 'HAO' joins the pod to talk about life after soccer, her new view on life as a mom, learning from her old coach in new ways, and even some crazy high school memories.

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Kelly Simmons is the director of the women's professional game for the FA. She joins Kickin' Back to discuss the professionalization of women's club soccer in England, the rapid growth and internationalization which followed, and the ongoing balancing act which next year will see a homegrown player quota introduced.

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Vlatko Andonovski went from an unknown to the head coach of the two-time defending World Cup champion United States women's national team in a matter of seven years. He joins Kickin' Back to share his coaching journey, including learning the women's game from scratch and some hard lessons along the way. Andonovski also shares his thoughts on the first U.S. training camp in over seven months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Kristie Mewis is in the form of her life for the Houston Dash, which earned her a return to United States national team camp. Kristie shares her journey of falling out of favor with the U.S. -- her last cap was over six years ago -- to being traded multiple times in the NWSL and finding herself after her ACL injury in Houston. Her revival is among the best on-field stories in a weird 2020.

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If you watch women's soccer on TV in the United States, you've heard Jenn Hildreth call a game. The longtime play-by-play voice of the National Women's Soccer League — among many other competitions — joins Kickin' Back to discuss how different it is announcing games remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic and how that might shape the future of sports broadcasting, plus her favorite memories from covering the NWSL and the now defunct WPS.

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