A move that should have benefited all teams, but not all players involved agreed. The US national team player was in no mood to move to a Dash team that had a less than pristine reputation around the league, the attacker eventually using her clout to move to the Utah Royals.

But for Beckie, who was happy in Texas, the trade and the specifics of how it was handled left her with a sour taste.

“It didn’t make me feel very valued as a player and I think that anyone that saw what happened and anyone that knows me, very much understood me feeling that way. I don't think it was handled very well: the communication behind my trade wasn’t at all professional and if I’m honest, I don't think that it was that necessary. But, you know, it's professional sports.”

Having left NWSL in 2018 and now into her second season with Manchester City, there is still a clear frustration in Beckie’s voice as she recounts her story.

“It's unfortunately the way that the league works, I think anyone that's been traded, whether they wanted to be traded or not, would agree with the fact that players rights, the wages and the way NWSL functions from a player's rights standpoint, it needs to change. I don't think it's fair to the player.”

Just like for Frisbie and Weimer, a move to Europe has opened the Canadian’s eyes considerably.

“Now being in England and understanding how it works over here, I can see the NWSL players really don't have any of their own rights and that's not good enough. We want to push the game forward and I think there’s a lot of work off the field that needs to happen in order for players to want to come and play in NWSL. When I come over here and people hear my story, it doesn't really make them want to go over there.”

Like Beckie when she shares her cautionary tale, Frisbie doesn’t pull any punches if she talks to players who’ve never played in the NWSL if and when they enquire about the league.

“It definitely plays with your head,” she said. “When I talk to players, the one thing that I tell them – if I were to give advice – is that it’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster all the time. You could wake up on Monday, go to training, in the training be like, ‘Hell yeah I killed that! I’m going to be fine.’ And then Tuesday you have a bad practice and it’s like, ‘I’m not going to be playing next weekend,’ and you’re not because you had one bad practice. So, one week you could be on cloud nine and the next it could be like, ‘I’m not going to be here’.” She concluded, “Overseas it’s just not like that at all.”

On the road again

Managing just four appearances in 2015 for the Flash, Frisbie, like a lot of her teammates, wasn’t happy with then coach Aaran Lines and at the end of the season, asked to be traded. The defender got her wish and moved to Kansas City (now Utah Royals) but she failed to hit her stride and opted to try her hand in Europe.

A half-season move to Stjarnan was a profitable one for Frisbie who won her first senior silverware as the Icelandic club claimed the Úrvalsdeild title for the fourth time in their history. All too soon the season wound to a close and the Texan was calling her agent to facilitate a move back to the NWSL. Happy after a season with the Boston Breakers, Frisbie opted to spend the NWSL offseason, as many of her compatriots do, in the Australian W-League and it was whilst she was in Perth that she found out the Breakers were folding. Already yearning to be back in the States, she decided against trying to go back to Europe and opted instead to go into the dispersal draft with her fellow Breakers.