Despite featuring talents like Carli Lloyd (pictured), Sky Blue FC doesn't have the investment of other clubs in the NWSL. (Getty)

Although the National Women’s Soccer League playoffs start this weekend, there is a bigger story inching toward an inflection point. The league, as always, is looking at expansion, which would see the nine-team NWSL add at least one new team for 2020.

An announcement could come by the end of this month to coincide with the buzz of the NWSL Championship, sources tell Yahoo Sports, and it would be hailed as a sign of progress for the still-growing 7-year-old league.

But, for as much as expansion is the most popular topic among NWSL observers —perhaps even more than the actual soccer being played — it may be the wrong discussion. Should the NWSL be adding new teams when it still feels like two separate leagues: one for the haves, and one for the have-nots?

On one end of the spectrum, the NWSL has the Portland Thorns, which is arguably the world's flagship women’s soccer club. The Thorns drew 24,521 fans over the weekend in their regular season finale, putting their 2019 average attendance at 20,098, which makes them one of the most popular soccer teams in the U.S., men’s or women's. Owned by former U.S. Treasury secretary Hank Paulson and his son Merritt, and part of the Portland Timbers organization, the Thorns’ players want for nothing and the team has no trouble attracting world-class talent.

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But then there are still NWSL clubs like New Jersey-based Sky Blue FC, which have languished for years under absentee ownership that players have said treat the team like a tax write-off rather than a real investment. The player facilities have been unsanitary, the game day experience has been sub-par and, perhaps worst of all, Sky Blue, which plays at the Rutgers campus in Piscataway, New Jersey, has dibs on the New York City market, preventing another NWSL from tapping into the country’s largest city.

Expansion would look good for the NWSL. It would show the league is growing, it would expand the league’s national footprint to attract advertisers and broadcasters, and new owners would pay an expansion fee. Whichever ownership group wins an expansion slot first — ones from Louisville, Sacramento, Atlanta and Los Angeles are considered top contenders — they would join the growing class of NWSL teams that are run primarily by deep-pocketed rich people who also run men’s sports teams.

But that doesn’t do much to fix the league's Sky Blues, the teams that make the competition worse and cast the shadow of poor optics on the entire league as they struggle to attract fans and gain traction in their local areas.

What the league should instead do is replace its worst teams with new ones. Just look at it as quasi-expansion: The league can still say it’s attracting interest from new ownership groups, and fans can still use that “expansion” buzzword, but the number of teams would remain the same.

There is a precedent in the NWSL of doing just that.

Back in 2017, FC Kansas City had failed to meet required minimum standards to the point that the NWSL, after repeated warnings, took back the club’s NWSL rights and facilitated a move to Utah, where the owners of Real Salt Lake absorbed the team. That team is now the Utah Royals, and after years of players not having access to real medical facilities in Kansas City and having to travel to games without the minimum number of roster players, they are treated like true professionals in Utah.

View photos The Utah Royals, headlined by Christen Press , have enjoyed a much better infrastructure since relocating from Kansas City. (Getty) More

The Western New York Flash likewise were sold and relocated to North Carolina, where they became the Courage and instantly saw an increase in attendance and relevance in their market, as well as higher standards.

That model — relocation rather than expansion — makes far more sense given the disparate state of the NWSL right now. And there are buyers out there.

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