Part Two from my interview with league commissioner Tonya Antonucci, continuing with the decision to launch in 2009 discussion …

That’s the best long-term plan. Get this right. Don’t do it fast, but get it right and be in a position where we can come off the heels of a World Cup and come off the heels of an Olympics. It’s more exposure for all the athletes and more time for planning and development and then we launch. That was the decision and I think most people are feeling pretty good about it.

We’ve heard from some people within MLS saying, “We understand what you had to do. If you recall, we had to delay our launch one year.” There are all kinds of data points that historically lean towards this decision. You know, look how much time had lapsed between the NASL collapsing and the launch of MLS.

You really do want to take the long view and make sure that again, you’re not rushing, and then you’ve got a short-term solution but it might go away again. We’re only going to get this second bite at the apple at least in this country. That’s something that the owners, the marketers, WSII, we all felt that we get a second bite at this apple. Let’s make sure that we’re not handicapping ourselves.

I assume that the league offices will be out in the Bay Area with you?

We haven’t determined the final location of the league office. Temporarily, at a minimum, we are running the offices out of the Bay Area with me here and then we’ll make a decision on that later, probably after the New Year. There are really no other front-runners at this point. The issue is that we want to manage costs and be efficient so one of the options is, in the early years if possible share our league office including physical space and some staff with one of our franchise owners to keep the costs down. We have seven markets at a minimum for 2009 so you can hypothesis where we might wind up, but really, it’s going to come down to how do we manage costs and how do we kind of buckle down through the early years. That’s going to impact the final decision.

Have you made any hires yet?

I’m in the process of starting to evaluate some candidates in the short term. I’ve identified someone who I’m working on as an administrative, project manager type person to help me stand up the office. I don’t have an announcement yet, but I will have more announcements in the near future. Some of our executive level hires will be phased in the coming months. Once we launch our league website, that will be a great platform to share with folks and also to do recruiting. We’d love to hear who’s out there that would like to be part of our management team. We’re just beginning all that process now.

I know you’ve been watching the World Cup. What have you thought about the level of play so far and how it might impact the new league?

As far as the level, there’s a couple different ways to look at this. You look at a team like North Korea and you say, “Wow!” You know, we’ve not been exposed in this country to the level of play and they’re exciting in their attacking style. Their ability to play a possession game is a very attractive style of soccer. That’s exiting. Will some of those players be in a position politically to come and play in our league? I don’t know.

Not withstanding those issues, I’ve had a great time watching some of these players that I don’t have a chance to get exposed to on a regular basis. We don’t get exposed to the attacking duo of Hanna Ljungberg and Victoria Svensson. Granted Hanna’s not 100% fit and Sweden overall was not happy with their performance in this tournament and they’ve obviously not advanced, but just to see those players and look at the potential for them to come into our league and play on a regular basis against our American athletes is pretty exciting. And also, of course, Sweden’s number 8, Schelin, the top goal soccer in the Swedish league with more goals than Marta from Brazil. She didn’t have the best World Cup, but for us to get exposure to her, it’s been really exciting. And then of course there are tons of players from Germany, Marta, and Kelly Smith from England. Of course Kelly played in the previous WUSA.

Player development continues to improve and the level of play I just think is impressive. A lot of credit to the WUSA as well as the leagues in Germany and Sweden for creating an environment of player development that has, in part, led to the competitiveness that we’re seeing.

Now the flip side of course of that is you see a team like Argentina and you say, “Gosh, those countries and FIFA need to do more to support their teams.” They need to put more money into those national team programs. They need to put more money into the development of women’s football. Even Brazil, which is a super talented team, how many games did they get before this World Cup to get ready? Not enough. There needs to be more onus on the federations and more involvement with FIFA to get those federations to stand up. Having said that, we’re still seeing a lot of wonderful, athletic ability, soccer ability and talent on so many of these teams.

That’s exciting to me and from a perspective of can we bring these players here? Yes, we think we can have competitive offers. We think that we can get creative with these athletes. We know a bit about the various ways they are compensated in their countries when they’re playing women’s football either professional or semi-professionally that may be a little different than how we would normally compensate players here in the United States. We’ve rolled up our sleeves, we continue to look at it and we think we’re going to have competitive salaries not only for domestic players but also for the international players. We’re excited to start those conversations and bringing those personalities into discussions. Our goal as a league is to have the best women’s soccer league in the world. We want the best players here, the best American players and the best foreign players playing on American soil.

How close are you guys to naming this league?

We’re getting pretty close actually. We’ve been in the process of doing research for several weeks and that research involves talking to fans through surveys. Fans have been looking at logos. They’ve been looking at potential names. We’ve been testing hardcore soccer fans and we’ve also been testing general sports fans. We’ve been testing with some members of the sponsorship community and of course our owners. We feel like we’ve touched a number of the key constituents. We can’t get everybody, but we’re in the process of the research. We’re learning some interesting things. We’re looking at the data and we hope that we can unveil a really cool logo. We’re researching the names too. WUSA is part of research. There are a lot of really strong positives and good will that still exist with that brand with respect to the product on the field and the quality of athletes, the quality of the soccer players and the experience for fans. That’s being tested as well as some other potential new names.

It’s exciting for us. This is a good example of now that we’re substantially funded; we can actually start to do the business of the sports league. This is one of the first things that we’ll be able unveil for our fans.

Stay tuned. More to come.