Stream the 2011 WPS Draft.

And if streaming doesn’t work, an audio broadcast would be okay too. The fate of a team’s season could be decided in a matter of seconds. It’s exciting stuff and fans (particularly college fans) would appreciate being part of it.

Cultivate the Philadelphia/Boston rivalry.

So this may not actually be a bona fide rivalry but who cares. Professional sports leagues are known for manufacturing drama. WPS needs narratives to make it interesting. Aside from FCGP, these two teams were the best in the league and they both happened to be underdogs. The A-Rod/DiCicco storyline may be obsolete now but that’s okay. How about Danesha Adam’s clear hand ball that eliminated the Breakers in the Super Semifinal or the Magnusdottir/K. Smith tussles? Or the fantastic matches these two teams have produced?

Fund bus trips for away fans to travel to these games. There’s nothing better than a fierce rivalry. And two awesome long-range goals from full-backs.

More female coaches, please.

This is less of a suggestion than an indictment. There are no female head coaches in the league. WPS has had three female head coaches in the past two seasons. Only one has actually made it through an entire season. Two have gotten sacked and one resigned.

This probably speaks to the dearth of quality of female coaches out there but that’s a topic for another day. (For the record, the Frauenbundesliga only has three female head coaches out of 12 teams and two of them are leading newly-promoted sides.)

Emma Hayes was a consultant for the Washington Freedom this season but Steven Goff reported that she had “returned to Europe” and team GM Mark Washo isn’t sure of her coaching intentions. so who knows if she’s interesting in taking the helm of a WPS club again. The launch of FA Super League in March may also complicate matters.

Are there any female coaches at the NCAA level that would be interested in making the leap? Are there any 99ers be up for the task?

Try calculating possession stats.

WPS has always been a really great record keeper of various statistics. But keeping track of possession percentages makes recapping games easier if you know that a team owned, say, 65% of possession. If UEFA can tab possession statistics for a U-17 Women’s Championship between Liechtenstein and Kazakhstan there’s little reason why a WPS PR person can’t.

If European players are heading back home, look elsewhere.

With WPS’ French contingency now gone, will any other European players follow? Holmfridur Magnusdottir, Laura Kalmari, Laura del Rio, Daphne Koster, Veronica Boquete and Ifeoma Dieke won’t be appearing in next summer’s Women’s World Cup (their national teams didn’t qualify) so they won’t have that excuse. We’ll know about Johanna Rasmussen, Patrizia Panico and Ramona Bachmann next week. But for players like Lene Mykjaland, Caroline Seger, Sara Larsson, Kelly Smith, Alex Scott, Anita Asante, Karen Carney and Katie Chapman, the temptation of playing alongside national team players in a World Cup year might be too hard to resist. And then there’s the launch of the FA Women’s Super League but that’s for a different day.

It might be time to expand the horizons to continents such as Asia, Africa and South America. Asia and Africa have taken the largest strides in youth development of any continent as of late. The all-Asian 2010 U-17 Women’s World Cup Final and Nigeria’s excellent run in the 2010 U-20 Women’s World Cup are evidence of this. Why not try to continue scouting on such shores? The Boston Breakers’ interest in South Korean wunderkind Ji So-Yung is a terrific start. (She’s close to making her decision, apparently)

WPS has gotten some good service out of Asian players (specifically Japanese players). Women’s soccer has developed rapidly in Asia over the past five years. There might be a gold mine of untapped talent.

World Cup qualifying for Africa and South America kickoff October 28 and October 31 respectively. Coverage of these events simply does not exist so it may take some extra effort to scout players. Shek Borkowski has a list of players to watch in the Africa Women’s Championship. There will also inevitably be diamonds in the rough. There could be the next Genoveva Anonma perhaps. Anonma rose to prominence in the 2008 Women’s African Football Championship. She led Equatorial Guinea to the title, beating South Africa 2-1. She was the tournament’s top player, scoring six goals. It was a dream debut for the 19 year-old. She was signed by Frauenbundesliga club USV Jena and scored an unbelievable 25 goals in 30 games last season. She’s essentially kept the club out of the relegation zone this season with her team-leading six goals in seven games. That’s all 2/3rds of the goals her team has scored so far The 21 year-old is already one of the most prolific goal scorers in the women’s game. And she’s from Equatorial Guinea.

There has never been an African player in WPS with the exception of Faith Ikidi whose player rights rest with the Chicago Red Stars. Ikidi currently plays for Linkopings in the Damallsvenskan. The talent is out there, it’s just a matter of finding it.

Fix the playoff schedule, not the system.

The system in itself is fine. The regular season champion should get rewarded for their efforts. It also creates a de facto storyline for an upset in the Championship game. But is forcing a team to play two matches in one week before making a cross-country flight competitively legitimate? WPS obviously had no control over the fact that both games went to extra time. Again, scheduling is going to be an issue with the World Cup but would it be possible to reserve two weeks of playoffs before the WPS Championship game? The First Round could be the weekend immediately after the conclusion of the regular season, then the Super Semifinal a week after and finally the Championship. The regular season champion would still get a bye and the last team standing in the playoffs would still have to contend with fatigue that comes from playing two extra matches. Compressing the playoffs into one week is a little unfair.

Now on to the host site. With the expansion of the Western New York franchise, we can possibly see some re-jiggering of the WPS Championship location. With five of the eight WPS franchises based in the East Coast, perhaps an East Coast neutral site or an NCAA tournament-type “festival” (which hearkens back to WUSA) would be considered. Personally, there’s nothing wrong with having the regular season champion get the right to host the event but others might disagree. And besides, there’s a 62% chance that an East Coast team will win the regular season anyway.

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