After several months of speculation and increasingly solid hints from head coach Matt Beard, Whitney Engen has confirmed she will not play in NWSL in 2017.
Engen joined the Boston Breakers for the 2016 season, brought in by Beard after they’d already established a working partnership at Liverpool in the FAWSL. She immediately established herself as a team leader and was given the captain’s armband.
But at the end of the season came bad news: Engen was released from the US women’s national team by Jill Ellis, a move that Engen said “devastated” her.
Beard was never very up on Engen returning to the team after that; in repeated interviews he also mentioned how much getting cut from the WNT hurt Engen.