Short takes
• Carli Lloyd, the best women's soccer player in the world, will miss the beginning of the NWSL season to play in England for Manchester City. This means the league will start 2017 without its two most recognizable players in Lloyd and Alex Morgan, who will be playing in France for Paris St.-Germain until midsummer. It's yet another offseason blow for the NWSL, which is struggling to keep its best, and most marketable, players.
• Interesting move by Univision, the Spanish-language television network that will stream English-language broadcasts of select Liga MX games on Facebook for the rest of the 2017 spring season. The first one is Saturday (see the Weekend Watch Guide). It should be a good opportunity for fans who want to check out the region's best league, but couldn't get past the Spanish-language commentary.
• The Philadelphia Union is hiring a "Chief Tattoo Officer" in charge of tattooing interested team staff and players and, presumably, becoming the point person for fans who want to ink the team's branding onto their bodies. It's likely the first position of its kind for any soccer team anywhere. With the sport's younger, cooler demographic in America, you can bet other teams are considering a similar move.
