BOS Nation FC general manager outlined vision for the club, building a roster under the new NWSL CBA

Boston’s NWSL expansion team, which (for the moment) remains named BOS Nation FC, introduced its first general manager on Tuesday in a virtual press conference.

Domènec Guasch, formerly the Head of Management for Women’s Football for FC Barcelona, called Boston an “amazing city with great culture,” adding that he thinks it will be an attractive destination for players from around the world.

Guasch, who joined Barcelona in 2011 and helped oversee the women’s team’s professionalization in 2015, noted that the prospect of building a new club from the ground up is a “challenge I want to embrace.”

One of the major issues for Guasch, alongside the basic hurdles he needs to clear regarding hiring a technical staff (and head coach), will be dealing with the National Women’s Soccer League’s (NWSL) new collective bargaining agreement.

In it, the CBA eliminates both the expansion draft and rookie draft systems (which exist in every other major North American sports league). In addition, the players have been granted full free agency, and must now give consent to any trade.

While this will be a monumental shift for existing NWSL front offices, who are entrenched in the rules of the older system, it could prove to be an advantage for Guasch. His background is aligned much more closely with the new rules, as those are already the prevailing conditions for many league around the world (including Barcelona).

“I think that’s a step ahead to the growth of the game, right?” Guasch said of the new agreement. “The CBA ultimately [empowers] the players to make their decisions on their lives. That’s a great step for this league and women’s football in general. It’s like this in other parts of the world, and now it’ll be like this here as well. And obviously with that, we have to create an even more attractive club for the players.”

“It’s a landscape that’s changing,” he added in response to a later follow-up question, “it’s changing towards a model that I’m more used to. So in that regard, I feel comfortable.”

While Guasch was unable to say exactly when the club will begin signing players, he outlined his goal for the roster.

“I want to build, first of all, a balanced roster,” he explained. “Obviously that doesn’t mean that everybody will be equal, because we know that different players have different talents.

“In any starting team, you always look for that player,” he said of potentially signing a bigger name addition. “But to me, the star [player] that I envision here might not be the most talented player, but a player that can be a great leader on and off the field and help us mentor the young players.”

Stylistically, Guasch described an overarching strategy befitting his Barcelona background.

“We want to build an attacking team,” Guasch said. “A team that’s able to be the protagonist in the game, that creates many chances, that’s playing close to the opposing team’s goal.

“That not only means obviously having the ball and trying to create those chances through a fast game, but also pressing high, high-intensity throughout the game, high competitiveness.”

He added that he wants to emulate Barcelona’s top-to-bottom competitiveness, to “take every situation as a competition and try to win every situation of the game.”

While larger questions will continue to dominate discussion of BOS Nation for the foreseeable future — controlling owner Jennifer Epstein deflected a query about a recent Boston Globe report in which the proposed 2026 start date at White Stadium was called into question — the fundamental hire of a front office figurehead from one of Europe’s most successful teams is a coup for the Boston leadership.

“I will say what stood out about [Domènec] and made us believe that he is the right person to build the sport side of the club is [that] we see that he’s a really dynamic leader, that he has an exceptional ability to identify and nurture championship-caliber talent,” said Epstein. “He brings amazing experience with one of the best clubs in the world. When we spoke with him, we really sensed and believed in his ability to lead from the ground up, which is obviously critical as our first hire to lead the sporting side of our club.”

As for the team name itself, which was largely panned following a problematic rollout (and which the team has admitted might still change), Epstein acknowledged that it isn’t a settled question.

“We have certainly heard a lot of feedback on the launch,” she noted, “and are going through a deliberate process to continue to seek out and listen and reflect upon this input from our fans and our supporters and other advisors. Really, we’re looking to gain a diverse range of voices and perspectives, and make some decisions. Certainly we’ll share more about this — about the process and any direction we go — in the near future.”