CHICAGO - The National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) stated that they would honor the former commissioner of the league from 2017 to 2020 by having the players in the league do nothing for 45 minutes during the opening game of the 2020 season.

The former commissioner pictured here during the 2018 season.

“It’s important for us to show deference to the empty chair that we didn’t fill for almost three years and we feel this is the best way to do this,” stated NWSL director of marketing Susan Renken.

According to league sources, players will kick the ball to start the game and then look at one another for a few minutes before former managing director of operations and president Amanda Duffy appears on the jumbotron to encourage them to continue in a pre-recorded message streamed by go90 that will hang for 10 minutes, require a full reboot of the system and then fragment.

“We are excited to honor all the hard work put in by the commissioner over the past three years while we also prepare excitedly for the tenure of Lisa Baird,” stated Renken. “We hope that our fans will give a hearty round of applause during the half time transition period as we move forward into a new era.”

The Nutmeg News will have more on this as the Duffy go90 stream is geolocked for the Orlando game and the onsite technicians have to use a vpn to masquerade their traffic as coming from England in order to play the message from the official league website.