Boston Breakers sign Canadian international Adriana Leon

The Boston Breakers have signed 24-year-old Canadian forward Adriana Leon, the club announced via team press release.

“Adriana is keen to come back to Boston and prove herself back in the NWSL and also to get back into the Canadian Women’s National Team,” said head coach Matt Beard.

Leon returns to the Breakers roster after initially being allocated to the team in 2013 during the first season of NWSL. She made six appearances and scored one goal before being traded to the Chicago Red Stars for fellow Canadian allocation Carmelina Moscato, as old NWSL rules only allowed allocated-for-allocated trades. Leon had three goals and two assists in 25 appearances for Chicago before being traded to the Western New York Flash (now the North Carolina Courage after being bought by North Carolina FC ownership). Leon then hopped over to FC Zurich Frauen in the Swiss Nationalliga A.

Now Leon returns to Boston, eager to get back into the fray in what many consider to be a more physical league than those in Europe, while simultaneously getting back on Canadian WNT head coach John Herdman’s radar. Leon has been capped 38 times for Canada with five goals, and was at one time was part of Herdman’s testing to see who could create with and for talismanic Canadian goalscorer Christine Sinclair. She was a member of the 2015 CanWNT World Cup squad, where she mostly acted as an impact sub. But Leon didn’t quite click in the role, and was not on the 2016 Olympic squad, nor was she named as an alternate.

Leon didn’t particularly make an impression on her first go-round with Boston, but perhaps, like many other players from North America, a stint in Europe has done her some good. She’ll join a large contingent of attacking players and will hopefully provide a good counterpart for Natasha Dowie, who is expected to be one of the central focuses of Boston’s attack.