The picture is slowly coming into focus.

After a trickle of information for the past five months, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) took a huge step Friday afternoon, announcing the destinations of the 55 subsidized players from the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. This gives us the clearest snapshot to date of what the league will look like when it kicks off in April… and it looks exciting.

Portland are the early winners, snagging young American stars Alex Morgan, Tobin Heath, and Rachel Buehler as well as Canadian veterans Christine Sinclair and Karina LeBlanc. They were also allocated Mexican players Luz Saucedo and Marlene Sandoval. Morgan had a breakout year for the U.S. in 2012, scoring 28 goals and 21 assists, while Heath is widely regarded as a future anchor in the USWNT’s midfield and Buehler has been holding down a U.S. central defense spot for the better part of four years. Meanwhile, Sinclair is a Canadian legend, with 143 career goals and 190 appearances for Canada.

Thorns head coach Cindy Parlow-Cone expressed enthusiasm for the allocated Thorns, but tamped down the already-high expectations. “I’m very excited for our seven picks that we have,” she said. “It’s a great foundation for us. Is it time to hand us the hardware? No. We’re not planning on playing 7 v. 11. We need to fill in with some core players and hopefully build a championship team around these core seven players.

Many expected University of Portland alum Megan Rapinoe, to join the Thorns after her springtime stint with Lyon, but she was allocated to the Seattle Reign along with goalkeeper Hope Solo and forward Amy Rodriguez, setting up what many already anticipated to be a spirited rivalry between Portland and Seattle.

U.S. Soccer originally planned to subsidize 24 spots in the league for U.S. players. That figure, however, dropped to 23 when Meghan Klingenberg opted to stay in Sweden with her club, Tyreso, meaning that one team would be allocated two U.S. players instead of three. That team, the Western New York Flash, will be fine because they ended up with Rochester native Abby Wambach, fresh off her FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year win, and veteran midfielder Carli Lloyd.

“My guess is nobody in Rochester is too upset about having only two National Team players when it's Carli [Lloyd] and Abby,” said U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati in a conference call.

The only remaining member of the 1999 Women’s World Cup team, Christie Rampone, was allocated to New Jersey franchise, Sky Blue FC, along with Kelley O’Hara and goalkeeper Jill Loyden. Despite her age, Rampone is still one of the speediest members of the USWNT and provides a unique level of leadership to the club. O’Hara spent most of her college and WPS days playing midfield and forward but was converted to defense on the national team.

Around the rest of the league, the Boston Breakers ended up with speedy youngster Sydney Leroux, hard-nosed Heather O’Reilly, and veteran defender Heather Mitts, a combination that makes for one of the quicker teams in the league. Chicago will have a strong defense, with veteran defensive midfielder Shannon Boxx, defender Amy LePeilbet, and newcomer Keelin Winters. Winters is one of two players that has not been capped by the U.S. senior national team.

Ali Krieger, Lori Lindsey, and Ashlyn Harris are all headed back to the nation's capital to play for the Washington Spirit. The trio all played for previous iterations of the D.C. franchise. Lindsey was a member of the WUSA’s Washington Freedom in 2003 as well as the WPS’s Washington Freedom from 2006-09. Krieger played for the Freedom briefly in 2009, while Harris had nine appearances with the team in 2010.

New franchise FC Kansas City received Midwestern natives midfielder Lauren Cheney and defender Becky Sauerbrunn along with goalkeeper Nicole Barnhart.

While info regarding the league was previously coming in drops, it’s now flooding in. Next Friday is the NWSL College Draft where each team will flesh out its roster with four college players, but Gulati stressed the importance of today’s announcement. “There is a lot of information here and a number of pieces still outstanding,” he said. “Having gone through this 17 years ago [with MLS], there were a lot of moving parts then, and there are now. We’ll have information of it and a steady flow of it over the next few weeks. We’ve got coaches that have been hired, general managers being put in place and everything will fall into place. We’re certainly operating in real time, but today is an important part.”

Maura Gladys, a featured ASN columnist, works in production for KICKTV. She also runs the goalkeeping blog All You Need Is Glove.