U.S. Soccer subsidizing individual players is a bad idea because the incentives are all screwed up. The 25 players with contracts feel their positions on the national team are assured, and why wouldn't they? Hardly anyone outside that group gets called up at all, no matter how good their club form is. I think NWSL should scrap the allocations altogether and instead subsidize each NWSL team an equal amount. All players should be on an equal playing field. Good league play = a USWNT call up. Enough of this artificial separation of players into two classes. All the current system does is make the allocated players feel they deserve their national team spots. Like I said before, bad incentives.
Hindsight is 20/20 and I think now most can see the flaws in the allocation system but during the formation of the league, they needed a way to get it off the ground and have the than USWNT stars enticed to play in the new league and the allocation system seemed a good idea at the time
Is different for women. Most national team players around the world can't live on salaries from clubs. Federations have to step in and pay or many girls will just move on to something else. Mexico and Canada have the same issue and their players get paid so much less.
USSF pays the Allocated players. Not NWSL. So to fix your post. You think USSF should just allocate cash to NWSL teams and let them figure out who they pay and how much right?
I disagree that the CBA is the culprit. While the CBA does restrict the size of the pool it pretty much just puts players in the butter zone for one year. So, if I dont think Alex Morgan did the job last year, I just dont pick up her contract for the next year. The problem lies with the decision making on who gets the full contracts for the next year. These decisions seem to be more business decisions than coaching decisions.
And then what if a big shoe or clothing sponsor says, we need Abby playing because she has a contract with us. We need her playing. Too bad Sarah Hagen, too bad Kealia O'hai, sorry, Abby has a contract with one of our big sponsors, you can't play yet, we need her for the money. Oh yeah, and we need her to draw the soccer moms and dads to our meaningless friendlies against 3rd teams where we will win 5-0 and Abby can pad her goal total.
I wish I could rep this a few thousand times. Until salaries for club play get to the point where players can make a living on that, the CBA and the contract system is a necessary evil.
Just because something has always been done one way, does not mean there is no other possible way to do it. USSF made $74,288,028 in 2014. Lets say USSF decided to be benevolent and subsidize the league so that the minimum salary would increase from $6000 (though I think it was one reported to be up to $6500 I'll stick with the original) to the 2015 poverty level for a single person at $11,770. That's an increase of $5770 per person (I am just increasing all salaries equally with the subsidy even though some people make more than the poverty line, but to be fair everyone gets it). There will be 139 rostered players that aren't allocated (assuming nobody else pulls a Wambach), so 139*5770 = $802,030 total. Surely USSF could afford $802,030 out of it's $74,288,028 to improve players lives... Now lets imagine another scenario where they put all the current USWNT salaries into one big pool for the NWSL to distribute. We know the top USWNT players can earn over $250,000, but let's just use $150,000 as an average. That's $6,300,000. Distribute that evenly among all the players (20*9) and that's a $35,000 subsidy per player... Imagine that. No extra USSF money needed and all players guaranteed a livable wage. Sounds like a utopian dream. But no, we wouldn't want to do that because we need to stick to the way things have always been... and we can't have the stars like Abby Wambach go hungry by only earning a minimum of $35,000 a year...
We dont know the top USWNT player make over $250,000. What we know that in perfect storm year a player could make that much. I think if u went with $125,000 as the average over the cycle ud be more in the ball park. And I dont think u'll slip turning the NWSL into a commune past the Economics professor who runs the USSF. I hope u didnt mention this in the commissioner job interview.
Well, Equalizer reported that Morgan earned $282,564, Sauerbrunn earned $274,871, and Rampone earned $272,913 back in 2012-2013. Which is why I said they can earn over $250,000. And that's the thing, those bonuses can remain in place so players playing in the WWC and Olympics can make additional money. So it's not like the USWNT player would be limited to just their NWSL salary. But that part of their salary would be depended upon playing in the NWSL and if they didn't play in the NWSL, it could be used on someone else. Just realized I made a mistake with my calculation, and multiplied the salary by all allocated players and not just US allocated players. That changes my previous sum from $6,300,000 to $3,750,000. And $28,333.33 per player. So not quite as much as I originally thought. Still, that is much better than the current minimum wage. That would end up being $3,125,000 total. And $17,361.11 per player. Again, still a lot better than the current minimum wage. Ooops! Now I know why I wasn't hired... Seriously though, it wouldn't have to be an everyone's equal sort of thing, rather my attempt was to show how the USWNT salaries could be used to bolster the NWSL salaries (they could rather raise the minimum wage and salary cap a little bit, and have it be a subsidy per team where the teams can decide how to distribute the extra money among their own contracts) as an example of not doing things the same old way. There are countless different ways things could be done if people were just creative and flexible about it. Unfortunately, you can't really describe USSF and the USWNT as either of those things.
It will be interesting to see what the salaries r in the next fiscal year (13-14) when there r no big roster bonuses and a lot fewer matches. I think that will give u a much better average to work with. It would also be interesting to see a breakdown of someone's pay...for example is that budget line item just pay or does it include things like housing allowances? I do agree that they need to divy up the pie a little better. In all sports the stars r disproportionally paid but in healthy sports no one suffers for it.
I'll say again what I've said before. Comparisons to the men are not valid. The points may or may not be right, but the USMNT, on a world level, is mediocre. The USWNT is excellent. And, men's club soccer is much better for its players economically than women's anywhere, it's not even remotely close. Women's club soccer sucks economically. Even MLS does not suck, by comparison. Again, the points may be right, but making comparisons to the men doesn't help make them.
I understand. But so what? Does that mean that Abby and Rapinoe and Rampone, etc., etc. have some kind of birth right or sense of entitlement to be employed and payed by the USWNT until Social Security retirement age? While a whole generation of young players have been overlooked, dissed, or ignored by the Ellis/Heinrichs regime, IMO. And yes, you can compare the US women's team and the US men's teams as to how they are run. Klinsmann runs the assylum, not the other way around. I am so sick of looking at some of these "veterans", I cannot wait to see their back-side as they leave the USWNT. And to your point about the USWNT being excellent, well, up till now they have had very little competition. It's easy to be excellent when you beat a poor Central American country 7-0. As other countries start investing into their women's program, we'll see how excellent they are.
US soccer is not going to turn over their money to NWSL to spend it as they see fit. No enterprise in this whole world would do that! What if NWSL decides to give a good chunk of money to 18 yr old Jane Doe because they like her, at the same time decides that Abby is worthless and makes her play for $6K/ year?
If US Soccer thought that was a good idea, they would have said so to NWSL. The problem is not because US Soccer allocate players and spend their money but rather whom they allocate and spend their money on.
Having said that, US Soccer may be constrained by the contracts they signed with the USWNT players. If you look at other sports, BB, football, ... teams may sign a player to a long term contract and find they are worthless toward the end of their contracts, they have to pay the players to terminate the contract early. US Soccer may not have the luxury/ money to do that. The contracts may not be too long and they may have to just ride it out.
I believe USWNT contracts r one year in length so they could do a partial house cleaning each year if they chose. The problems r 1) what's go for the NT isnt necessarily good for the club, (Example there may be a late match sub role for Boxx but that doesnt translate to how the Red Stars need to use an allocated player); 2) NWSL allocation should be tied to full team contracts.
If 18 year old Jane Doe is good enough to be on a NWSL team and not going to college, then 18 year old Jane Doe is likely another Lindsey Horan... and would require them to pay her a salary cap busting contract. OK, maybe not busting, but it would certainly be a huge portion of the salary cap... far above the current top contracts. If that's the best contract offer she gets, then that's what she's worth. More likely she would go sign with some European team with a rich owner who will overpay for what she's worth.
That's right according to an NWSL coach. These people are not chopped liver but experience coaches and former players themselves. Vlatko Andonovski was a professional player himself in Europe and here in the US, to give you an example. Where has Jill Ellis played? Heinrichs was a failure as a coach, now she is a failure as a"technical director". Ellis was a failure as a coach at UCLA with all those stars and access to recruiting stars and could not a win a National Championship on the college level over many years. I would trust an NWSL coaches opinion and evaluation of a player over Jill Ellis's or April Heinrichs anytime. In my opinion.
You guys again fail to understand how the world works. Even your most idiotic neighbor would not let you run the affairs in his home.
Something something about personal attacks? Also, to be fair, no-one was saying how things have fallen out doesn't make sense. Everyone knows that "the way the world works" is that the opinions of people in NT positions always trump the opinions of those in club positions - that's how it works in BroSo, too. All that MRAD was saying was that the logic behind that looks backward to most fans when you have NT people that are apparently less qualified than club people. I think that criticizing how the world does work and suggesting something that would be more reasonable shows quite the opposite of a "failure to understand".
Let's use another example. You have a dog that barks all night, a kid that misbehaves. Do you give your money to your neighbor and let him come in and kick the dog and slap your kid? No, you want deal with them even though it's clear that you are not good at that job. If you were, they would not be where they are.