News: Jermaine Jones criticizes the USWNT equal pay and says Alex Morgan too outspoken

Good for a USWNT game. A bit disappointing considering the timing and attempted hype.
(Braces to dodge political arrow throwing).

 

Guys, we shouldn't be debating whether or not the US or Mexico men should or shouldn't have qualified. The whole point on this thread is, unknowledgeable women's fans mocking and putting down the US men for failing to qualify in they claim a "weak" CONCACAF. Hey, it happens. Look at Italy and Holland. Does that mean their women are better than their men?
We should easily agree CONCACAF is a challenging road, at least on the men's side.

 

You know Italy and the Dutch do blame themselves right? Their women did do a better job than their men in THEIR competition, why is it a question? If the women fans blame the MNT for not winning the WC, that's unknowledgeable, but asking the men to qualify for WC is not something wrong.

The men going through CONCACAF<<<The women winning the WWC, seriously.

 

There are 3.5 spots in the HEX and it is a round-robin, the US only needs to beat T&T, Panama and Honduras to make it into the WC. Why would anyone think it's more difficult than winning the WWC by beating all the good women teams based on the player pool?

 

I was kinda hoping they'd match the 44K they got in the first match after the 2015 World Cup, in Pittsburgh, but as @McSkillz pointed out a few posts back, this match didn't have quite as much time for hype buildup (August 16 vs August 3) and did face a few other headwinds, relatively speaking. Based on her accounts, the marketing for USWNT matches leaves much to be desired [and many sure-thing tickets on the table], if this game was any indication, even considering the limited time they had to build hype in this case.

An interesting experiment would be for U.S. Soccer to make the exact same marketing investment and effort in promoting a USMNT match and a USWNT match scheduled around the same period in the same city, in the same venue, timed to coincide with a similar level of potential event competition, and see which match [i.e. team] draws a larger crowd. Of course, they'd have to do that a couple of times to get a decent sample, and hope that they could minimize the interference of uncontrolled variables like the weather.

Comparing the USMNT to the USWNT or any men's national team to its counterpart women's national team and trying to demonstrate objectively that one team is "better than" the other is obviously more complicated than it might sound. Even a stark contrast in analogous results can be deceptive due the context in which each team plays. But from an outsider's perspective, the logic of the simplistic approach can't be completely dismissed either. I imagine that at least on paper, given the choice between getting to watch back-to-back reigning World Cup Champions play in person would be a little more enticing to the average person than getting to watch a team that, with a World Cup berth on the line, failed to simply not lose to the national team of a country with 0.4% of this country's population. Never mind the USMNT's other notable slip-ups earlier in the Hexagonal, the Confederations Cup qualifier, the Gold Cup, etc.; that is not an easy offense to forgive, even for the most ardent supporters, and even two years later.

I'm sure that qualifying in CONCACAF isn't as much of a cakewalk as many fans believe, even for a perfectly competent national team. And yes, other nations like Italy have quite recently failed to qualify in ways that have stunned and disappointed its fans equally. Be that as it may, this nation's fans expect United States national teams to demonstrate American exceptionalism, not American mediocrity [or less than mediocrity]. The best teams are supposed to overcome adversity, to welcome it as a chance to become stronger, not to fold under its pressure and then console themselves with the knowledge that they're not alone in having come up short. I don't think the common perception that the USMNT is more prone to do the latter is by any means an entirely unfair one. In general it's just troubling to think how much more often that expression "Hey, it happens" is used pertaining to the USMNT than to the USWNT, especially considering that teams tend to repeat failures when they low-key write them off as misfortunes rather than truly learning from them. That doesn't necessarily make the USWNT the "better team" but I would say it makes them the team that's a lot easier for a fan to get behind.

I hope you don't consider any of this post "political arrow-throwing", because I make it a policy to stay out of politics in person and especially on this forum.


(This thread needed at least one movie reference, right?)

 

I'm subscribed to every thread on this board. I forgot this was one of those threads I had no interest in taking part of because the entire thing is so stupid. We're talking about ********ing Jermaine Jones...

Anyways... I read that post, forgot everything and had to post it.

Also, I was lonely on this board being the only person who actually mentioned anything during US the game yesterday.

 

What the hell is this? Some sort of riddle? An incantation? Will I be turned into a newt?

 

Why are responding to arguments that haven't been made?

 

The problem with that supposition is that historical attendance figures don't bear that out. At all. Similar with television ratings.

I know this is broken-record territory, but Beau Dure.

P.S. "American exceptionalism" has a much more loaded, less frivolous meaning than "does really really good at sportsball". That was not a great call.

 

I stand by my decision. In this context it merely means that representatives of the United States, even in a setting as relatively frivolous as a football pitch, should strive to be better than its competition and not take solace in the fact that other countries make the same mistakes they do.

 

Which is again where the comparative marketing investment (quantitatively and qualitatively) by U.S. Soccer would be interesting to look at. Also bear in mind that women's football is still a relatively new phenomenon in the U.S. and that the the USMNT has a 72-year head start on the USWNT culturally. My supposition was, once again, "at least on paper", all other things being equal.

 

That's quite a conclusion. If you could come within thousand miles of proving that, you'd have won their lawsuit.

Oh, I remember this argument. It's the argument soccer fans in the US have used since time immemorial. It's also a bit...twisty of the truth...when you consider that 50 of those 72 years were spent with no soccer culture to speak of.

 

I don't substantially disagree with you on either point. To state definitively that the marketing and historical factors put the USMNT at a distinct and insurmountable advantage over their counterparts would be a difficult case to litigate with the evidence currently at our disposal, but I don't think it hurts to simply consider them. That they bear absolutely no relevance whatsoever might be even harder to prove.

 

How would one go about proving this? Sure it's harder. But it's not an affirmative argument, to say nothing of its use or employment by anyone.

 

Now this I will revise to the more concise "average".

 

Oh, good! Job done!

 

Due to both the late hour and the fact that the match was virtually meaningless I watched the next day rather than live. While I am a fan of US Soccer I just cannot seem to get excited by the totally meaningless "Victory tour."

I will watch, and participate in threads here live, if the games are convenient to me but I will not be going out of my way to watch at all. I will say that most of the team looked about as interested in playing the match as I was in watching it.

 

even tho they make no money on the womens side?

 

I'm not shrugging off the men's failure to qualify. I'm just making the point that it also doesn't mean the "suck." They failed to qualify, that's all. It's going to happen sometimes in your history. It happened between 1954-1986. Then we decided soccer mattered and we weren't just sending college or indoor all star teams to the next qualifier.
While Americans were embarrassed by the loss to T&T a couple of years ago, meaning no Russia, every one of my European friends said don't be embarrassed. You can't expect to make every world cup. It's just tough break. All the big European teams have missed the world cup (except Germany), and Argentina and Uruguay have needed intercontinental playoffs to make it.
Thing is, as Americans, we DO expect it, now despite 1954-86.
Women's soccer is not yet at a point where you will have a surprise failed qualification.

 

US men could claim lack of marketing for it's games many times over the years. The women are just finding this out. They aren't getting any lesser treatment. Once again, they think they are. But any historical perspective from the women's team is lacking, as usual. And really, they don't care, as long as they advance their politics.

 

Yeah, marketing now is no great shakes. I can't tell you the number of USMNT friendlies I missed the last 4 years or so, coinciding with a serious downtick in my personal devotion to hunting that information down. BigSoccer is a rare place where most everyone knows when and how to get the information. I'm an avid, avid fan, and I stopped hunting (visiting the US Men section here) for non-qualies/tournaments and got caught out a number of times.

Imagine what a less connected fan (my dad, who LOVES the USMNT - he's relied on me for years to know when to watch, despite him being handy with technology) goes through.

(Now this is mostly CONCACAF's issue, but...) I can't tell you how many people in and around NE Ohio had no idea the US was playing in Browns Stadium this June. It wasn't until we got to Northcoast Harbor area when we saw real evidence (and there was a lot...tons of people walking to the game and heavy traffic). And that was about 27,000, lowest USMNT attendance at that facility (about what I predicted though, given Couva, etc.)

 

No, not talking about YOUR politics. Just a certain aimless rant earlier on this thread.
One could argue that the shorter time ( Aug. 3) is actually an advantage, as the women's team fades from the public conscious, which is typical of a team that is in the spotlight for a fleeting time twice every four years.

 

In 2010, the USWNT had to beat Costa Rica in a one off before a two game series with Italy to qualify. Things happen.

 

I don't disagree. However, the Genesis of the argument for "equal pay" that the US women's team is making is they win world cups and gold medals, while the men don't. That simplified argument equates the two, right there.
My point is that the two are not equal. Anyone who knows anything about soccer knows that.
But politics does not require depth in thinking.

 

The US men also have an issue of ticket prices currently being overpriced, especially for friendlies for a team not preparing for a WC. This likely diminished attendance for many of their matches the past 3 years. Which, coincidentally, is the time period we are talking about that the US women made about $1.5 million more revenue than the men, for the first time.
So, US Soccer's "bad marketing" is not restricted to the women. They are an equal opportunity poor marketer.