The Biden ass-kissing has begun. Featuring Pro/Rel zealots. Please take a look at how Soccer United Marketing and the USSF interact financially... the effects that it has on the decision making process and the regulatory capture that has happened. #ReformUSSF— Chris Kessell (@THEChrisKessell) May 2, 2020
Great idea. Let's have the Federal government take charge of US Soccer. Are you, literally, insane? And someone needs to tell Joe that the US committed, by contract, to participation in the WC as part of the bid process. All bidder governments are required to do so. They can't back out of the deal just because Meghan Rapinoe is unhappy. In any case, since Joe has sworn to only serve one term, he won't be President on 2026 anyway. This is reckless, silly talk.
I really think that an underrated segment of this whole fight is the rise of MLS. Since nowadays, if you're playing a real role for the US, you are pretty much guaranteed to be making six figures at a minimum in MLS, there's no reason to worry about any sort of security from the USSF, since you already have that. The women are in the exact opposite position, where their NWSL salary is directly tied to their status on the USWNT. My position has always been that the growth of their league is what will garner the women what they want out of all of this, not trying to bleed the Fed. The early men understood that, and went to great lengths to try and build the game here. I don't see any of that same attitude in this set of the women. As someone up thread stated, they even have seen some benefits, as a lot of them have coaching, GM, and commentary positions. In some cases, they even built a league for their own children (hello, Ian Harkes). It may be possible that we don't celebrate those guys enough for that. The one thing that may be a positive for the women from MLS's growth is that the men will demand better and better travel accommodations from USSF as they get them from the league, as demonstrated in the shiny new CBA. Almost by default, what the Fed gives to the men, they will have to give to the women as well.
Fascinating that Pro/Rel zealots advocate for authoritarianism in US Soccer now. Not saying that the status quo is the preferable choice for US Soccer, even though pretty much the "Old Guard" of US Soccer like Gulati, Flynn, left to greener pastures. But people need to remove their rose-tinted glasses at some point.
Hold on, cowboy. You've got a source for this? He's done something extremely unusual in modern politics, in that he has speculated about serving only one term before he's even elected. TBH I don't think that's happened in US politics since Polk made a promise to serve one term. (I could be wrong about that.) But contemplating it is one thing. I'm 99.9% sure he hasn't "sworn" to do this. You really should retract this unless you can back it up.
What sort of statement do you expect a politician to have on this? It is low hanging fruit that makes for a good sound bite or a good look. If you ran this past every politician out there how many would say "well, you know the court says they didn't have a case for equal pay so I'm siding with the courts on this"? It is a political statement that will never come to pass but sounds good to your audience. It is a lot like Trump's statements that he'd investigate Hillary if he won. It sounds good to the base but it is ignored once the person is in office. Pretty much this. I'm all for equal pay, but I've always understood that pay is much more than a paycheck. If I get paid 3k a month and a co-worker gets paid 2k but gets their 1.5k mortgage paid for, well, I'm going to think they get paid more than I do. But that part of the equation is never brought into the light during the talks on the subject. Nor do they ever bring up the efforts they have taken to keep players who aren't on the USWNT off the USWNT. But the straw that broke my back was realizing that pretty much all the financial numbers that they used in their argument were wrong. It took my about 10 minutes to look at what they wrote and to compare it to the earnings statement from the USSF. When your argument is supported by numbers that I can easily disprove then, well, I wonder about your argument quite a bit. Then when Carli Lloyd wrote an op-ed that used those numbers to explain why they were fighting the good fight, well, that ended my support for them. Haven't watched a single game since then
These are all great points, but the difference to me is that I see the Women’s National Team as too valuable to just blow off. Soccer wise, they killed it at the last World Cup. Their problem solving skills related to non-soccer issues? Poor to the degree that one only sees it when a group are operating in a bubble, re-enforcing each other’s faulty unconscious assumptions. They still do a lot for the game with their play, but this is clearly something that they need to grow out of. What will be interesting for me will be to see how long this lasts. It is very obvious to those of us who follow the game, but how long before the press and general public start to have an “emperor’s new clothes” kind of moment in regard to their “equal pay” argument? They can’t blame it on sexism with Parlow in charge of US Soccer and it isn’t a difficult problem for Parlow to explain to the die hards trying to support the team at all costs. This might expose to the general public what the book about the Women’s National Team exposed to a smaller audience (and most people in this thread already knew) - that the culture of their team is a volatile, primadona, cut throat culture where players are constantly trying to get the coach fired behind his/her back no matter how well he/she is doing. I’ve been around long enough to have seen this in the men’s game forever so I don’t mind. I just think that this could signal the end of the honeymoon type of relationship between the women and a lot of casual observers who don’t care as much about the game. The “fight for equal pay” has been very disingenuous on the part of the players. I don’t think they are evil, just unaware of the cost when people realize how sloppy and convenient they were in portraying their “fight”. Putting the NWSL at risk is the one lasting legacy about all of this for me. That is simply not okay and there should be repercussions from the general population for that.
"Retract" ?? Are you drinking again? You can point out when I miss the mark if you want. I've misremebered stuff before, likely will again ( although I have yet to reach Joe Biden "Roosevelt addressing the nation on TV after the 29 market crash" levels of reality disconnect. Yet.) But demanding a retraction? My, my, arent we just full of ourselves. A mea culpa is the best youre gonna do here, even when you put it in bold lettering. Take a breath.
I'm pretty sure whether Biden has pledged to only serve one term has nothing to do with the case. So, move along people.
Here's a more reasonable take: https://sports.yahoo.com/uswnt-should-focus-equal-pay-fight-on-fifa-not-us-soccer-002314466.html And from Yahoo Sports of all places too......
Good find. From that article that really is where the rubber meets the road on this issue: U.S. Soccer offers a full-time salary to all women’s national team players and pays their salaries in the National Women’s Soccer League. It also funds the NWSL’s central office. Without the support, there is no NWSL. The women sought this in their contract. None of it occurs with the men because they earn so much more as professional players that it isn’t needed. That’s a luxury the women don’t enjoy but U.S. Soccer tries to make up. Should it also make up the FIFA shortfalls? U.S. Soccer turns over 100 percent of FIFA bonus money to the women. (It would give just 60 percent of the same type of money to the men’s team.) France gave its men’s team just 30 percent of its 2019 bonus pot. The problem is the same sport is being played under two different business environments. Men’s soccer is the most popular game on earth. Women’s soccer isn’t. The USWNT is the engine that is pulling it to increased profitability, but it’s got a long way to go. The USMNT, meanwhile, is the square-wheeled caboose being dragged by other countries into piles of cash.
There are two things going on here, what the USSF is legally required to do and what the smart thing to do is. Legally I always thought the USWNT was on shaky ground and were trying to force the USSF to capitulate through a PR storm before the courts knocked them back. The fact that the USWNT players were getting subsidized salaries and such meant that the legal argument had a huge hurdle to climb. That said, the smart thing for the USSF to do would have been (and still is) to get in front of it by announcing all non-salary expenditures would be leveled between the MNT and WNT. Travel, accommodations, medical care, etc., to the best extent possible, wouldn't differentiate between the WNT and MNT. In the grand scheme of things the costs for that aren't a big deal and taking all that off the table goes a long way into taking away a point that could be argued, makes the USSF look good in PR, and is the right thing to do.
As far as I know, they mostly are. Most of the fight has always been over bonuses and actual pay. The last time I looked at the CBA I remember it had full insurance, housing allowance, paid leave for child care, and day care allowances. I don't believe that the men's team gets any of that. The financials for the year that this was submitted to the court had the USWNT's non-game day expenses at around 5 times that of what the USMNT was. Evening that stuff out would actually lead to a greater disparity in overall pay between the two. The USSF was never going to win any sort of PR game because they are a corporation and the USWNT is a group of women claiming they are getting paid less than the men. You just aren't winning that battle no matter how many facts you throw out there or what you do, particularly when the other side is hell bent on ignoring that aspect of it and keeps the focus on one thing. Are newspapers or sports sites going to run articles with interviews of the head of USSF? Not likely. But an article with "World Cup Hero" whoever? Hell yeah. And if they bring up the pay fight is the interviewer going to ask about the non-pay elements of the CBA? No. This fight was always going to be a PR disaster for the USSF because of the nature of the fight. Pretty much no corporation ever comes out of battle that is looked at as sexist. For the most part people are so invested in one side (it has to be sexist and they deserve the same money as men) or the other (women should be lucky that they get paid to play a sport at all) that there is very little room for people to actually see anything other than what they want to see. And if anyone brings up facts that are counter to the person's point of view it is either dismissed out of hand or someone takes it to the extreme, which causes the other side to just dig their heels in. I mean, they have basically lost two court battles against the USSF and has that swayed public opinion at all? Now people just blame the courts in addition to the USSF instead of actually questioning if the USWNT was right at all.
Are you, SuperDave, 99.9% sure that the point is "swearing"? Ol' Uncle Joe could officially swear, upon a stack of Qurans, Book of Mormons, Talmuds, Little Red Books,and a host of other Holy Molies, before all the journos you'd wish to muster................ but would he remember it the day after tomorrow? Can you swear on that? Call me "much more than 0.01% " sceptical.
FIFA says all sorts of stuff because, in most of the world, they can get away with it. However, when they try to pull their "mightier than thou" act against bigger countries or economic powers they get smacked down. See the FIFA corruption case here in the US or the Bosman ruling by the EU. Bullying the Nigerian government may work, not so much here.
And another casualty from the fallout of the misguided defense: https://www.yahoo.com/sports/us-soc...-misogynistic-equal-pay-filing-153117508.html
Meanwhile, Wynalda is still talking shit about everyone. The only person- in the end - that split the vote was Kyle Martino. Posing as an “agent of change” but really becoming the most detrimental to the cause. His actions were unforgivable https://t.co/mowMvCB1as— Eric Wynalda (@EricWynalda) May 16, 2020 and 1263612842449571840 is not a valid tweet id