This week we look at the legal impasse between the U.S. Soccer Federation and their Women's National Team's Player Union, the United Women's Soccer League's expansion to the western United States for 2016, and review Puerto Rico's roster for the CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Tournament that begins this week.
US SOCCER IN LITIGATION WITH THE WOMEN'S NATIONAL TEAM PLAYERS ASSOCIATION
This week it was revealed that the U.S. Soccer Federation has gone to federal court to resolve a dispute with the U.S. Women's National Team Players Association.
U.S. Soccer contends that their collective bargaining agreement with the players' union ends on December 31, 2016, while the Players Association believes it can terminate the agreement at any time during the last 11 months before it expires; furthermore they intend to cancel it on February 24, three days after the Olympic qualifying tournament ends. The Players Association leverage is the threat of a strike before the SheBelieves Cup from March 3-9 when England, France and Germany come to the Southeastern U.S. to play in a new, high profile friendly tournament.
The federation believes that they are threatening to violate a “no strike" clause ahead of the 2016 NWSL season and Olympic Finals in August, which the Americans are expected to qualify for, having won the Gold Medal in four of the five Olympics which have included women's soccer.
Under the existing collective bargaining agreement, U.S. Soccer names 24 team members under full-time contracts each year, with at least 18 making a Tier 1 salary of $72,000 annually, while Tier 2 players earn $51,000 and Tier 3 players $36,000 each. Those national team players who join NWSL sides earn an additional $46,000-$54,000, as the federation founded and operates the league. As part of the contract, non-national team players cannot earn more in NWSL than the national team players. U.S. National Team members each earned $75,000 for winning the 2015 Women's World Cup as well as $15,000 for qualifying for the tournament and the same amount for making the roster. The bonus structure is the same for this summer's Olympic Games.
They also share money from friendlies—including ticket sales--and each friendly win earns them $1,350 each. Besides the salary information, unfortunately the 217 page court filing revealed home addresses and email addresses for a number of players. Midfielder Megan Rapinoe, who is recovering from an ACL reacted to the news: “Naturally, we're upset. The players are very, very upset. We feel disrespected. We feel that our personal information, our privacy and our safety was handled frivolously and with real negligence. I doubt it was purposeful, but it's an egregious error, and one that's unacceptable…We're public figures. There have been issues of privacy and hacking and stalkers — it's very unsettling. We're upset. To know that someone could show up at your door? That's extremely unsettling, and it's something that you can't get back."
The U.S. Soccer Federation and their women's national team players have long had a contentious relationship over the years, including one brief strike in 2000 and threats of others at various times. One has to wonder if the source of this particular conflict was the badly mishandled cancellation of a Victory Tour match in Hawaii last December.
Rapinoe tore her ACL in a practice session on a grass field and the players refused to play the game on the artificial turf at Honolulu's Aloha Stadium. The U.S. Soccer Federation admitted that they had not conducted enough due diligence of the facility before the team arrived. Is the federation's lawsuit an attempt to short-circuit a power play by the Players Association, using the SheBelieves Cup as a bargaining chip? Will the federation-run NWSL season be used by players or U.S. Soccer as another bargaining chip? If national team players boycott the NWSL or the federation locks them out of the league, it will do irreparable damage to the most successful women's professional league in U.S. history after two previous failures.
What are the players' goals short term in 2016 and long term for the next contract? Whenever the new collective bargaining agreement is negotiated, it should be interesting to see the results and it will set a benchmark, not only for the Americans but for the rest of the global game. The Australian national team women struck after the Women's World Cup—driven in large part by the A-League men's contract--and Trinidad and Tobago's national women's team threatened to boycott a game against the U.S. late last year to send a message to their federation. The Americans as a group are the best paid and compensated players in the world, though their compensation is still vastly short of the men's national team players.
Other nation's look at them as a standard and their strategies over the next few months could be repeated as other national teams around the world lobby their federation for better funding and conditions.
UNITED WOMEN'S SOCCER LEAGUE ADDS 5 WESTERN TEAMS FOR 2016
The United Women's Soccer League, which was formed after the demise of the amateur W-League late last year, has announced that they are adding five western based franchises:
Colorado Pride – Denver, Colorado
Colorado Storm – Denver, Colorado
Houston Aces – Houston, Texas
Real Salt Lake Women – Salt Lake, Utah
Santa Clarita Blue Heat – Santa Clarita (Greater Los Angeles), California
The two Colorado sides and Santa Clarita were formerly members of the W-League while Houston Aces and Real Salt Lake were WPSL Elite sides, with Real Salt Lake winning the league crown in 2015 in their first season after moving up from the WPSL. Real Salt Lake, which fields a MLS and USL Pro Division team as well as a youth academy, has had discussions with NWSL about joining the professional top division in the near future.
Houston Aces had explored joining WPS and NWSL in the past, but the Houston DynamoMLS franchise established the NWSL Dash franchise in 2014. The Houston Aces were two-time National Finalists in the WPSL (2013-14) and won the 2013 USASA National Women's Open.
Founded in 2008, the Santa Clarita Blue Heat were 2011 Western Conference champions in the W-League while the two year old Colorado Pride made the W-League final last season, losing an exciting contest 2-1 to Washington Spirit Reserves.
The Western clubs join eight Eastern U.S. and Canadian franchises announced late in 2015:
New England Mutiny - Massachusetts
New York Magic – New York
Long Island Rough Riders – New York
TSF Academy – New Jersey
New Jersey Copa FC – New Jersey
Lancaster Inferno - Pennsylvania
Laval Comets - Quebec Canada
Quebec Dynamo - Quebec Canada
PUERTO RICO NAMES NATIONAL TEAM ROSTER FOR OLYMPIC QUALIFYING
Ahead of their first CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying tournament game versus Mexico in Frisco, Texas on February 10, Puerto Rico trained in Charlotte, North Carolina where they played Winthrop University of South Carolina (0-1)—the home of their starting goalkeeper Karly Gustafson--former W-League power Charlotte Eagles (0-4), NCAA power University of North Carolina (a tie) and St Andrews University of North Carolina (8-1).
Despite the 1-1-2 exhibition record, Puerto Rico has shown improvement recently and hopes are high for the squad despite facing the Americans, Mexico and Costa Rica in their group. Puerto Rico is coached by Garabet Avedissian, a 56 year old Uruguayan who guided Costa Rica to the 2015 Women's World Cup and their U-20 team to the 2014 FIFA U-20 World Cup, where they lost to France (5-1), Paraguay (2-1) and New Zealand (3-0).
Avedissian moved to Puerto Rico in January 2015 to head up the men's and women's national teams program—he had previously worked in Puerto Rico. In a short period of time, he led their national team to qualify for the final round of CONCACAF qualifying, losing the Caribbean championship to Trinidad and Tobago 1-0.
This is a landmark achievement for a program that had qualified for only one CONCACAF Gold Cup finals, in Canada back in 1998. Goalkeeper Nicole Rodriguez played at the University of Notre Dame and the University of Connecticut and now is in England with the University of Durham.
1 Karly Gustafson (Winthrop University)
2 Kelley Johnson (Agente Libre)
3 Victoria Barris (Quickstrike FC, New Jersey)
4 Viviana Fiol (Agente Libre)
5 Noelia Reyes (Bayamón FC)
6 Marie Ashley Johnson (Agente Libre)
7 Delyaliz Rosario (Romano SA)
8 Selimar Pagán (Bayamón FC)
9 Karina Socarrás (Bayamón FC)
10 Laura Suárez (Romano SA)
11 Annie Lee Méndez (Bayamón FC)
12 Alejandra Carrión (Gurabo FC)
13 Sandra Rolón (Romano SA)
14 Ashley Rivera (Romano SA)
15 Ángela Díaz (Caribbean Stars)
16 Marianée Zaragoza (Águilas de Añasco)
17 Adriana Font (Challengers FC)
18 Nicole Rodríguez (Durham University, England)
19 Stephanie Colón (Agente Libre)
20 María del Carmen Guerrero (Puerto Rico High Performance)
Next week, Women's Football Review will report from the 8 team CONCACAF Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Texas, from which two will advance to the Rio Olympics.
