When the U.S. Women’s soccer team scored 13 goals against Thailand in their opening game at the World Cup, I celebrated along with them. Goal number 13 was no less exciting than the first. I was happy for the players who were able to score their first goal in a World Cup. I was happy for the veterans seeking to show the world that they can still play and that their age is irrelevant to their abilities, and I was happy for those on the bench being included in Megan Rapinoe’s goal celebration. It would frustrate me if I was Mallory Pugh and I just scored the 12th goal of the game, and the coach glared at me from the sidelines and told me I’m not allowed to celebrate. "Act like you've been there before." That is difficult when half of the team literally hasn't been there before. Mallory Pugh is the youngest member on the team, and this is her first World Cup goal. Who has the right to tell her that she can’t celebrate that accomplishment, or has to subdue her natural emotions simply because she scored later in the game? Pundits apparently. The outrage was swift. Then the backlash against the outrage. There’s a lot of outrage out there, and a sort of false pride that goes along with being the first to act outraged by something that other people maybe hadn’t thought to be outraged by yet. But more often than not, this outrage is misplaced and misses the bigger picture. Nowhere was this more evident than the U.S. team’s lopsided victory over Thailand. While we could argue all day about running up the score and whether or not the Americans should have celebrated after goal number 8 (or should it have been 6?), all of that is kind of missing the potential powder keg of positive change that could finally come to women’s soccer that this game highlighted.
I don’t think anyone expected Thailand to get a win over the U.S. and that includes the Thai National Team themselves. They were simply proud to be there for the second time. Of course they were hoping to see a lower point deficit, but it's worth noting that veterans such as Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd sought out their opponents at the end of the game and gave them words of encouragement. This ultimately ended up in an amusing twitter exchange between Lloyd and the Thai goalie who seemed almost star struck that she had been approached by one of the greatest players to play the game. Point being the Thais were not offended by the 13-0 deficit, or the celebrations. Upset and disappointed? Yes. Offended? No.
You see, the Thai women have now been in two consecutive World Cup tournaments, and their male counterparts have never even qualified. And yet, the men’s team seems to benefit from more money and support. Sound familiar? When Alex Morgan was confronted by a reporter regarding the high number of goals, she responded that it would have been a greater insult to be playing "keep away" from Thailand during the second half and that FIFA and other world organizations weren’t doing enough to elevate women’s football clubs to a more level playing field. Many of these clubs are focused more on money than finding real talent or encouraging young women to get involved in sports, and the results are apparent. FIFA and corruption kind of go together like Donald Trump and twitter, so most of this is unsurprising. As shocking as it may seem, fixed matches still exist, and the players (often unaware of playing in fixed matches) are the ones who are the losers in the end (in more ways than one).
Radical change will not occur from a 6-0 final score. Thailand could, in theory, go home at the end of the tournament saying they "held their own" against the best ranked team in the tournament. A 13-0 score? Not so much. Will this motivate the Thais to put more energy into their women's program to avoid this kind of embarrassment in the future? I want to say yes, but realistically . . . no. The Thai women don't have a lot of leverage to demand greater support in their home country, but their opponents might be able to get something started.
The American female players have been fighting for equal pay for years now. The lawsuit was most recently elevated when U.S. soccer attempted to make the absurd argument that the men's and women's team could not be viewed as counterparts and therefore did not need to pay the women the same amounts because the pay structures were different. Uh, yeah, that's kind of the point. The women are salaried and the men are paid on a per-game basis. But this is a relatively insignificant difference because the disparities are still out of control. Both the men and women are required to play 20 international "friendly" games per year. If the men lose half of them, they still get paid over $180,000 for their "efforts." If the women won ALL of the games (including all of their bonuses for winning), they would be set to make $99,000 total. Even if the men lost EVERY SINGLE GAME, they would still make more than the women. The men's team is basically the Cleveland Browns of U.S. soccer. Everyone knows they're a joke, but everyone also seems to be ok with paying them a lot of money for their embarrassing performances.
For years it was argued that the men generated more revenue and thus deserved higher pay. Sure. Let's look into that. The women's World Cup final versus Japan in 2015 is the highest watched soccer game in U.S. history -- men or women. Thanks to that victory, revenues for the women have exceeded the men every year since 2015, no thanks to U.S. soccer's lackluster efforts to get the new jerseys out prior to the current World Cup. Nicole and I finally received ours after our return from France, having ordered them weeks earlier. The men failed to qualify for the World Cup last year after losing to Trinidad & Tobago. The women have won three world cups, yet the men play on better fields, get better treatment, fly chartered airplanes, and enjoy greater bonuses and per diem pay. Alex Morgan, the star celebrity of the American women, makes most of her money from sponsorships, not from U.S. soccer's laughable compensation structure.
If the U.S. women are able to pull off another World Cup victory (and there's no guarantee of this despite that impressive 13-0 score against Thailand), they may just have that extra bit of ammunition for their lawsuit. Most athletes wouldn't want a lawsuit distraction while playing in the biggest games of their lives, but that's precisely what the women have done. They've basically said, "No one will listen to us for the last four years, so now that we're back in the headlines, don't you find it reasonable to get equal pay for equal play?" They are fighting a two front war, on and off the pitch. Never has the threshold for victory been so high. 13-0? It's a start.
The last time I went to an LA Galaxy game, the score ended in a 0-0 tie. Needless to say, it was an incredibly boring game. The crowd (mostly filled with Galaxy fans) uncharacteristically booed them at the end of the game. With 30 minutes left to play, both teams played as if they were complacent with a scoreless game. We just watched both teams pass it around to each other with no attempt to score. It was a complete joke. We have not been back to an MLS game since that day. We now only attend games for the Women's National Team. They are always entertaining because they play every game like they're down. They have an intensity and dynamic style of play that is rarely seen in soccer. They make it . . . watchable. And in the stands are a lot of youths - boys and girls sporting the jerseys of players like Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd. It would have been unheard of in the past for a boy to be wearing jersey with a girl's name on it. You have to look at that and think, maybe, just maybe this time there's a chance. It won't be easy, but if there's any group of women who could pull off such drastic change that has alluded so many before them, it's this team right now. So when Megan Rapinoe darts to the sideline to celebrate with the rest of the bench, you should probably be celebrating with them.
Radical change will not occur from a 6-0 final score. Thailand could, in theory, go home at the end of the tournament saying they "held their own" against the best ranked team in the tournament. A 13-0 score? Not so much. Will this motivate the Thais to put more energy into their women's program to avoid this kind of embarrassment in the future? I want to say yes, but realistically . . . no. The Thai women don't have a lot of leverage to demand greater support in their home country, but their opponents might be able to get something started.
The American female players have been fighting for equal pay for years now. The lawsuit was most recently elevated when U.S. soccer attempted to make the absurd argument that the men's and women's team could not be viewed as counterparts and therefore did not need to pay the women the same amounts because the pay structures were different. Uh, yeah, that's kind of the point. The women are salaried and the men are paid on a per-game basis. But this is a relatively insignificant difference because the disparities are still out of control. Both the men and women are required to play 20 international "friendly" games per year. If the men lose half of them, they still get paid over $180,000 for their "efforts." If the women won ALL of the games (including all of their bonuses for winning), they would be set to make $99,000 total. Even if the men lost EVERY SINGLE GAME, they would still make more than the women. The men's team is basically the Cleveland Browns of U.S. soccer. Everyone knows they're a joke, but everyone also seems to be ok with paying them a lot of money for their embarrassing performances.
For years it was argued that the men generated more revenue and thus deserved higher pay. Sure. Let's look into that. The women's World Cup final versus Japan in 2015 is the highest watched soccer game in U.S. history -- men or women. Thanks to that victory, revenues for the women have exceeded the men every year since 2015, no thanks to U.S. soccer's lackluster efforts to get the new jerseys out prior to the current World Cup. Nicole and I finally received ours after our return from France, having ordered them weeks earlier. The men failed to qualify for the World Cup last year after losing to Trinidad & Tobago. The women have won three world cups, yet the men play on better fields, get better treatment, fly chartered airplanes, and enjoy greater bonuses and per diem pay. Alex Morgan, the star celebrity of the American women, makes most of her money from sponsorships, not from U.S. soccer's laughable compensation structure.
If the U.S. women are able to pull off another World Cup victory (and there's no guarantee of this despite that impressive 13-0 score against Thailand), they may just have that extra bit of ammunition for their lawsuit. Most athletes wouldn't want a lawsuit distraction while playing in the biggest games of their lives, but that's precisely what the women have done. They've basically said, "No one will listen to us for the last four years, so now that we're back in the headlines, don't you find it reasonable to get equal pay for equal play?" They are fighting a two front war, on and off the pitch. Never has the threshold for victory been so high. 13-0? It's a start.
The last time I went to an LA Galaxy game, the score ended in a 0-0 tie. Needless to say, it was an incredibly boring game. The crowd (mostly filled with Galaxy fans) uncharacteristically booed them at the end of the game. With 30 minutes left to play, both teams played as if they were complacent with a scoreless game. We just watched both teams pass it around to each other with no attempt to score. It was a complete joke. We have not been back to an MLS game since that day. We now only attend games for the Women's National Team. They are always entertaining because they play every game like they're down. They have an intensity and dynamic style of play that is rarely seen in soccer. They make it . . . watchable. And in the stands are a lot of youths - boys and girls sporting the jerseys of players like Alex Morgan and Carli Lloyd. It would have been unheard of in the past for a boy to be wearing jersey with a girl's name on it. You have to look at that and think, maybe, just maybe this time there's a chance. It won't be easy, but if there's any group of women who could pull off such drastic change that has alluded so many before them, it's this team right now. So when Megan Rapinoe darts to the sideline to celebrate with the rest of the bench, you should probably be celebrating with them.
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