U.S. Women's Soccer CBA Negotations Take an Interesting Turn

We awoke this morning to the news that the U.S. Women's National Team has parted ways with its chief negotiator, Rich Nichols, three days before its collective bargaining agreement with the U.S. Soccer Federation is set to expire.

Why and why now are relevant questions unanswered by the Women's Player's Association in its terse announcement, which merely says that Nichols will "no longer serve" as counsel to the Association, says that it is "focused on" productive conversations with U.S. Soccer regarding "our future" and looks forward to the upcoming NWSL season and an international women's tournament next March.

That immediate future will apparently proceed under the current CBA, which expires Saturday. Neither side has given the required 60-day notice of termination of that agreement,  after which either a work stoppage or a lock-out would be permitted.

Nichols has been a ferocious advocate for the women's team in negotiations with the Federation and by all appearances was the driving force in the wage discrimination complaint of five prominent players filed with the EEOC earlier this year, the defense of the Federation's suit that sought to impose the terms of an earlier CBA which forbid the players from striking before the Olympics this year (in which the Federation succeeded), and presumably in the players' public relations onslaught regarding their demands for "equal pay."

While meddling politicians and vacuous media outlets have taken up the women's team's call, as I and others have explained in the past, equal pay in the context of national soccer teams is not as simple as paying everyone the same salary or bonus or even paying equal amounts to the teams as a whole. And the EEOC complaint could, in fact, simply lead to further pay disparities in the women's professional game or the death of the women's professional league in the U.S. 

It seems likely that during negotiations (or perhaps because of the absence of negotiations) regarding a new CBA the players reached the conclusion that Nichol's approach was counterproductive to striking a bargain. Nichols has certainly raised the bar for the next counsel in terms of his zealous advocacy of the women's professional game, but perhaps a skillful negotiator and someone more willing to compromise is needed to bring the two sides together.

Certainly there's been nothing said publicly to-date by the Federation or its President Sunil Gulati to suggest that the Federation is not interested in trying to reach an agreement that does not compensate the national team players at a rate commensurate with their male counterparts, keeping in mind the revenue that each team has generated on a historical basis and U.S. Soccer's financial support for the NWSL.

Oh, but wait. There is one women's national team member who has cried foul, complaining that the Federation is "putting pressure" on the women to strike a deal. Anyone care to guess who that player might be?

Equal rights champion Hope Solo at her arraignment on
domestic violence charges (photo from washingtonpost.com)

That's right, Hope Solo. In a blog post yesterday Solo expounded on her self-proclaimed role as a champion for equal pay and takes a shot at the Federation and Gulati for "putting pressure on the players" and "trying to divide and conquer us."

To which I say: go figure. One side of a negotiation is trying to use leverage against the other? Say it ain't so, Solo! I suppose the EEOC complaint and the players' implicit threat of a strike prior to the Olympics (which caused the Federation's ultimately successful lawsuit) were not leverage, or attempts by the players to put pressure on the Federation to strike a deal?

Posturing aside, one has to wonder if the timing of Solo's post isn't an indication that she is not on-board with her fellow team members and litigants regarding Nichol's approach and was her (indirect) protest against his dismissal. In other words, Hope is the true champion of women's rights and the others are not. Certainly wouldn't be the first time that she willingly distanced herself from the common good.

Killing The Goose?

"We are the best in the world" said Hope Solo in announcing her support for the EEOC complaint filed by her and four other members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team this past week against the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Setting aside concerns that Solo provided bulletin board material for 15 other national teams (and that she would have the temerity to bite the hand that not only fed her but provided support when she faced a domestic violence charge  (yes, I just linked to a People Magazine article) that could have ended her World Cup hopes, if not her career, last year), while Solo's statement is completely defensible given that the team is the reigning World Cup and Olympic champion, it does not conclusively prove the players' case.

Too easy, I know (photo from businessinsider.com)

By now my support of women's sports in general and soccer in particular should be well-established. I believe in level playing fields (and similarly surfaced playing fields) for men and women.

But equal opportunity does not necessarily mean equal pay.

While I am all for the women receiving pay commensurate with their work and the money that they generate for U.S. Soccer (and with their male counterparts if they are entitled to it) I'm not sure that this lawsuit is the best way to try to accomplish that. In fact, a victory for them could actually be detrimental to many of their professional soccer playing peers who are good, but not good enough to play for the national team.

The men's team and the women's team are governed by separate collective bargaining agreements, under which the men are paid substantially more for performances in international matches. Important, lawyer-type note: just because you're subject to a collective bargaining agreement does not mean that you are prohibited from bringing an equal pay claim. According to one article, when playing in an international friendly, the men can earn as much as $17,635 in bonus money for a win, $8,125 for a tie, and $5000 for a loss.  The women, meanwhile, receive a $1,350 bonus for winning a friendly, nothing if they tie or lose.

But the ways in which the men's team and the women's team members are compensated are hardly apples to apples. The men are paid strictly on a bonus system while the women are paid salaries and receive benefits more akin to those of traditional employees - severance pay and "various types of insurance" - that the men are not.  And they are also paid salaries as National Women's Soccer League players, which is where the crux of the problem, and the danger in the players' suit, lies.

U.S. Soccer, with some help from the Canadian and Mexican federations, helped start and is presumably helping keep the NWSL financially afloat. It doesn't take a photographic memory to recall the fate of the two U.S. women's professional leagues that preceded the NWSL (but it may to name them), both of which succumbed to a combination of poor management and, frankly, lack of interest in non-World Cup and Olympic seasons. It appears that the players' suit does not take into account the money that U.S. Soccer has spent to start and sustain the NWSL. [In my original post, I surmised here that the federations pay the salaries of non-federation players in the NWSL. After further investigation, I don't believe that to be the case. While information regarding NWSL individual players' salaries is not disseminated, it appears that the league pays non-federation players, while the federations only pay those of "allocated players" from one of the three participating federations. Nonetheless, the suggestion that U.S. Soccer pays the salaries of the highest-paid players in the league appears to be correct.]

The league has benefited those players, who would not otherwise have an opportunity to play professional soccer, by both giving them that chance and proving that they are worthy of consideration for the national team. Crystal Dunn, for example, was the last player cut from last year's World Cup team, but proved her mettle by being the leading scorer in the league last season. Restored to the roster, she scored five goals against Puerto Rico in the Olympic qualifying tournament and appears to be poised to play a significant role for the team in Rio.

Setting aside U.S. Soccer's apparently well-taken position that the players and their attorneys cooked the books by focusing on income from last year (when the women won the World Cup in Canada and embarked on an extended victory tour), its claim that the men's team's games over which it has control (i.e., non-World Cup games) have audiences double those of the women, and that U.S. Soccer has been at the forefront, world-wide, of commitment both to the women's game and to cajoling or compelling FIFA to support women's soccer and women in positions of power within FIFA, there's a more fundamental concern that I have with the players' complaint and the future of women's soccer in the U.S.

Where is the money to come from to pay the players if they succeed?

Unless U.S. Soccer adopts FIFA's more ... creative ways of generating income, the funds to pay a large increase in player compensation may well result in a reduction of its financial commitment  to the NWSL. And while the national team players may or may not care, that would be detrimental to the long-term health of women's professional soccer in the U.S., and perhaps to the national team as well. 

This may all be much ado about next-to-nothing. The Soccer America article suggests that the true motive for the EEOC complaint may be simply to gain leverage in the players' on-going negotiations with U.S. Soccer over a new collective bargaining agreement, particularly in light of U.S. Soccer's filing of its own complaint in February, in which it seeks court confirmation that the current collective bargaining agreement runs through the end of 2016 (fearing, presumably, a work stoppage by the players shortly before or during the Olympics).

But if it is not, if the players pursue their complaint beyond the Olympics or the (hopeful) signing of a new collective bargaining agreement, then I fear for the future of women's professional soccer in the U.S. That may or may not be of concern to Solo and her fellow litigants. But it should be to the rest of us.

Then Again ...

Did I overreact to the result of a friendly?

Perhaps.

But examples of equal overreaction to the U.S. Women's win in the finals of the Algarve Cup abound as well.

Yes, the U.S. was missing Hope Solo and Megan Rapinoe and Sydney Leroux in its 2-0 loss in a friendly last month. But Rapinoe and Leroux made mere cameo appearance in its 2-0 win over France in the Algarve Cup final last week. Meanwhile, the French were missing five of their starters in the match in Portugal who had featured in the earlier game in Lorient (including both starting center backs, playmaker Louisa Nacib, and Elodie Thomis who torched the American defense repeatedly in their first meeting of the year).

What can we learn from the second match? First, as hard as it may be to admit, the team needs Solo. She is athletic and commanding in the box. She made a good save on the late penalty kick, but more importantly her presence seems to calm all of the U.S. defenders. And that unit also seems better equipped to handle fast, skilled players with Julie Johnston partnering with Becky Sauerbrunn in central defense.

Second, the team has a new star in Christen Press. While she may not have been able to shred France's Wendie Renard and Laura Georges the way she did their substitutes in the Final in Portugal, she is a dynamic player whose individual skill on the ball is going to be needed if Jill Ellis' team continues to play balls over the top to its forwards (whoever they will end up being between Alex Morgan, Amy Rodriquez, Abby Wambach, Sydney Leroux, and Press) rather than possession soccer.

Press at the Algarve Cup (photo from usatoday.com)

Which brings me to third, why I'm not sold on the team yet. It probably has more to do with the type of soccer that I like to watch than it does whether I believe the U.S. will win the Women's World Cup in Canada. It seems that Ellis is intent on playing with no true attacking wing midfielders, putting Press and Carli Lloyd out wide and letting Lauren Holiday (of whom everyone but me seems enamored as a playmaker) and Morgan Brian run the center of midfield.

Moving Press and Lloyd "out wide" means that they rarely play as out-and-out wingers, but more like additional center-mids, which is fine if you want to control possession and play a small-pass game. Which, puzzlingly, the U.S. has not done in any of the matches that it's played in that alignment. I've long expressed my admiration for the skills of Rapinoe and Tobin Heath, who excel at wing play (although Heath, like Press, is more adept at challenging players from the wing and cutting inside than Rapinoe, who sends in crosses with the best of them). If Ellis continues to use Press and Lloyd at outside mid, then the U.S. attack will be less varied, more predictable, and not nearly as entertaining as when Rapinoe and Heath play.

I don't expect that the exhibitions that the U.S. has scheduled over the next three months will tell us much about how the U.S. will fair in Canada. But they will very likely confirm what Ellis' plans are for the formation they will use and the players that she is counting to prove that Portugal, not Lorient, was the bell weather of what their chances of success are.

Rudderless

rud·der·less

ˈrədərləs/

adjective

adjective: rudderless

1. lacking a rudder.

   • lacking a clear sense of one's aims or principles.

     "today's leadership is rudderless"

Rudderless.

That's the one word that kept creeping into my mind, over and over again, as I watched another U.S. National Soccer team, this time the women, be outclassed and outworked.

Yes, we lost 2-0 to a very good French national team that has beaten Germany and Brazil in the past few months.

Yes, the U.S. was without some of its key players as Megan Rapinoe, Christine Rampone, Hope Solo, and Sydney Leroux didn't dress for the match and the first three didn't even make the trip for the friendlies with France and England.

Yes, the rest of the world is catching us along with the other members of the formerly exclusive club of countries that can contend for the women's World Cup.

All the more reason to need, to have to rely on and have confidence in, your coach. And in my opinion the game against the French demonstrated that the team appears to be a rudderless ship.

When, just seven months ago, U.S. Soccer decided to unceremoniously dump national team coach Tom Sermanni I wrote that the candidates to replace him were uninspiring and that, if the powers-that-be had concluded that they had made the wrong decision in hiring Sermanni, they did not have the luxury of making a second mistake in choosing his replacement with the World Cup a year away. 

One of those candidates, Jill Ellis, was chosen as the temporary and then permanent replacement for Sermanni. Ellis was born in England and her father John was a soccer coach as well. After playing for William & Mary, Ellis embarked on a coaching career in college that culminated at UCLA, where the program made eight NCAA Final Fours in her 12 years as coach. She then moved to U.S. Soccer on a full-time basis in 2011. Ellis was the temporary head coach for the team when Pia Sundhage departed in 2012 as well.

Ellis may be a fine coach. She may have the ear of her players. She may be a good organizer. She may be a good practice coach.

But she's never won anything. 

A couple of Nordic Cups, whatever that is. But no NCAA titles (in eight visits). No U-20 World Cups (the team that she coached in 2010 didn't make the semi-finals). 

When it mattered, when it came time to play the game that was the difference between finishing second or third or fourth best or hoisting the trophy in triumph, her teams always came up short. And, while sports are a perfect venue for second chances and new opportunities, nothing that has occurred since Ellis took permanent control of arguably the most prominent women's national sports team in the World indicates that things will be different this time around.

Strategically, the handling of the team, and its goalkeeper/diva Hope Solo in particular, has been troubling. While Ellis was quoted in the New York Times yesterday as saying "for every player, you have to have a Plan B" there was clearly no Plan B for the U.S. at the position that has always been one of the biggest strengths of its men's and women's teams (keeper, not diva). Julie Foudy pointed out as much in ESPNW the day before Ellis' comment was published, and I submit that I did the same over two years ago.

Tactically, the Americans were always "on the back foot," as Ian Darke likes to say, against the French. Second best in effort and ideas. Reduced by bad passes in the mid-field to booting it forward and hoping for the best. Unable, even, to take advantage of a huge potential break when the referee gifted them a penalty for a foul that both wasn't a foul and wasn't in the penalty box, only for Abby Wambach to hit a weak penalty kick that was easily saved. The midfield chased the game, with Lauren Holiday practically invisible unless she was passing to the team in the blue shirts (and, in case you didn't watch, the U.S. wore white).

I understand, and often state, that too much shouldn't be read into friendly matches. But this was one that the U.S. was apparently pointing to. Yes, Ellis wants to review her options in game situations for the World Cup. And it was encouraging to see Alex Morgan put in a full 90 minutes in her return from injury.

Morgan's presence (although not necessarily her play) was one
of the few bright spots against France. (photo from ussoccer.com)

But the lack of ideas and skill and just plain work (excepting the always solid Carli Lloyd and Tobin Heath) transcend the issue of whether this was "just a friendly." Foudy made the comment shortly after Wambach entered the game that you could sense a lift in the other U.S. players' emotions when she was on the field. But neither they, nor Ellis, should have to rely on a simple tactical change to inject energy or ingenuity into the game. And, even if it works, you can only go to that particular well so many times before it becomes routine and by definition unremarkable.

The U.S. plays England in that next friendly on Friday. After that comes the Algarve Cup, the tournament that was presumably Sermanni's undoing when the U.S. finished seventh out of eight teams a year ago. We'd better hope that Ellis has figured some things out between now and then. Because, much like Solo, I doubt that there's a "Plan B" when it comes to who will coach our national team at the World Cup in June.

Learning to Live with It

If you follow women's soccer, or the tabloids, you've probably heard about Hope Solo's drunken bachelorette/bachelor party/melee, followed by her appearance at a hearing on domestic battery charges that she brought against her fiancee (now husband), a former NFL player with an impressive history of run-ins with the law including DUI, possession with intent to distribute, and, most disturbingly, sexual assault.

Various folks have weighed in on what should or should not be off limits with regard to Solo and what appear to be some questionable life choices (not that that should be particularly shocking given her public declarations in the past). But my take is a little different. It's about the choices that coaches and teams are sometimes forced to make.

Coaches are fond of saying that they have one set of rules that applies to all players. But they know, and the players know, that that's not always the case.

At any level, coaches have to make adjustments and even exceptions for exceptional players. And they have to depend on the players to understand that it's for the good of the team that they do so, even if  the players that exceptions are made for aren't "team players."

After watching the U.S. Women's team in the Olympics, reading Solo's controversial comments regarding Brandi Chastain's commentary and the lack of public support that she received for those comments from her teammates and coaches, and then watch the last two friendlies that the team played against the Republic of Ireland, I wonder how much tongue biting and eye rolling goes on inside the team when Solo opens her mouth. Because two things are clear: first, Solo, true to her name, is not a team player; and, second, the team really, really needs her.

Um, that look pretty much says it all.

Admittedly, it may not be fair to evaluate based on two halves of two friendlies, but Solo's backup, Nicole Barnhart, looked very shaky in her two appearances. While her decision-making would undoubtedly benefit from more game time, she looked indecisive on crosses and balls in the box.

Keepers are like left-handed pitchers in baseball -- they're often viewed as the odd-balls, marching to the beat of a different drummer (no doubt in part because they are the only players allowed to use their hands). But that doesn't mean they can't or don't have to be good teammates.

It will be interesting to see how the new head coach of the National Team, Tom Sermanni, deals with Solo. Perhaps, like Pia Sundhage before him, he will decide that regardless of the distractions, it's best for the team that he tolerate them as best as he and the team can. But we should also probably hope (pun intended) that somewhere in the program a replacement is being groomed.

A Fitting Farewell

Pia Sundhage's final match as the U.S. Women's soccer coach had all the right elements to encapsulate her nearly five years in charge. An early deficit, some dodgy defending, lots of goals, and in the end, a victory as the Americans beat Australia 6-2.

It's easy to forget that when Sundhage took over the team it was in complete disarray. The women had finished third in the World Cup in 2007, a result with which most countries (Canada comes to mind) would be ecstatic, but which was disappointing for the Americans in part because it constituted the second straight World Cup that they had failed to win, but mostly because of the way it had happened.

Then-coach Greg Ryan benched keeper Hope Solo in favor of long-time starter Brianna Scurry for the semi-final match against Brazil, which the U.S. promptly and embarrassingly lost 4-0. After the game, Solo publicly blasted Ryan for the decision (where have we heard that since?), splitting the team into two camps.

Alex Morgan, one of the fast, skilled young players
that Sundhage included in the U.S. Women's National team.

While the team regrouped to defeat Norway in the consolation game, the damage had been done. Ryan was dismissed and U.S. Soccer President Sunil Gulati eventually named Sundhage, the first non-American to hold the job, in his place.

Nine months later, the U.S. Women won the Gold Medal at the Beijing Olympics. Sundhage found a winning formula, based primarily on Abby Wambach and Solo, and stuck with it.

While the play wasn't always pretty, and there were some rough stretches (particularly during World Cup qualifying, when the U.S. lost to Mexico and had to defeat Italy in home-and-home matches to squeak into the Finals) the team began to play exciting, attractive soccer. Sure, there were more bumps along the way - especially the World Cup Final against Japan when the Americans twice surrendered leads and their slow defenders (yes, Hope, slow defenders) were exposed.

But two matches in particular, the World Cup quarterfinal against Brazil in 2011 and the Olympic semifinal against Canada this summer, were two of the most compelling soccer matches, men's or women's, I've ever watched. And Sundhage should also be credited for bringing youth into the team, Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, and Sydney Leroux being the best examples of quality players who blossomed under Sundhage's leadership.

Perhaps most importantly, Sundhage clearly enjoys coaching and imparts that joy to her players. Undoubtedly she worked them hard. But she has a whimsical side that occasionally causes her to dance or break into song.

Whoever replaces Sundhage will have big shoes to fill, and will inherit a team with high expectations for the next World Cup, to be held in Canada in 2015. He or she may well bring the Cup back across the border. But I doubt that whoever it is will do so with as much panache as Sundhage brought to our team.