Apologies for misleading people with the headline. I’m not saying promotion/relegation is going to happen because of popular demand. The growth in MLS and other “closed” leagues is a rather powerful argument against that argument.

No, I’m doing a post by popular demand. Also because MLS is growing too much, moving up to 30 teams and a Leagues Cup competition with Mexico.

So yes, it’s time to reconsider. First, I’ll need to sum up the thousands of words I’ve written on the topic, much of it on my own blogs but also occasionally in outlets like The Guardian. Bear in mind that if you want a good synopsis of how U.S. soccer arrived at this point, I wrote the book on the subject:

It only mentions pro/rel in passing, but the “historical and cultural reality check” is relevant. People often say “pro/rel works everywhere else, so why not here?” without considering what makes the USA unique and difficult.

A quick look back at the issue:

A little outdated: A look at the major players in professional and elite amateur soccer.
The pros of pro/rel
The cons of pro/rel
A refutation of the idea that pro/rel necessarily leads to better player development
A 2017 promotion/relegation plan (along with a look at pro/rel myths)
A 2018 plea for a reset of the discussion

Yes, I’ve written plans for pro/rel in the past. And given the Leagues Cup and growing intermingling with Mexico, I think these plans need a rewrite.

I already wrote a suggested league(s) calendar to accommodate the Leagues Cup. It’s at Soccer America.

So let’s go farther. This might seem unusual, but bear in mind that a lot of countries (see England, Japan and the Netherlands) have historically had narrow gateways between amateur and pro divisions. Also, Brazil had one year in which the final 16 teams included qualifiers from the lower divisions.

The goal here is simple: Maximize opportunity, minimize risk.

Start with a licensing requirement based on facilities, staffing, academy and competitive criteria. Instead of joining MLS as an expansion club, an existing club obtains a MLS license, with which they’re guaranteed a place in either the first or second division. Other clubs can get an MLS associate license, which guarantees a place in either the second or third division. The third division can grow almost indefinitely through independent leagues with their own competition rules. If you really want to have pro/rel within a third-division league, fine.

So here’s the deal:

Fall season

Late July (as soon as practical after World Cup or other international tournaments) to mid-December, 20 weeks plus playoff final. Also note CONCACAF Champions Cup.

MLS Division 1: 16 teams, all with full licenses. East/West divisions. Top four in each qualify for Leagues Cup and cannot be relegated. Top team in each division qualifies for single-game MLS Cup at warm-weather neutral venue just before Christmas.

MLS Division 2: 16 teams, full or associate licenses, with room to grow. Four teams qualify for Leagues Cup. Those with full licenses are promoted.

Third division: Independent leagues that govern as they see fit.

Spring season

February to mid-May (finished in time for World Cup/other international tournament). Also note Open Cup.

Leagues Cup: 12 MLS, 12 Liga MX. Four-team single-elimination playoff.

MLS Promotion Cup: All full-license clubs that aren’t in Leagues Cup play for spots in MLS Division 1.

Third division: Independent leagues continue, with associate-license teams rejoining. National tournament of qualified teams determines which teams play in Division 2 the next season.

Other tournaments

CONCACAF Champions League (really Cup): Knockout tournament in fall but give byes to quarterfinals to Leagues Cup, MLS, Liga MX and CONCACAF League champions. Play-in round spots go to runners-up of those competitions, CONCACAF League third-place finisher, Caribbean champion, U.S. Open Cup winner and Canadian champion. (If someone qualifies for the play-in round by two different routes — say, Open Cup winner and MLS runner-up — that team gets a bye. If any other spaces remain, go to third place finisher in Leagues Cup.)

U.S. Open Cup: Local leagues and third division play qualifying rounds in fall. In mid-January, surviving teams face MLS teams (excluding League Cup teams) in 20 four-team groups at warm-weather sites. That takes us to 32 teams for knockout tournament culminating in May final.

The rationale

Existing MLS clubs face little risk to the nine-figure investments they’ve made. Every year, they have a chance at the Leagues Cup. They’ll either have a chance at MLS Cup or promotion.

Up-and-coming pro clubs get a new pathway that could see them reach the second division and even the Leagues Cup, in addition to the Open Cup. Over time, they may solidify and earn a full license.

Other pro clubs can play in regional leagues. Over time, they may earn an associate license.

Youth players will have opportunities with local clubs that cannot lose pro status unless they collapse. You won’t see an entire state’s kids lose their pathways to the pros just because the senior team had injury problems and got relegated.

And it’ll be fun.

And it’ll never happen.

Uncategorized

Maps

Posted on May 9, 2020May 9, 2020 by Beau Dure

Legend:

The map represents each club’s top level of competition in 2019-20 except for USYS NL 19, which is 2018-19. Some clubs may have second teams, third teams, ninth teams, etc., in lower leagues.

To be listed on this map, clubs have to meet one of the following criteria:

Development Academy (DA), 2019-20
ECNL, 2019-20 and/or 2020-21 (“Carryover” means the club is remaining in the ECNL next year.)
ECNL Regional Leagues, 2019-20 and/or 2020-21
Girls Academy, 2020-21.
U.S. Youth Soccer National League U-17 age group, 2019-20 or 2018-19 (USYS NL, USYS NL 19). This league’s composition changes each year based on qualification.
At least one team in the age groups U-14 and above ranked in the top 50 at youthsoccerrankings.us.

USYS regional = U.S. Youth Soccer conferences. Again, composition changes each year based on qualification. Not every club from this level is listed — only the clubs that placed a team in the Top 50. (For clubs moving to GA, I haven’t specified whether a club was in the National League or regionals — they’re just categorized as “USYS” on the map.)

NPL = National Premier Leagues. Some of these have become ECNL regional leagues.

Local = Not in any of the leagues above. Local leagues aren’t necessarily weaker than NPLs, and some leagues have similar travel demands to those leagues. (For example: The Club Champions League, which includes Beach FC (Va.), has teams in the D.C. suburbs, Roanoke and Virginia Beach, all drives of 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 hours even on those rare days with no traffic.)

Spreadsheet is here.

Map closeups:

pro soccer, us soccer, women's soccer, world soccer, youth soccer

Future Ranting Soccer Dad posts will be at Medium

Posted on May 5, 2020 by Beau Dure

Follow me there.

us soccer, women's soccer

No, the WNT didn’t lose in court because the MNT lost in Couva

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Beau Dure

The court ruling that decimated the U.S. women’s soccer team’s lawsuit had a peculiar irony that didn’t escape the sharp eyes of many who read the case: The women’s earned more than the men, not just over the course of five years but per game, because the men failed to qualify for the World Cup and therefore missed out on a ton of bonus money. And that fact was Point No. 1 in the decision.

Yes, that could be another verse for Alanis Morissette to consider.

No, it didn’t cost the WNT the case. It just saved Judge R. Gary Klausner a bit of time. “The Court need not address the remaining elements of Plaintiffs’ prima facie case,” Klausner wrote, surely with a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to delve into anything more complex than that.

Both sides presented plenty of hypotheticals; e.g., whether the MNT would make more under the WNT deal or vice versa. This period of time just gave the judge a scenario that he couldn’t dismiss as implausible — because it actually happened.

In any case, a lot of analyses are overlooking the more damning part of Klausner’s ruling. The women willingly traded higher bonuses for greater stability. They can’t turn around and complain that they would have been paid more under a deal they didn’t actually want.

That fact also saved Klausner some time. He didn’t have to walk through the four-part test of the WNT’s legal burden that Elon professor Andrew Haile, a former Davidson soccer player, spelled out in an Oregon Law Review piece. Klausner only really addressed No. 2: Rate of Pay.

The judge didn’t deal with No. 1: The “Same Establishment,” on which U.S. Soccer had a legitimate argument that the MNT and WNT “effectively operate in different markets,” as Haile said. Nor did he address No. 3: “Equal Work,” on which Haile was more bullish on the WNT winning. The USSF had plenty of sound arguments on No. 4: Pay differences for reasons “Other Than Sex” — including revenue generation.

Here’s where we find another irony, one that acts as a bit of a counterweight to the first one. Yes, the men’s failure to qualify for the World Cup suppressed their pay. But it also suppressed the team’s revenue, which had been running well ahead of the WNT’s in the years before this all started in 2016. (The exception was a World Cup year, but that difference hardly made up the differences in 2011-15.)

So if the case had gone to court back when the EEOC complaint that became this lawsuit was filed in 2016, before the men’s disastrous World Cup qualifying campaign, U.S. Soccer would have had that much stronger of an argument that the disparity is due to reasons “other than sex”: Just look at the revenue.

That’s not necessarily fair. U.S. Soccer is a nonprofit charged with growing the game in the United States. That’s why it pays for things like Paralympic soccer and development programs that are guaranteed to lose money. They should be supporting women’s soccer even if they lose money. (In the strictest sense, they do, but the women’s team certainly helps bring in the sponsorship and marketing money that is by far the biggest revenue-driver in the USSF budget.)

Which brings us back to the point you’ve seen from so many knowledgeable people in women’s soccer such as Andrew Das, Kelsey Trainor and Julie Foudy: Any more progress the women make will be made at the negotiating table that they’ve avoided for a while. (It’s certainly possible that U.S. Soccer made that table unpleasant at times.)

So much to try & fit into a tweet/SC interview. Women lose leverage but US Soccer also understands that they need to move the ball forward. The women say they'll appeal. BOTH NEED TO GET TO THE TABLE. The game wins when this gets resolved & all parties start to trust again. https://t.co/x4r7UVrFAA
— Julie Foudy (@JulieFoudy) May 2, 2020

So the suit may have served a purpose beyond any settlement the WNT may get on the remaining points on support for the team aside from paychecks. That’s the conclusion of Caitlin Murray, who literally wrote the book on the WNT and points out that the suit sparked a strong wave of public attention and pressure that has forced U.S. Soccer to address a few issues already.

Unless the women appeal, which would be an appalling decision akin to when MLS players — also represented by Jeff Kessler — dragged out their case two unnecessary years, everyone has a chance to avoid embarrassing situations.

The WNT can avoid having their case picked apart in court. They can avoid having Meghan Klingenberg, Kelley O’Hara and union chief Becca Roux called by the Federation, which found items in their depositions that they believe favored their side.

The Federation can avoid the optics of cross-examining beloved celebrities. Even if they’re not asking the insulting questions about skill and physical abilities that prompted USSF President Carlos Cordeiro’s resignation and an abrupt reshuffling of their legal team, USSF lawyers surely would love to avoid questioning Alex Morgan (pending pregnancy) and Megan Rapinoe while journalists who don’t know the details of the case sit with poised skewers.

And the Federation finally has the opportunity to wriggle out of a situation it created by accident — an MNT contract with World Cup bonuses they’ll never need to pay the men and can’t afford to pay the women.

The MNT won’t like hearing this, but World Cup bonus money is the whole reason the Federation is in this mess. When U.S. Soccer agreed to a deal that would pay the MNT north of $25 million if they won the Cup, a significant but not overwhelming chunk of FIFAs $38 million prize money, they didn’t anticipate that the women would see the same money, which would have given the Federation a loss of more than $20 million on FIFA’s laughable $4 million prize money for the Women’s World Cup.

In Australia and Norway, the federations have reached “equal pay” deals because women accepted equal percentages of prize money, not equal payouts. The USWNT certainly wouldn’t have accepted that calculation in their request for back pay. U.S. Soccer probably would have.

FIFA has pledged to double the prize money for the 2023 Women’s World Cup. But unless they double that figure and then double it again, we’ll still have a large disparity in the winnings available for the MNT and the WNT.

Everything outside the World Cup bonuses can and should be as equal as possible. U.S. Soccer might not accept the argument that the SheBelieves Cup would be as important as the Gold Cup or Copa America if only they asked FIFA to recognize it as such, but the details aren’t impossible to work out.

Seriously — the women made that argument about the SheBelieves Cup. If you want another bit of irony, just bear in mind that U.S. Soccer created that competition for the sole purpose of boosting the women’s game.

And that’ll give us one last opportunity to look at the women’s court filings and see the contortions their lawyers made. These are from the Plaintiffs’ Statement of Additional Genuine Disputes in Support of Their Motion for Partial Summary Judgment:

Disputed that the “results of friendly matches, such as those in the SheBelieves Cup or Tournament of Nations, are not as heavily weighted in FIFA’s team rankings as those in non-friendly competitions such as the Gold Cup, Copa America, or the FIFA Confederations Cup.” This purported “fact” is only Mr. Gulati’s opinion.

Sunil Gulati would need very little time to produce the documents backing up this “opinion.” Actually, the women also get more heavily weighted rankings from continental competitions than they do from the SheBelieves Cup.

Disputed that “in the world of international soccer there is more prestige involved in winning an official continental championship, such as the Gold Cup or Copa America, than winning a friendly tournament such as the SheBelieves Cup or Tournament of Nations. This additional prestige results from factors such as the number of participants in the tournaments, the fact that the continental championships are continental championships in the first place (and not friendly matches), the fact that they include knockout rounds and a final match, and the comparative age of the tournaments.” This purported “fact” is only Mr. Gulati’s opinion.

Good luck disputing that in court.

USSF has acknowledged that it has not attempted to register the SheBelieves Cup and the Tournament of Nations, tournaments it hosts, with FIFA, and that FIFA’s recognition may not be needed.

What does that even mean?

How much money did both sides have to pay their lawyers to come up and refute such ridiculous points? Billable hours aren’t cheap.

The women might not get as much back pay as they wanted. But we can turn to the future and figure out how to solve this.

Let’s go back to Julie Foudy again for her solution: Pool everything together and split it …

Yep, & I'll add a negotiated settlement WITH THE MEN AND WOMEN. Again, put all the Revenue (broadcast, sponsor, gate, FIFA) into one pot. Give the same % to men/women. Not the entire pot of course so US Soccer can fund other programming, but stop fighting these CBA battles 1/ https://t.co/rNaEVpswBy
— Julie Foudy (@JulieFoudy) May 2, 2020

The arguments against:

If the MNT made a decent World Cup run, they’d end up making less money than they would under their own deal.
Each team, likely within each union, would need to figure out how to split their money.

The arguments for:

Figuring out how to split that money within each team may be a good thing. In the WNT, we’d have to hope they do more to get money to more people in the talent pool. As it stands now, the difference between being the 23rd player and being the 27th player in the pool can be the difference between a solid six-figure payout and the need to find a side hustle.
One Nation, One Team. While the MNT union has mastered the art of being performatively woke in its statements backing the WNT, even though a $66m payout to the WNT — especially given the COVID-19 budget cuts — would effectively kill any hope they have of getting a raise in the new deal to replace the one that expired 16 months ago, there’s a rift between some MNT fans and WNT fans. Shockingly, bashing the MNT apparently didn’t sit well with a lot of supporters. Split the pot equally, and then every MNT success helps the WNT and vice versa.
No more lawsuits. Equal pay. Surely no more strike threats either. As revenue increases, player pay would increase as well.

So if you’re looking for a way to inspire the next generation of women’s players, make a deal that ensures labor peace and equal pay (however they can define it) now and down the road. And try to leave a bit of money to develop the younger players who’ll form the generation after that.

us soccer, women's soccer

U.S. women’s soccer case: Witness list

Posted on March 31, 2020 by Beau Dure

If the U.S. women’s team lawsuit proceeds to trial, it’ll take a while. The parties have just released their witness list, and it’s a nice 25 pages. (That means I spent $2.50 at PACER, so please buy one of my books as compensation. You can now read the details for free at RECAP.)

Here we go …

PLAINTIFFS

Plaintiffs reserve the right to call more. USSF is seeking to exclude Cook and Goldberg.

Asterisks are witnesses on both plaintiffs’ and USSF list. Time estimates are combined (in other words, when USSF says 1.25 hours, that should be total).

*Alex Morgan (live – time expected: 1.25 hours plantiffs, 1.25 USSF) — but due to pregnancy, Christen Press may be called in her place. If Press is called, USSF expects only 0.75 hours.
Megan Rapinoe (live – 1.25/1.25)
Carli Lloyd (live – 1.25/1.25)
Becky Sauerbrunn (live – 2.5/1.25)
Finnie Cook, economics expert witness (live – 3/2)
Caren Goldberg, human resources expert witness (live – 3/2)
Roger Noll, economics expert witness called for rebuttal to USSF experts Carlyn Irwin and Justin McCrary (live – 2/1.5)
“USSF through designees Jay Berhalter, Sunil Gulati and Tom King” (by deposition video — 5 hours plaintiffs, 3 hours USSF)
*Sunil Gulati (live or deposition video – 3/4)
Jay Berhalter (live or deposition video – 1/1.5)
Carlos Cordeiro (live or deposition video – 2/1.5)
*Tom King (USSF managing director of administration, live or deposition video – 3/4.5)
Pinky Raina (USSF’s relatively new chief financial officer, live or deposition video – 1/2)
Jill Ellis (live or deposition video – 1/1.5)
*Rich Nichols (Hope Solo’s lawyer, but more relevant to this case is his role as former WNTPA executive director, by deposition video – 0.75/2)
*John Langel (WNTPA executive director before Nichols, by deposition video – 1.25/2.5)
“The Coca-Cola Company through designee John Seiler” (by deposition video – 1/0.25)
“Visa U.S.A. through designee Ashley Fisher” (by deposition video – 0.75/0.25)

USSF

USSF reserves the right to add more. Plaintiffs are seeking to exclude Moses, Marsteller, Hopfinger and Levine.

Asterisks are different here — these are witnesses USSF will call “only if need arises.” Is USSF that confident?

*Kay Bradley (USSF brand director, live – 1.5 USSF/1 plaintiffs)
*Jill Ellis (see above)
Sunil Gulati (see above)
Amy Hopfinger (USSF director of events, live – 1.5/1)
Carlyn Irwin (forensic accounting expert, live – 3.0/1)
Tom King (see above)
Meghan Klingenberg (video deposition – 0.75/0.5)
John Langel (see above)
*Lisa Levine (former USSF general counsel, not the one involved with recent controversies, live – 1.5/1)
Paul Marstellar (USSF director of event revenue, live – 1.5/1)
Justin McCrary (economics expert witness, live – 3/2)
Philip Miscimarra (labor economics expert witness, live – 2/1)
Alex Morgan (see above)
Ross Moses (USSF director of analytics and research, live – 1.25/1)
Rich Nichols (see above)
Kelley O’Hara (deposition designation – 1.25/0.5)
Christen Press (see above – note that USSF doesn’t distinguish that she would be called only if Morgan can’t testify. “Her testimony includes her own admissions,” USSF says.)
Pinky Raina (see above)
Rebecca Roux (WNTPA executive director, live or video deposition – 1/1)
*Russ Sauer (retired lawyer who represented USSF in CBA talks – 1.5/1)

So a few thoughts:

Klingenberg, O’Hara and Roux – seems interesting that USSF is calling them and plaintiffs are not.

Coca-Cola and VISA – relevant because plaintiffs, in motion to exclude evidence of Soccer United Marketing revenue, make the case that these sponsors inquired about sponsoring only the WNT but were told SUM bundles MNT, WNT and everything else.

women's soccer

Revisiting ‘Enduring Spirit’

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Beau Dure

Enduring Spirit failed.

Not just because not many people read it and I lost money on it. I had another book, Single-Digit Soccer, that didn’t sell a lot, but I didn’t incur any real expenses — the cover photo was my kid’s untied shoe with the laces draped over a ball — and I had reasonable expectations. I also have reasonable expectations for my new mini-book, How the Hell Did I End Up Cageside?, which is just a fun look at how I ended up watching people kick, punch and choke each other.

For Enduring Spirit, I paid twice for the cover photo — once for the ebook, once for print. I also paid out of pocket for editing, and I racked up a lot of travel expenses. At least all of that was deductible.

But that’s not the main reason I call it a failure. Nor is the fact that, in the process of writing the book, I made a few enemies. More on that in a bit.

No, Enduring Spirit failed because I didn’t do what I set out to do.

The minimum salary in the first season of the NWSL was $6,000. (Granted, that’s infinity percent of my net proceeds on the book.) I figured I could get players to talk about the challenges of living on what was basically a stipend while they played professional soccer. For whatever reason, I never got much of a handle on that.

The players never seemed to mind my presence, but neither were they eager to share the tribulations they were willing to endure to chase their dreams. I was surprised at times how little interest they had in the fact that someone was writing a book about them. If I’d written about a men’s team, I think a lot of players would’ve been eager to chat me up, get a sense of what I was writing and give me good material for the book. (The only person who did that while I was writing this was Mark Parsons.)

So it didn’t deliver what I was hoping for, and it apparently didn’t deliver what many fans were hoping for. Readers raised complaints about a lack of insight / investigative skewering right away, to the point that I felt compelled to do a blog post in response. Some just wanted a bit more behind-the-scenes insight. Some wanted the pages to run red with the blood of owner Bill Lynch, general manager Chris Hummer and original coach Mike Jorden. The team only won three games, two of them near the end of the season after Jorden was replaced. But players weren’t confiding in me about some horrible secret I couldn’t see, and I doubt there’s anything scandalous beyond simply not doing that well.

In re-reading the book today, I realized one reason I might not have had more to tell. I was there for a practice just before the season opener, and players were a bit more candid during the session than in the midweek training. Lori Lindsey exploded at one point. Ashlyn Harris took issue with the height of the wall they were setting for free kicks — Diana Matheson (not tall) was giggling a little.

For the rest of the season, though, the Spirit laid down one rule: I was not to come to the final practice before a game. Who knows what else I missed?

The Spirit certainly whiffed a bit on free agents and discovery players. Aside from Chapman and eventually Toni Pressley, a good player upon whom the Spirit placed too many expectations, they had too many players who were young, local and overwhelmed. Aside from that, though, I didn’t have any dirt that people were seeking.

The front office’s personnel mistakes were compounded by some bad luck. Candace Chapman was a great defender who couldn’t get healthy, and she had plenty of company among the walking injured. The draft picks seemed pretty good with the available info at the time — if you’d told women’s soccer talent scouts that no one out of the trio of Tiffany McCarty, Caroline Miller and Stephanie Ochs would develop into a potent NWSL attacker, they would’ve scoffed.

But players loved the SoccerPlex, especially the majestic carpet of grass on which they played their games. I didn’t hear complaints about living arrangements. Putting Diana Matheson, Robyn Gayle and eventually Conny Pohlers in a retirement home was certainly unusual, but even a year later, Matheson seemed to have enjoyed it.

I did have one controversy to report, and unfortunately for a lot of fans, it wasn’t about the supposed evil overlords. It was the movement to have Ali Krieger’s father, Ken, to come out and “help” coach the team while Jorden was there. (Must be said, though, that Jorden missed some time with a back injury, so another coach wouldn’t have been a terrible idea — especially given German Peri’s frequent absences for reasons I still don’t understand.) As far as local coaches go, Ken Krieger had as good a resume as anyone — certainly a ton more experience than Parsons, who wound up taking over the team at an age when some people are still living in their parents’ basement but turned out to be such a good coach that the big-spending Thorns lured him away.

Which leads to one thing I hadn’t anticipated: The fan base was changing.

Sure, some fans have stuck around since Hamm, Foudy, Chastain and company introduced a lot of the country not just to women’s soccer but to soccer in general. But there’s also a new generation with different expectations. They’re more demanding. They’re not inclined to heed the counsel of people who experienced the Dark Ages. They’re more cynical. Whatever you write about Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger — good, bad or completely neutral — is going to make you a few best friends and a few sworn enemies.

Social media also has dramatically changed things. Amanda Vandervort’s effort to get WPS players on Twitter (Kati Jo Spisak!) has been superseded by players sharing much more of their lives on Instagram — and a lot of fans turning into voyeurs.

You can’t say these fans are worse than previous generations. They’re more devoted. That’s why the boom of 2019 looks stronger than the boom of 1999. Their passion may lead to a lack of perspective and some over-the-top vitriol, but that passion is going to make NWSL pretty strong whenever we can all venture out of our houses again. They’re not really looking for the amusing or mildly colorful anecdotes that I gathered over the course of the Spirit’s season.

And I think that’s fair. Some of the criticism was ridiculous. (“Fan fiction”? Really? What part of this was fiction?) But I really didn’t get much below the surface, scandalous or otherwise, and it’s frankly not my best writing. The game reports that I posted on my blog throughout the season were more entertaining and easier to read.

On Twitter and on my blog, I was accused of being too much of a Spirit apologist at times, and that’s understandable. Seeing a team train can skew someone’s perception of how good it is, and yes, some of the free agents and discovery players were expected to be much better than they were. But I still maintain that if any of the young attackers had panned out and Alina Garciamendez had some to Washington instead of Germany, the season would’ve been considerably better.

And yes — there was always at least one bad call per game involving Tori Huster. Ask anyone else who covered the team that year.

I’m more aggravated that more recent work of mine has been dismissed by large segments of the fan base and even fellow reporters — not just the bevy of younger reporters (some of them quite good) who’ve come from non-traditional backgrounds but also some people in the “mainstream” media. I’ve spent eons digging into financial documents, augmented with a couple of decades of experience and conversations with knowledgeable people, and I can tell you there are some dangers in the women’s team’s (and men’s team’s) pay demands. Someone has to stick up for future generations — it’s ironic that it’s the resident old guy in a women’s soccer community.

But I digress …

So is anything in Enduring Spirit worth reading? I think so …

Heather Cooke’s story, from The Real World to the Philippines
The aforementioned training session before the opening game
Chantel Jones on playing professionally in Iceland
Teresa “Lupita” Worbis adjusting to the U.S. at her first practice (and scoring both in practice and a game in front of her parents)
Players who turned up on trial
Mike Jorden’s insightful use of the word “lollygagging”
Several glimpses of the training methods of well-regarded goalkeeper coach Lloyd Yaxley (who, I just discovered, is now also coaching a high school team)
The mysterious Ingrid Wells waiver and pickup, which I still don’t understand to this day
The water balloon fight (some people found it frivolous, but I thought it was a good way to unwind after training)
Several takes on a couple of personnel changes
One of my favorite quotes, from Yaxley after being kept awake by some basketball players at the team hotel: “Why would anyone invent a sport so noisy?”
A look at the ridiculous postgame routine teams had to go through at Sky Blue

The other thing I noticed on re-reading: I had forgotten how long it took the team to turn around after the coaching change. Everyone loved Parsons from the get-go, and injuries didn’t help, but some of those games were as one-sided as you’ll see in an American professional league. The next year, when Parsons was able to make some personnel changes, the Spirit got a lot better.

And I found one reason why the book seems worse than it is. The last week or so just drags. I understand why I emphasized it so much — the team was finally winning, and it was my last chance to gather material — but that could’ve used some editing.

I’ve slashed the price to $2.99. Judge for yourself while you’re stuck at home.

us soccer, women's soccer

Will the U.S. women’s back pay demands hurt future women’s soccer players?

Posted on February 21, 2020March 21, 2020 by Beau Dure

I’ve been covering women’s sports for about three decades now. Not as 100% of my job — through most of my employment, I’ve had a lot of editing and online responsibilities as well as reporting — but I’ve amassed a considerable amount of women’s soccer stories (and a book) and a lot of women’s coverage in my Olympic sports work.

Lately, that’s been less game coverage and more issue coverage. How can we keep young athletes safe from sexual predators like Larry Nassar? How do Olympic sports athletes support themselves? How can an athlete stay in a sport in which women have been denied a spot in the Games?

It hasn’t been good for my career. I lost money on my book, though I could’ve done a better job reporting it. An editor (a woman, and she was a great boss) once told me I should cut back on covering women’s soccer, and I didn’t.

I’ve also delved deeply into U.S. Soccer finances. Haven’t made a lot of money on that, either. The Guardian and Soccer America are good to me, but I’ve done so much extra work on this that my income is far under minimum wage.

I’ve also covered youth soccer. It’s a mess. That’s a big reason why I have a book out now called Why the U.S. Men Will Never Win the World Cup.

But it also has the potential to ensure that the 2019 Women’s World Cup win will be the USA’s last. The rest of the world is catching ahead, and staying ahead will require well-spent money.

So when I see that the U.S. women are looking for $66 million, I have to go back to the math.

Also to clarify: The $66 million is back pay plus punitive damages. #USWNT #USSF https://t.co/K0M5Ad6NZs
— Miki Turner (@turneresq) February 21, 2020

U.S. Soccer, of course, has countered with a motion for a summary judgment of $0. I’m guessing negotiations aren’t going well.

And we should say at the outset that such motions, no matter how many volumes of documents are printed in support, still don’t force the court to play “all or nothing,” as the eminent sports law professor Steven Bank points out.

I haven't gotten to read the motions carefully yet, but I should caution that it is standard for a plaintiff to move for summary judgment and a defendant to move to dismiss at the conclusion of discovery. Regardless of the arguments, it says little about the settlement chances https://t.co/FGX8JQCTwU
— Steven Bank (@ProfBank) February 21, 2020

But if the women were seeking $10 million, we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all. $20 million? Possibly.

Here are a few points demonstrating that neither the Fed ($0) nor the players ($66 million) have taken a justifiable stance.

$66 million is more than even the most generous computation I can find.

I ran the numbers last summer, using the assumption that the U.S. women would ask for the same bonuses the U.S. men would have received had they won the World Cup. That wouldn’t meant the women, who under the current CBA get close to 100% of FIFA prize money if they win (once you include the Victory Tour bonus, which is paid on top of their regular pay for four friendlies), would have received more than 1,300% of FIFA prize money in 2015. (The winning country received $2 million. The men’s bonus for winning would’ve been more than $26 million.)

I came up with $50,365,524.

You can make your own calculations and run different scenarios if you like using this spreadsheet. You can also download from GitHub.

The Federation’s mandate is to grow the game, which will make it possible for the men to get better and the women to stay on top

A lot of people look at pay in a vacuum, as if U.S. Soccer is an NBA team and players should get a specific part of the revenue. But we’re not talking about billionaire owners here. (Yes, we’re talking about overpaid executives — we’ll get to that.) This is a nonprofit organization that is responsible for coaching education, referee education, Paralympic soccer, youth national teams, etc.

The Federation is way behind other federations in this respect

U.S. Soccer doesn’t have the scouting or coaching infrastructure that other countries have.

That’s one reason the men haven’t done as well as anyone would like.

That’s one reason the women’s youth national teams haven’t done well recently, either, and that bodes ill for the future.

The Federation is trying to address this by spending a pile of assets it accumulated, much of it by hosting the Copa America Centenario, on new programs

The initial idea was to spend it down to $50 million. Thanks to legal fees, that’s now $42 million.

Which is less than $66 million.

That said, we don’t know how well the Federation is spending that money

Take a look at the Federation’s budgets — not just in FY 2019 but in past years as well.

A couple of things seem sensible. They’re spending more on the U.S. Open Cup and much more on referee and coaching education. They’ve also spent a bit on technology so they can keep track of players and shore up the Fed’s awful web sites. They’ve launched a terrific Innovate to Grow grant program that was a big hit among state federations (who deserve none of the blame for the Federation’s spending or contract negotiations) at the Annual General Meeting.

But in the Annual General Meeting book (see AGM books tab on the spreadsheet linked above), they have a $3 million line item for “Various.” And executive pay is out of whack. Maybe they can go without replacing Jay Berhalter. (Not Gregg. They still need a men’s coach.) Maybe they don’t need to hire so many staffers and relocate them to Chicago.

Still, the new CEO will probably command a lot of money, maybe even more than Dan Flynn made. They need someone good.

It’d be cool if they hired a woman, right? Maybe a former Board of Directors member?

Historically, the Federation hasn’t treated the women as well as they should have

There’s a reason the women went on strike in 2000. There’s a reason they filed an EEOC complaint. And the new collective bargaining agreement should have equalized some things that could’ve been equalized. (You could argue that hiring lawyers who have lost multiple times to U.S. Soccer was a bad idea on the women’s part.)

Hank Steinbrecher is gone. Dan Flynn just left. Sunil Gulati is an ex officio member of the board.

And to be sure, they’ve invested more into women’s soccer than other federations. Yes, even Norway and Australia, with their much-hyped “equal pay” deals that (A) don’t account for the differences in prize money that the U.S. women clearly want to address and (B) don’t pay either team that well, especially in Norway.

But they left a mess. There’s no reason the women’s CBA shouldn’t have equal bonuses for friendlies at the very least.

One important myth to debunk here: Typically, the WNT’s revenue is not equal to the men. Not close. But the women can still make a case. Go back to the notion that the Federation is a nonprofit that’s supposed to grow the game. They’re not going to make a profit on beach soccer (which has a new women’s team), Para soccer and youth programs, but they have to do so anyway. They may not make a profit on women’s soccer, but it’s their mandate to support it equally anyway.

I’ll write more for various outlets on this at some point, but I hope everything above is helpful.

us soccer, women's soccer

AGM wrap: U.S. Soccer board obstructs and women’s soccer moves forward … but this one guy …

Posted on February 16, 2020March 21, 2020 by Beau Dure

The U.S. Soccer Annual General Meeting provided expected drama at some points, unexpected non-drama at others, and unexpected drama at others.

I’ll get to the bit about the guy who called out the women’s national team for its sportsmanship.

Going bit by bit …

The Powers That Be may once again find themselves at war with the state reps.

U.S. Soccer’s National Council includes representatives from every state youth association (Youth Council), every state adult soccer association (Adult Council) and every pro league (Pro Council, dominated by MLS). Each group gets an equal share of the votes, a little more than 25% per Council. The Athletes Council, most consisting of those who played for a national team less than 10 years ago, is required by law to have 20% of the vote. The rest go to an assortment of associate organizations, individual board members, past presidents and Life Members (that’ll come up later).

Any organization can make a proposal to change the bylaws or policy manual. This year, the Metropolitan DC-Virginia Soccer Association (adult) had a policy proposal to slash registration fees across the board, except for pro leagues. Organizations would pay $5,000 rather than $10,000. Youth players’ fees would be 10 cents, down from $1. Adult fees would get a similar cut, from $2 to 20 cents. The goal was to erase barriers to participation for low-income families.

To get through all this, let’s go to the video …

U.S. Soccer – live via https://t.co/uTz96MbcSU https://t.co/HXVZyU2xgx
— U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) February 15, 2020

At 38:45, when they’re about to vote to approve the budget, the MDCVSA rep stands up to get clarification on the procedure of the day. Can we approve the budget now, he asks, but then discuss the policy proposal later and, if it passes, get the staff to go back and adjust the budget? The answer is yes.

Fast forward to 53:15 for the big showdown between the MDCVSA rep and parliamentarian Michael Malamut, who says the board has decided not to recommend the dues changes, and that means the policy proposal is out of order.

Block out 10-15 minutes to watch what happens next. The MDCVSA rep was prepared, leading to a discussion of Roberts Rules of Order and such. Malamut, who’s been doing this forever, also knew his stuff.

No one raised his voice, though there was some interrupting. It was certainly tense. Under pressure, Malamut said the chair of the meeting has a decision to make, effectively punting to president Carlos Cordeiro to weigh in.

Eventually, Bylaw 212 is cited, supposedly to demonstrate that membership fees are recommended by the board and approved by the National Council by a majority vote. I don’t see that in the 2019-20 bylaws, but let’s assume for a minute that it’s correct. Does that means the only opportunity the National Council (again, all the members) had to question the membership fees was when the budget was discussed thirty minutes earlier? Or not at all?

Cordeiro agreed with Malamut but offered the olive branch of a task force. It may not be much, but it’s something.

I’ll get to the bit about the guy who called out the women’s national team for its sportsmanship.

The next policy proposal, essentially to require more detail in board and committee minutes, also caused some consternation between the representative (from Cal North), Malamut and Cordeiro. The Cal North man offered some concessions to exempt certain committees, at least for this year. That wore down the resistance, and the proposal was approved by a wide margin, to my surprise.

Earlier, West Virginia withdrew its proposal to require equal representation between men’s and women’s leagues in the same tier (in other words, MLS and NWSL). The Rules Committee had said it should be a bylaw rather than a policy. West Virginia’s Dave Laraba, who could probably be elected USSF president and Santa Claus in the same year if it was up to the states, said he respectfully disagree with the Rules Committee but would work toward re-submitting next year.

“We do urge the Pro Council to deal with this issue on their own, which they have the power to do,” Laraba said.

https://twitter.com/RealMeMP/status/1228769120155512832

The weirdest state-related thing: Illinois’ adult association, which drew attention two years ago as one of Eric Wynalda’s most outspoken supporters in the presidential race, didn’t even speak on behalf of its proposals on Pro League Standards (punted because the Federation is being sued on that matter — feel free to contact the NASL about dropping that suit so the Fed can actually discuss this) and procurement (voted down rather heavily, in part because it was incomprehensible).

I’ll get to the bit about the guy who called out the women’s national team for its sportsmanship.

Cindy Cone was re-elected as vice president. This was contested but not contentious.

One year after being unanimously elected to fill the VP slot left empty when previous VP Carlos Cordeiro was elected president, the Hall of Famer won convincingly but far from unanimously over John Motta.

Cindy Cone re-elected as U.S. Soccer Vice President over USASA chairman John Motta with more than 73% of vote. Quite decisive. pic.twitter.com/tcfkDi6E5F
— Paul Kennedy (@pkedit) February 15, 2020

Worth remembering: The Athletes Council surely gave its 20% to Cone. The Pro Council probably gave all or most of its vote to her as well. Motta is the U.S. Adult Soccer Association president, so the Adult Council’s 25% and change surely went mostly to him. So the Youth Council and miscellaneous votes probably leaned toward Cone.

In any case, the candidates were gracious. Motta’s still on the board, and he’s anything but vindictive.

I’ll get to the bit about the guy who called out the women’s national team for its sportsmanship.

The good news: Everyone loves the Federation’s Innovate to Grow grant program, which is funding several initiatives on women’s coaching education.

Paired with the newly announced Jill Ellis Scholarship Fund, which has more than $200,000 in donations so far, the Federation is clearly taking steps to address a long-standing problem.

And let’s be clear — if national team pay is tripled, programs like this will be in serious jeopardy. Do the math. If you end up with a choice between training 200 female coaches and helping national teamers upgrade their cars, which would you choose?

I’ll get to the bit about the guy who called out the women’s national team for its sportsmanship.

Some members don’t understand legal obligations. An Athletes Council proposal to put athletes on grievance panels was a no-brainer. Literally. The Federation can’t afford to think about it because legal trends point rather heavily toward giving sports governing bodies no choice in the matter.

And yet some people voted against it. In an era in which legal fees are taking a big bite out of the Federation’s image and bottom line, they were happy to invite more lawsuits. Just to spite the Athletes Council?

OK, fine. Here you go …

Someone took issue with the women’s national team’s celebrations in the World Cup.

https://twitter.com/WoSoRegion/status/1228783190258651136

The man in question is Stephen Flamhaft, who’s been around forever. He is NOT on the board or in any other position of power. He’s one guy. Some people applauded, and they must have been near the microphones, because people at the AGM said they were sparse and that there were boos as well. Then several speakers took issue with him.

One thing to add: he was on 1963 U.S. Pan-American team. It lost its four games 2-0, 10-0, 10-2 and 8-1! https://t.co/HxOSdRRaCq
— Paul Kennedy (@pkedit) February 15, 2020

This isn’t the first time Flamhaft has made waves from the National Council floor. In 2005, he made a speech that reads like a plea to let board officers work until they drop. (See my 1998-2009 piece again.) In 2016, he rose to denounce Chuck Blazer, which was more controversial than you might think. See my 2010-2017 piece, then this thread.

This time, his comments were ill-timed and ill-stated. There’s no need to dredge this up again.

But, just like last summer, the Twitter reaction was so far overboard that it can’t be reached with a life preserver.

A little perspective — and yes, I know I’m speaking from male cis hetero financially comfortable privilege here. I’m also speaking from experience. While I sometimes agree with the “OK Boomer” sentiment, a lot of you whipper-snappers are just ageist. (Besides, I’m Gen X. We were handed Nirvana (good band) and Reality Bites (horrible movie) as our cultural touchstones, and we’ve been ignored ever since while the Millennials and Boomers …

So anyway …

Earlier this week, I watched the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary I Hate Christian Laettner, about the legendary Duke player (legendary for college play; in the NBA, he was a one-time All-Star, and that’s about it) and the fact that hating him was, and to some extent still is, a national pastime.

Did he commit a violent crime? No. He’s … arrogant. Overexuberant. A fierce competitor.

And people hate him.

That’s not surprising. A lot of people hate arrogant athletes.

And male athletes get pissed off when opponents celebrate too much. In baseball, if you flip your bat or do a slow home run trot, you may get a fastball to the ribs. Or the benches may clear. All part of baseball’s unwritten rules, much like the code (which is clear as mud, to be honest) in hockey.

The typical men’s sports controversy lasts for 24 hours. It feeds a cycle of talk radio and TV, then dies.

The WNT’s celebrations against Thailand stayed in the news because the women kept making reference to it and because of the rampant and grossly unfair accusations that anyone who questions the WNT’s behavior is sexist and misogynist.

Period.

Of course, there are some knuckle-dragging idiots out there. Always are. If you ever click a trending topic on Twitter and sort by “latest” instead of “top,” you’ll think civilization is speeding toward collapse. (It might be, which is another reason the U.S. men will never win the World Cup. I don’t cover that one in the book.)

But the defensiveness is over the top. It was last summer, and it was yesterday, where a lot of the ridiculous arguments popped up again.

They’re jealous because the men don’t win anything.

The Gender War is far from productive, and it’s unfair to current MNT players who face a much more difficult gauntlet of competition along with entrenched historical and cultural factors (see my book) that the women have never had to face.

I’ll argue that this can be fixed, though, by borrowing from Australia’s “equal pay” (it’s not) solution. The prize money for World Cups and other tournaments would still need to be addressed, but other money is put in one pool and evenly split between the men and women. That way, the men and women don’t just have a patriotic and cultural incentive to cheer for each other. They have have a financial incentive as well.

@HeatherOReilly 'Game Face', you go tell those good ol' boy dinosaurs!!! Proud of our @USWNT and FOUR @FIFAWWC unlike them Good Ol' Boys.
— AO St. Petersburg (@AOStPete) February 16, 2020

The women could beat the men

No.

The result making the rounds last year was a scrimmage between FC Dallas’ U15 team and the WNT, which ended 5-2 to the little guys. A fact check argued that the result was “decontextualized” because it was a “structured practice.” Perhaps, but the reason the WNT was playing a U15 team — and not even the full national team, just one very good club U15 team — was because it would be a comparable level of athleticism. It’s actually a common practice. They scrimmage youth teams because they would gain nothing by trying to match up with full-grown men.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

We don’t build up Mikaela Shiffrin at the expense of Bode Miller. We can celebrate Allyson Felix even though her best time (21.69) in her best event (200 meters) was beaten by more than 70 male runners in the 2016 Olympics. We don’t fret about how Elena Delle Donne would fare in the post against … I don’t know. I don’t follow the NBA that closely.

Athletes are human.

They’re not people to be put on pedestals. Some of them are decent people. Some are even great. Even they make the occasional questionable decision.

A bigger issue in women’s soccer is coaching. It’s appropriate that Ellis is the namesake of a scholarship fund because she is the only woman among the 49 U.S. coaches to earn the new-ish Pro license. The United Soccer Coaches convention is so overwhelmingly male it makes a Star Trek convention look like Lilith Fair.

(For the record, I loved Lilith Fair.)

No one benefits from BS. No one benefits from misplaced priorities.

We need more women to stay in the game and coach. We need better youth development for men and women.

That’s why I point out the short-sighted and divisive arguments men’s and women’s senior national team advocates make in the pay debates. That’s why I think we need to find a way to get men’s and women’s fans and advocates on the same page.

One Nation One Team, indeed.

So we’re taunting the men’s national team over the women’s national team’s success, even while the men speak up for better pay for women. We’re touting proposals to pay the national teams at the expense of programs that grow the game, the opposite of what other (better) federations do.

So is Flamhaft a bit of a dinosaur? Sure.

But at some point, we should quit bashing the low-hanging fruit and climb a little higher on the tree.

(OK, Gen Xer.)

women's soccer

Harvard analysis shows deeply embedded misinformation on women’s soccer pay

Posted on January 22, 2020March 21, 2020 by Beau Dure

It’s not their faults.

Harvard Business Publishing has made available — for a fee — a pair of articles designed to serve as a basis for classroom discussion. They’re thoroughly researched by four people (“Professors Christine Exley and John Beshears and Research Associates Manuela Collis and Davis Heniford prepared this case”) with roughly 100 citations. (The narcissist in me is a little miffed that they didn’t read The Guardian or Soccer America, but the footnotes have a mix of primary sources and reliable news reports, not the pundits’ polemics scribbled out without the slightest attempt to get accurate information or context.)

For the most part, they’re quite good. You wouldn’t guess this is academic writing. That’s a compliment. These pieces isn’t muddled by obfuscatory jargon. They duly include arguments from each party and facts that favor each side.

The problems aren’t a reflection on the work of the Harvard quartet. For the most part, they’re an indication of how the media haven’t been able to correct misinformation in the players’ messaging. They’re also the result of some clumsy language in a contract.

Let’s start with the mildest of the problems — a chart that refers to the “league salary” specified in the 2005-2012 collective bargaining agreement if a league should arise. The CBA doesn’t actually specify a “league salary” because no one had any inkling in 2005 that the federation would pay players’ club salaries. The salaries in question show how the players’ federation salaries would be reduced a bit if a league formed, giving them more income from elsewhere and less time to play national team games.

But the language in the CBA is so fuzzy that we can hardly blame the research team:

So unless you’re fully aware of the context, “from Federation to salaried Players” is ambiguous.

Another sentence is technically accurate but misleading: ““Furthermore, for each game played over the minimum of 20 games, the women would receive no additional pay for a tie or a loss and would receive $1,350 for a win, while the men would receive between $5,000 and $17,625.”

The word “additional” keeps the sentence from being false, but the implication is that the men’s pay is also “additional.” It is not.

The biggest problem, though, is also in that sentence. It’s stated by the women in their EEOC complaint, and it’s a fabrication.

“the minimum of 20 games”

And not just 20 games. Twenty friendlies.

The key sentences from the EEOC complaint:

“Specifically, the Federation pays top tier WNT players, such as each of us, $72,000 per year to play a minimum of 20 Friendlies that year.”
“MNT players are also required to play a minimum of 20 Friendlies per year.”

If I may borrow a phrase from the great Paul Riley (said in an entirely different context), this is complete poppycock.

The women’s CBA actually specifies a maximum of 92 games — all games — over a four-year span.

The Memorandum of Misunderstanding … er … Understanding completely wiped out any talk of required games. Explicitly.

I sometimes wonder if U.S. Soccer hasn’t settled this case because they just can’t wait to demonstrate this error in court. But they could always do it in the Hope Solo case, which surely won’t settle before we’re all dead from climate change.

Shall we look at how many games the teams actually played?

Year	Men	Women
2019	18 (incl. Gold Cup and Nations League)	24 (incl. World Cup)
2018	11	20 (incl. qualifiers)
2017	19 (incl. Gold Cup and qualifiers)	16
2016	19 (incl. Copa America and qualifiers)	25 (incl. Olympics and qualifiers)
2015	20 (incl. Gold Cup)	26 (incl. World Cup)
2014	15 (incl. World Cup)	24 (incl. qualifiers)

They do not play 20 friendlies. Period.

But again — you’d have to be a hard-core soccer fan to know the EEOC complaint was wrong. And we in the media haven’t done enough to tell the truth.

If you already know all this stuff, the Harvard Business discussion won’t tell you much. If you don’t, it’s not a bad place to start.

Duresport.com

Duresport.com

Books and freelance work by Beau Dure

Most of the stories I wrote for NBC during the Olympics

Promotion/relegation 2022, by popular demand (sort of)

Fall season

Spring season

Other tournaments

The rationale

Maps

Future Ranting Soccer Dad posts will be at Medium

No, the WNT didn’t lose in court because the MNT lost in Couva

U.S. women’s soccer case: Witness list

Revisiting ‘Enduring Spirit’

Will the U.S. women’s back pay demands hurt future women’s soccer players?

$66 million is more than even the most generous computation I can find.

The Federation’s mandate is to grow the game, which will make it possible for the men to get better and the women to stay on top

The Federation is way behind other federations in this respect

The Federation is trying to address this by spending a pile of assets it accumulated, much of it by hosting the Copa America Centenario, on new programs

That said, we don’t know how well the Federation is spending that money

Historically, the Federation hasn’t treated the women as well as they should have

AGM wrap: U.S. Soccer board obstructs and women’s soccer moves forward … but this one guy …

Harvard analysis shows deeply embedded misinformation on women’s soccer pay