LONDON — There is always something to shoulder, the world’s best women’s soccer players know. Second-class facilities. Failed leadership. The persistent fight for equal opportunities. The glacial battle for equal pay.
Just last week, a comprehensive report revealing systemic abuse across American women’s soccer left players devastated, but not surprised.
“It’s really sad to say, but in a way, I think we’re used to having to deal with one thing or another,” United States forward Megan Rapinoe said of the report’s findings before her team played England on Friday. “It seems to bring us closer.”
It is that sense of collective struggle that has repeatedly galvanized the United States women’s team in its battles with U.S. Soccer. It’s also what has made them leaders to colleagues and rivals around the world, players and teams with their own struggles, their own priorities, their own goals on and off the field.
England’s players, for example, said this week that they would use their next match to raise awareness of a campaign for girls to have equal access to soccer at school. In Spain, the team that will take the field against the United States on Tuesday will be without 15 key players who have been exiled for demanding that their federation engage with concerns about the team’s coach.
And in Canada, the women’s team — the biggest regional rival to the U.S. and a leading contender to win next summer’s Women’s World Cup — has drawn a line in the sand with its federation, saying it will not accept any new contract that does not guarantee equal pay between men and women.
“A lot of it has to do with respect and being seen and valued for what we’re providing to our federations,” the United States captain Becky Sauerbrunn said in a recent interview about her team’s equal pay campaign. “We’re doing the same work that the men are doing. We’re playing on the same pitch. We’re traveling and training and playing games, usually the same amount, if not more. Why would they get paid more than us?”
In Washington last month, Sauerbrunn sat at a table alongside several teammates after a match and signed the equal pay deal. It was, for her, a moment worth savoring.
“What’s so frustrating for us sometimes,” she said of that moment of triumph and celebration, “is that we feel like this should have been given so long ago.”
It is an issue that a growing number of federations are continuing to work to address, either through proactive agreements or after pressure from their players. Since 2017, when Norway’s federation became the first to announce an equal pay agreement between its national teams, a host of nations have followed suit, including federations in New Zealand, Brazil, Australia, England, Ireland and — just this summer — Spain and the Netherlands.
Still, nearly all of those deals shade the definition of equal pay by offering men’s and women’s players equal match bonuses but only equivalent percentages of the vastly different prize money on offer from FIFA at competitions like the World Cup. The prize pool for the men’s tournament in Qatar next month will be $440 million — multiples more than what will be available to women at their next championship.
The new U.S. Soccer agreement is different: The American teams will be paid the same, dollar for dollar, for competing for their country because they have agreed to pool their World Cup prize money. Over the lifetime of the deal, that is expected to shift millions of dollars that would have gone to the men in previous years to the members of the women’s team.
Players in other nations still have far to go. But they have been taking notes.
In June, the Canadian women rebelled against their federation — just over a year before the next World Cup — over the cause of equal pay. “The women’s national team does not view equal FIFA percentages as between our respective teams as equal pay,” said its players in an open letter in which the team indicated its ambition to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. women’s team.
The team, the Canadian players said, “will not accept an agreement that does not guarantee equal pay.”
That spirit of equal reward, and equal opportunity, is spreading.
“The younger generation now will believe that they all should be having the same opportunities, and they all should be having the same chances,” said Vivianne Miedema, the Arsenal and Netherlands star, who worked with her federation and alongside her Dutch teammates to achieve their equal pay deal.
“It’s not just a money thing,” Miedema added. “It’s a movement that’s been created. I just don’t really think women and men should be treated in a different way.”
In Spain, a dispute involving a group of 15 national team players is about more day-to-day concerns. They have refused to play for their country until their federation addresses the methods and management of their coach, Jorge Vilda, whom some members of the team want removed.
The Spanish federation responded by not only refusing to engage with the complaints but also exiling the 15 players who went public with their demands. Instead, the federation will field an understrength squad in Tuesday’s high-profile friendly against the United States, one of Spain’s most important opportunities to test itself against a World Cup rival before the tournament next summer.
“If 15 of the best players in the world wanted to share feedback I’d respect them enough as people and players to take their concerns seriously,” Sauerbrunn wrote on Twitter.
Rapinoe echoed that sense of solidarity, saying, “It’s uncomfortable to know the just general level of disrespect for women’s teams and women’s players around the world.”
That is why, for Miedema and other top players, the fight isn’t only about pay. Resources are just as important, from the fields teams play on to equal access to equipment and medical personnel to the quality of coaching.
“One of the most important things that we’ve been continuously fighting for over the last couple of years is that we’ve got the same facilities, we’ve got the same opportunities, starting at a young age,” Miedema said. “Because that’s how the level of women’s soccer will increase.”
But alongside progress in the women’s game — record attendances, unprecedented television ratings, record salaries and rising transfer fees — the scathing inequalities players continue to face were being laid bare. The abuse scandal, documented in excruciating detail in a report by the former Justice Department official Sally Q. Yates last week, was just the latest example.
Miedema, in an interview before the Yates report was published, suggested oversight was just as important as pay and other working conditions. But the issue of the huge gap in prize money was too big, and too widespread, she said, to be left to individual federations to resolve.
“I think that’s something that needs to be led by FIFA and UEFA,” she said, a reference to European soccer’s governing body.
Lise Klaveness, the president of Norway’s soccer federation, has committed her federation to that kind of top-down equality. But she also has urged UEFA and FIFA to make a similar commitment.
“Soccer is the biggest sport in the world and in Norway,” said Klaveness, a former national team player. “We’re everywhere, in every schoolyard, everywhere. So, it’s very important for us to look at ourselves as something that meets all girls and all boys, and that you should feel the same value.”
Sauerbrunn’s advice to other teams, including the Spanish side she and her teammates will face on Tuesday? Keep fighting. Keep asking. Keep trying.
“When you’re negotiating, sometimes you’re going to have to be creative, you’re going to have to persevere because you’re going to hear ‘no’ a lot,” she said. “We had to keep making ground slowly.
“But you’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t ask. And I would definitely say that the collective voice is so much stronger than just a few individuals.”
