Friday’s game between the U.S. women’s national team and England should be a wonderful occasion.
The defending World Cup champions and most decorated team in women’s soccer, playing the winners of Euro 2022, at a sold-out Wembley? Star players on both teams firing on all cylinders? As far as friendlies go, this should be as good as it gets.
And yet, this USWNT vs. England match — through no fault of the players that will play it — juxtaposes the wonderful heights the sport has reached against the hellish lows revealed in the findings of Sally Yates’ investigation into systemic abuse in the NWSL.
“The players are not doing well. We are horrified, and heartbroken, and frustrated, and exhausted, and really, really angry,” Sauerbrunn told reporters on Wednesday, before later adding a sad fact of life for USWNT players.
“Well, unfortunately, I would say that a lot of us have been navigating these sorts of things for a very long time,” said the veteran center back, who has seen the USWNT come through battles over playing conditions and equal pay. She’s also speaking from the perspective of someone who has truly been through it in NWSL, starting out with an FC Kansas City team that was moved over issues with both poor infrastructure and disgusting emails from an owner.
That team moved west and became the Utah Royals, who ceased to exist after owner Dell Loy Hansen walked away under intense pressure after reports of racist language and demeaning treatment of women players (something that came up again in the Yates report). Sauerbrunn moved to Portland, only to find a Thorns club that is undergoing a seismic shift after the investigation’s findings concerning their handling of Paul Riley.
It’s a theme that came up with every USWNT player who spoke in a press conference format heading into Friday’s showcase game. OL Reign defender Alana Cook, whose club hired Farid Benstiti even after he had been publicly accused of body shaming at Paris Saint-Germain, struck a similar chord to Sauerbrunn.
“I think as women, personally as a minority, this isn’t new,” said Cook. “I think these hostile conditions are kind of now being unearthed and properly revealed, but it’s things that we’ve been dealing with for the entirety of our careers.”
Megan Rapinoe, who also plays for the Reign, ruefully laughed while praising the USWNT’s ability to cope and still play at a high level.
“As sick as this sounds, I feel like we’re used to having to take on so much more than gameplan, tactics,” said Rapinoe. “I feel like we have an incredible ability to shoulder so much.”
Still, Rapinoe on multiple occasions circled back to the positive of the current circumstances. Wembley, one of the world’s genuine soccer shrines, is going to be packed with fans to watch two of the brightest lights in the game. It’s rare, and it has incredible value, and it’s what these players actually deserve.
“This is an incredible game, an incredible moment that actually, I think, sits kind of nicely with this horrific thing,” explained Rapinoe. “The players have pushed (women’s soccer) to this point, where it’s a sellout, 90,000-plus at Wembley. Off another team fighting for respect in their country and fighting for the right treatment, having an incredible run and being able to galvanize their fans in the country behind them, and feeling like this is a special moment for us to all come together and celebrate women’s football for all of the good that it is.”
Women’s soccer has seemingly always been in a balancing act, carrying amazing feats in one hand and damaging, unfair treatment in the other. The last NWSL champions pushed through a run for the ages while also successfully demanding ownership change at the Washington Spirit, and rather than being a one-off, it feels like the history of women’s soccer played out by one team as a metaphor.
This friendly is a glimpse at what women’s soccer could be all the time, in so many more places. It’s a north star shining through some extraordinarily bleak circumstances, and hopefully it can help guide the sport to better times. If people with authority could simply bring themselves to care about providing a safe, fair environment, this kind of occasion wouldn’t be such a rarity.
“There’s a reason that we’re at Wembley right now, there’s a reason that there’s 90,000 people coming, there’s a reason that these two particular teams have stretched way past the field and done something really special,” said Rapinoe. “I feel like this is a really special moment in women’s football. I know it’s just a friendly, but it does mean more than that.”
All of that is true, and Rapinoe is right to remain defiant when it comes to protecting that joy and that sense of accomplishment. It just also lives in the same space as the trauma that hovers over seemingly every team, no matter how successful they are.
Cook put it very succinctly on Wednesday. “I think we have such a momentous occasion on Friday playing at a sold out Wembley Stadium. And it’s marred by this report, and it’s marred by the atrocities that have been condoned and tolerated and allowed to go on in the NWSL for the last 10 years.”
Let’s hope these massive days don’t keep being marred by the kinds of people that have brought so much pain to women’s soccer.
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