Forget the United States men’s national team missing out on qualifying for the 2018 World Cup. We have found a new low for the U.S. Soccer federation.
This week, legal documents in the equal-pay lawsuit brought against U.S. Soccer by the USWNT were made public. In them, attorneys for U.S. Soccer made the argument that women were inherently inferior to men when it came to the game.
Writing on behalf of U.S. Soccer, attorney Brian Stolzenbach made the argument that the job of a USMNT player requires a greater level of skill than does a player for the USWNT.
The attorney also argued that men’s national team members have a greater responsibility to U.S. Soccer than the women’s team does.
It was shocking. U.S. Soccer was echoing the sentiments of toxic trolls you block on Twitter. It was saying the quiet part, the part you always feared they may feel deep down, out loud.
People doubted earlier that US Soccer was actually arguing that women are inherently inferior to men as part of the federation's attempt to prove it isn't discriminating against the USWNT based on gender.
So here are some court filing excerpts where they do just that: pic.twitter.com/1XzNTFfxiO
— Molly Hensley-Clancy (@mollyhc) March 10, 2020
U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro offered an apology after the document was made public and everyone, from USWNT players to journalists to federation sponsors Coca-Cola, expressed their shock at the legal argument. Coca-Cola has publicly demanded an immediate meeting with U.S. Soccer to “express their concerns.”
In the statement, Cordeiro wrote: “On behalf of U.S. Soccer, I sincerely apologize for the offense and pain caused by language in this week’s court filing, which did not reflect the values of our federation or our tremendous admiration of our women’s national team.”
Cordeiro can try to distance U.S. Soccer and make the claim that the attorneys were the ones who made the argument, but it’s a horrifying look either way. He’s either so incompetent that he was unaware of arguments his own legal team was making, or he approved those arguments, and is now trying to cover his tracks. (Especially after major sponsors got involved.)
There are arguments to be made against the USWNT lawsuit. FIFA pays out higher prize money for men’s tournaments than women’s tournaments, and U.S. Soccer could easily deflect some of the USWNT claims onto the higher authority.
Instead, they went scorched earth. They made the argument you can’t come back from, one that gets at the heart of all this. U.S. Soccer is no longer arguing that economic realities or FIFA’s backwardness make it impossible to guarantee equal pay. U.S. Soccer is now arguing that women don’t deserve equal pay because they aren’t equal.
This is sickening.
Part of the reason this is so sickening is how short-sighted this all is. The USWNT is U.S. Soccer’s most successful product by a long shot. They’ve got four World Cup titles. They draw consistently bigger crowds than the men’s team does.
In making this argument, U.S. Soccer is not only risking forever alienating that women’s team, the organization is also sending a message to potential fans — potential customers — that this isn’t as good as the men’s game. It’s an inferior product.
This is not only morally repugnant, it’s bad business.
On top of that, U.S. Soccer is now undoubtedly making the men’s team furious, who are suddenly being held up against their will as a superior team to the women’s, even though the men haven’t had even an iota of the success internationally. It also links them to a sexist argument that the men’s team itself almost certainly doesn’t want to make.
Over at SI, Grant Wahl made the argument that U.S. Soccer president Carlos Cordeiro needs to resign. I don’t see any other way out of this, myself. This is a dark, dark day for U.S. Soccer, and unless there are wholesale changes, top to bottom, I don’t see a way out of this.
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