U.S. Soccer president is a little closer to being a paid position, but it’s not there yet.
For the second straight year, an amendment that would pay the U.S. Soccer president $125,000 annually was rejected at U.S. Soccer’s Annual General Meeting.
Last year the amendment got 58.91% approval and this year that figure was 62.87% — just short of the two-thirds required to adopt it.
U.S. Soccer president — who since 2020 has been Cindy Parlow Cone — has always been an unpaid position, which is typical of nonprofits like U.S. Soccer.
But there is a growing movement to change that, given Parlow Cone works full-time hours in her role.
As Yahoo Sports documented, Parlow Cone’s assistant was asked last year to track her weekly hours.
The time study found that, from July through November, [Parlow Cone] spent weekly averages of 12-14 hours in scheduled meetings, 18-24 hours on unscheduled calls and nine hours reading emails or documents.
The opposition to paying the U.S. Soccer president appears to come mostly from those who run amateur soccer associations across the country. From Yahoo:
“I would suggest to you that our clubs, the tens of thousands of clubs who are led by presidents who are volunteers — [they] probably invest as much time in their work life as they do in their volunteer job,” Dave Guthrie, Indiana Soccer’s executive director, said at last year’s AGM.
“So I don’t know that that justification [for paying the USSF president] holds true unless we somehow want to pay all of our presidents of all of our member organizations. Which I don’t think we’re prepared to do.”
[lawrence-related id=15938,15930,15870]