USWNT Players Association Calls Out US Soccer's 'PR Stunts' After Contract Proposal

The United States Soccer Federation announced Tuesday that it planned to offer identical contract proposals to the U.S. men's and women's national teams under one collective bargaining agreement amid the women's team's ongoing years-long fight for equal pay and treatment.

On Wednesday, the USWNT Players Association tweeted a response to that proposal:

U.S. Soccer's communications team responded to those comments with a tweet of its own:

USWNT striker and two-time World Cup winner Alex Morgan also provided comments.

"We still need to chat about the statement given by US Soccer. But any commitment to equal pay publicly is good," Morgan said Wednesday, per Anne M. Peterson of the Associated Press.

"However, we need to look line by line at what they're actually providing, because if you have equal but it's not even what we got before, or to the value that we are, then we still consider that to be not good enough."

This news follows last Friday's open letter from U.S. Soccer Federation president Cindy Parlow Cone, who asked the men's and women's teams to split World Cup prize money equally.

USWNT Players Association executive director Becca Roux called that letter a "publicity stunt."

Women's national soccer team players sued the USSF in March 2019 seeking equal treatment and pay as the men's team. They lost the equal pay claim in trial in May 2020 but are asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reinstate that federal lawsuit.