Women's Soccer (Football) Thread Soccer • Page 11

This suspension is essentially pointless. If this was really about a culmination of past events they would have suspended her earlier. The cycle is over; she's going to be out for a handful of friendlies that mean nothing.

I was expecting some sort of disciplinary action but was nothing of this scale, maybe a game or two at most. This really just seems to be for show to me.

 

Also it's worth noting that she is apparently allowed to play for her club team, the Seattle Reign, during this suspension. She is not considered an employee of the NWSL because US Soccer pays her salary, as they do for most of the rest of the national team, so this just supports my thoughts on the situation.

 

I mean they certainly wouldn't have the jurisdiction to say she can't play soccer at all. National team related incident = national team related suspension.

It definitely doesn't mean much, given it's not world cup/olympics season. But they would have gotten negative publicity if they sat on their hands on this. 6 months make it seem more substantive than it is, true.

 

I edited my post to clarify: because of the allocation system, she is not considered an employee of the NWSL, so I believe that US Soccer could also choose not to pay her for the club playing time if they wanted to.

I'm not sure if they could suspend her but it seems they might because the after they were eliminated from the Olympics, the NWSL had no say in when the national team players would return to their clubs. The federation left that up to the players to decide. For example, Ali Krieger chose to play last week, and as far as I know all of the other national team players are returning this week, except for Carli, who decided not to return to her club until next week (that's a whole other thing that I'm not going to get into lol)

It's a strange relationship between two organizations that apparently has some communication issues.


TL;DR - the relationship between the NWSL and US Soccer is weird and no one fully knows the details.

 

They terminated her contract and in response the player's Union is suing us soccer for breach of the first amendment. Hate to say it, but if they don't win it for Hope it sets a dangerous precedent.

 

WOW Hope said they also terminated her national team contract. That changes things, so I guess that means they are no longer paying her NWSL salary.

 

wait huh?

 

Seems like the USWNT fucked up by making THIS the case for suspension, especially terminating her contract.

Definitely staked themselves here.

 

This also looks terrible for us soccer considering Hope is the loudest/most influential voice in the wage discrimination suit.

 

This is ridiculous. A suspension is one thing but terminating her contract is another. They barely did anything about the domestic violence case and the DUI but now the comments is what pushes them over the edge??

 

I'm guessing they'll use the accumulation argument here, but that's hard to prove if there isn't a precedent for this stuff.

Either way, this isn't looking like it'll work out the way they wanted to.

WOOPS

 

There's also the whole "if she is expected to play for her club without pay" side which is basically sanctioned slave labor (probably not the right term, but I think you get my point).

Way to bungle this entirely.

 

This is not a good move by the federation at all especially when the players were considering going on strike and not competing in the Olympics. This is definitely going to make the next couple of months and the CBA discussions very interesting.

If she's still going to play for Seattle, they would now have to pay her salary so I don't think that she would play for free.

 

Also lol that the next game that matters, the Algarve Cup, is exactly six and a half months away.

 

It doesn't matter either, it's a friendly tournament. The next thing that matters would be the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament.

 

what a mouthful that acronym is.

Would also imagine that would be a shoo-in for the team with or without Hope.

 

Only team in concacaf that has a chance against us is Canada, and we're always seeded to meet in the already qualified if you get there final.

 

Yeah they would only have to make it to the final and it would be pretty shocking if they didn't.

This is insane, US Soccer really fucked itself tonight, like they literally just needed to not give her call ups anymore and then don't renew her contract. The allocation system resets in January.

 

So apparently they will finish paying the rest of her NWSL salary for this season.

 

went into the /r/soccer thread about the suspension.. that was a mistake, some gross comments as usual.

 

This whole thing is wild. Tbh I was hoping her time on the team was going to come to end in the next few years but never did I want something like this to happen.

 

I mean it seems like it's possible she doesn't step on the field again for the national team, if there are any talents out there that are close to/supercede her ability.

I don't follow the farm systems or NWSL so I wouldn't know though.

 

The other GKs on the team, Alyssa Naeher and Ashlyn Harris, have actually been having better NWSL seasons than Hope so for now they should be fine. But they are 28 and 31 respectively so they probably need to look at developing some younger GKs.

 

There are great keepers in the women's game, but Hope is the greatest in history and still easily that (even with a subpar Olympics).

 

Some interesting tweets that clarify the situation. There was never suspension issued, she was straight up terminated from the team. Why would US Soccer even pretend it started as a suspension? They had to have known that Hope would have said what really happened. Also that letter is ice cold, damn.