Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #407: Paul Kennedy joins the pod

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

The editor of Soccer America first interacted with the U.S. Soccer Federation when it was run out of a leased office at the Empire State Building, and he remains one of the organization's closest observers 50 years later. He joined Watke and Belz to discuss Berhalter's re-hiring, the search, federation finances, equal pay, NWSL finances, and much more. Second half of the interview is available only to patrons. Link below.----  Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. Soccer. Our guest today is the editor-in-chief of Soccer America, a man who's been covering the game in our country since 1974, and one of the closest, if not the closest observer of the U.S. Soccer Federation out there. It's an honor to have him on the podcast. Please welcome Paul Kennedy. Hey, Paul. Hey, thanks for having me on today. I'm glad to be with you guys. Also, Chris is here.

Chris, how are you doing? I'm doing great. I'm excited to talk with Paul. We do want to get into your background and Soccer America's background, but let's get into some sort of newsy questions right off the bat. J.T. Batson, the CEO of U.S. soccer, said there were no budget constraints on the recent head coach search. But ESPN reported, quote, a USSF source told ESPN in April that budget would play a role, and, for example, something in the range of $10 million for a salary was unrealistic.

Are these two things inconsistent with one another? Can it be true that there were no budget constraints? I think in the abstract, there probably were not any. I think of that $10 million figure, the reality is I don't think there's any national team coach in the world that makes that. There was a salary survey during the World Cup of the 32 head coaches, and Hansi Flick of Germany was the highest paid about $8 million. You know, Greg Berhalter, the U.S. coach, was making about $1.3 million last year. You know, we don't know what he made, or two years ago.

We don't know what he made last year when he'd take into account the bonuses he would have made for qualifying or anything related to the World Cup itself. You know, so I think the reality is that to say, you know, people say all the time, you know, if you're an organization of a reasonable size, which the Federation is, meaning it's got $100 million in the bank still, that, you know, money's not going to be an object for a big thing,

if the right circumstances arise. I think that's the catch where there was never, you know, ever a circumstance where it was going to, you know, that, you know, if Pep Guardiola came along and said, I wanted to coach a national team. And he also said, I will do everything you guys want me to do, which includes a lot of things which are go beyond just on-field performance,

which is winning games, winning a World Cup, things like that. That might have been different, but it never came up. So you can say, oh, money's not an object, but if it never comes up, you can get by with saying that. I think, you know, the only thing of that report is that, you know, the $10 million didn't make sense because it was never going to. happen. Right. I guess the argument would be you need to go really high to get a coach like Pep Guardiola to come to coach the U.S., right? I mean, I mean, at least in the...

Yeah, I mean, I think there's legitimate points to be made about what is the federation looking for. And to me, it really, there's a dividing line. And that is strictly, it's, it's, it's, Is it sporting considerations or is it more than sporting considerations? And by that, I mean, I'm not downplaying these other parts at all because I think they've been a huge part of the Federation and a huge part of, say, when Yvind Clinton's mind was involved and also in some of the things that the Federation has done well, which is sort of advocate for the game, you know, nationally. But, you know, if you're just looking for, you know, coach to win games,

you can find, you can probably find guys in the range of $5 to $10 million. dollars. I don't think the federation, but the federation, I don't think, was looking for that. Obviously, the point could be made. Well, you know, what they were looking for was what they just had, which was Greg Berhalter doing. The job he did covering a lot of areas that were more than sport, you know, strictly on-field performance consideration. What are those non-sporting considerations that are really important to the federation? Is it being the public face or are there other parts of it? In public face, you know, working with, you know, the other national team programs, you know, being a media presence, meeting, working with sponsors.

You know, those all have been in contracts in the past, you know, with Bob Bradley, with Serena, you're going to cleanse mine, things like that. And you can say some of those are pretty perfunctory easy to do. I think it's working with other programs, you know, it's important. And again, that gets into the issue of, well, you know, does it have to be an American coach or someone with a good knowledge of the American landscape, which then I think would, you know, if that's the criteria, it has to be there, you could argue it doesn't. But if it does, that's quite limiting. And I think Matt Crocker, who is the new sporting director of the Federation,

the man who's in charge of the national team programs, the man who ultimately decided to hire or re-hire Greg Brawler. You know, he said that those criteria that, you know, when he went out and started talking to people quickly ruled out certain people. And then on the other hand, there were other people who became more attractive because of the criteria. And that, as I said, was sort of, you know, what became the dividing line.

And obviously, you know, fans, you know, rightly, because that's what they care about, is results in the field. Sometimes you can say results in the field, plus how the team plays, how the team improves, things like that. But, you know, the Federation, you know, looks at more things than that.

and that's something that is for debate. I mean, I think, you know, I come from, you know, having followed the sport for 50 years when it was nothing and followed the Federation for 50 years to now where it's, you know, rightly or wrongly, the sport has, I mean, the Federation has taken on a giant-sized role in development of a game. an activist role in the game, that is something that is quite unusual, meaning if, you know,

the way I look at it is that, you know, to consider how far soccer's come, you also have compared to, say, other American sports of their sort of first 50 years. And if you look at other American sports, which all, you know, started at the beginning of the last century and sort of took off, let's say, you know, pro basketball or pro football or, you know, took off. And, you know, took off, say in the 50s and 60s, and that was after 50 years, you know, none of those sports ever had a federation to fall back on to help grow the game. You know, everything was developed locally in terms of just, you know, local participation from generation to generation. High school, college was was the number one competition at, say, football and,

basketball before it became a pro game. Right. And, you know, and you can say the same thing for soccer in Europe, meaning isn't like in the, in 1920, 1930s that, you know, the English FA played a role in the game. You know, they were, you know, a bunch of few old guys picking a team every couple of months, and that was it. Do you think it's good that we have this unusual situation or are there? Yeah, oh, of course, meaning, you know, I mean, it's, you know, it's like everything. And you can say that for every league, every, you know, for all the faults, say, you know, MLS, is MLS, is soccer better for MLS? Of course.

Is soccer better for U.S. soccer, of course. Is soccer better for the U.S.L for NWSL now, of course. Do each of these organizations have problems or head problems, of course? But the growth of sports made over the last, you know, 50 years or especially the last 20 years has been quite remarkable. And, you know, it has inevitably growing pains and pains of growing too fast. You know, I can argue at times, you know, meaning, you know, you look at the, you know, the national team in terms of the player pool, the sport has developed faster than, say, than, say, generations have come along for players of each generation to be better than the next. And that's where I would say, you know, all of us growing up, you know, at least say it's for myself, you know, and I look and even say, you know, I have a son who's in his late 20s.

grew up playing baseball. He played college baseball. And when he was growing up, you know, he never had a, you know, he played a traditional way

of growing up of Little League. And then when he got into high school, he started doing stuff outside of high school. But, you know, he never had a coach who had a license or never had a full-time coach, all the things that that soccer has

and has had now for 20 years. But that was because the sport had been in place. for so long. And, you know, so I think that, you know, I can say this of having been in this sport for 50 years, that it's going to be another 50 years before we see how far it will go. Yeah. I still, so back to the sort of off-field stuff that the Federation wants the the men's national team coach to do, I still don't feel like I'm real clear on what that is. And maybe you can, maybe by talking about Yergen Clemsman, what Yergan Clemsman did a little bit more,

you could put some color. And that also was, it was, Eugen Clean's Mind became the coach of the national team in 2011. At that point, the Development Academy had been placed for four years. At that point, the Federation clearly was working with issues

at the youth level of things like competition, you know, excessive, crazy competition of kids playing 11 v. 11. at a very young age, things like that. So the Federation needed someone to step in and sort of advocate, you know, if they're going to make change that if someone say,

who is prestigious, someone who is authoritative, to say why these changes needed to take place or why these things needed to be developed. And you're going, you know, wasn't, in many ways, especially good to that because it was background. He had his son, Jonathan, who grew up playing for the, strikers, which is one that was one and is still one of the top youth programs in Southern California. So he knew what was going on here quite well and was able to advocate for that.

Obviously, it's made cases. Some of the issues that say are in place now or less, so Greg Burhalter's role needs to be less. You could also make a case, well, you know, this is sort of a requirements or systems that would make it more likely that you had someone who is American, someone who's close to the best of the federation, someone who is less strictly, you know, with, you know, on-field performance issues, you know, and I think that's a fair argument to make.

You know, and again, then a lot of it goes back to the issue of Greg himself, of the pros and cons of how he's done as a, you know, The example would be that one of the biggest, one of the criteria was club player management, which would be dealing with players and clubs on ongoing basis. As a nationally team coach, you have to do that to have a good rapport with clubs to see how the players are doing, to see how they're progressing, see how they are handling fitness issues, injury issues. You know, I would make a case that one of the unique things about Greg was, his background having played in Europe his whole career,

having taken over a very young team that was almost all players who moved to Europe themselves, even younger than he did, which was 21, in this case, anywhere from 14 like Tim Wea to 16, like Giorana and Christian Pulisic, 18 or 19, with guys like Weston McKinney and Tyler Adams, where his ability to understand their situations, helped them navigate how they were doing to be, as Tim Wayas said,

recently a father figure for them is quite unusual and very powerful. And, you know, someone who's a father figure as a national team coach for the first four years might be different from the next four years when some of those guys are no longer going to be in the lineup because, you know, not all of them will be, but it is something that is quite unique. and I think the funny thing is is that one of the things that

Matt Crocker went over when they announced Greg's reappointment was a list of things of some of the tests they did and all was non-socker related of sort of leadership qualities of communication

Oh, that's Greg's wheelhouse and all things that his wheelhouse but I also say is that and Henry Bush and all of Yahoo Sports had a very good article detailing all this. And I saw Henry recently and we were talking about it and I said that going over that, all the tests could have been for finding the supervisor of a warehouse or a manager of McDonald's, let alone a national income. And my point also would be that the, you know,

a lot of the podcasts I would listen to pre-world Cup would be what Greg would do a number of series that would a podcast. He would go on occasionally with some reporters or with some of their shows. And Neville would come around to these things like what book was he reading? And he was really into these leadership books. And I think that's something that he very consciously worked on. And, you know, for the good of the program of having to figure out, How do you build a team where there's no leaders because it's so young? And so I think that, you know, sort of explains why would he go, why would three days after

the Willcovy go to a leadership conference? Yeah. Or why after the day after, I forgot the time frame, but there to after everything sort of blew up in January, goes on a sort of a leadership call with some guy at Harvard. And I'm not saying this to criticize him for that. But what I would say is that, you know, when he at the end of his speech in New York and December, when someone asked him about an example of something and he gave the Gio story without saying Gio's name and not realizing that was going to come out, that to me was sort of his blind spot of sort of, you know, telling one story too many of what was something that was very special to him and what he can say. considered a special quality. And, you know, so.

Yeah, it's almost like he was really proud of how he'd handle that. Yeah, and he should be. But the point is that, you know, you also can be, you know, he, he let his guard down, so to speak, and told the story that, you know, I mean, but for that, you know, none of this, none of this stuff are, unless the Gio's parents wanted to get him some other way, none of the stuff would have ever happened. Right. but then we'd still have a ticking time bomb.

That's me editorializing. And that's where, you know, I've, I had someone at the Federation say that everything that happened was sort of a blessing in disguise if the issue was to have a coaching search process, which took place. You could argue how serious it was and all that. But the point was that at that point,

you know, if you go back to December, you know, it was pretty clear that Ernie wanted to, Ernie Stewart, who was the then sporting director, wanted to keep Greg on, was going to do what they talked about a post-World Cup post-cycle analysis review of how things had gone. And what would have happened was Greg would have, in all likelihood, Ernie would have made the recommendation to rehire him.

He would have been approved as a rehire probably in late December, early January, for the start of what was going on in January. And then Ernie would have left, as he did, to go back to the Netherlands, to work at PSV. And then you would have had a new Spruyner to come in whose coach was hired by the previous guy,

which would have been a whole new problem for everybody. Right. So there's been a plan, he was going to go to Netherlands anyway, or there was some idea he was? Oh, you know, I don't know. No, I don't know if, I don't know, you know, no one has, Ernie has not said sort of when he decided to do it.

I think in the back of his mind that's something he wanted to do, partly for family reasons, which are all legitimate. So I think that was, it was, it was, there was going to be a poll to go back anyway. We don't know whether the events of December sort of forced his hand and said, this is too much or whether he wanted to move on, you know, because, you know, he'd been through a cycle, they've gone as far, you know, like some people will do, is, you know, they feel their mission has been completed and they've gone in as far as they think they can with a venture and then move on, you know.

So I don't know, you know, what it was, but my point is, is that, you know, there was a search greater than the search that would have taken place. if the stuff in December had not come out. Right. Okay. And then we would, like you said, we would have had a new sporting director if Ernie had then gone on to PSV as he did in actual time. And then we'd have a new sporting director with a coach who was hired on a pretty

abbreviated process. At least one more thing on the off-field stuff. Like if you look at the budget of the Federation, almost, well, the lion's share of the revenue comes from the national teams, which makes sense. But when it comes to expenses, you know, it's basically all the national teams and soccer house salaries as far as I can tell. Is that about right? I mean, it's like 90% more than 90% those things.

Yes, meaning, you know, and then the soccer house is, you know, is, or now, they, they moved their offices recently. but the point is that in Chicago, there are huge, I want to say huge, I don't mean in terms of each individual salaries, but there are a lot of employees there. And they're working on a lot of things.

They work on a national team program. They work on coaching education. They work on referee development. You know, I think the biggest thing in the example would be just the size of the national team programs has grown tremendously in terms of all the things of high performance,

you know, you know, things like that, that, you know, just didn't exist a generation ago. Yeah, that makes sense. So the management, so the management expenses line item is $40.5 million for the most recent fiscal year. That what you're saying, correct me if I'm wrong, is a large portion of that or some portion of that is stuff that is people that are working on referee, the referee program or the coaching program. Yeah. And then there's, you know, those are small numbers. But I think the point and the end, what people have to remember, which is sort of the crazy part of the federation is at the end of the end of the end of the end of the end of the end of the end up or has gone to the federation. And those members are millions and millions of kids whose parents in their registration fees pay a small amount that ends up or has gone to the federation.

You have the same thing with adults, which are all the people over the age of 18 or people playing in adult leagues, some, you know, around the country. And so it goes into, say, the politics of the Federation where, I'd say, for worse, not, I can't think of that much better. You know, at the end of the day, the Federation is an incredibly political organization and has been politicized through the, years for all the reasons and all the scenarios and situations that that you guys am sure have talked about a lot of your reader I mean your your your listeners have understand um because there is this uh membership with with various interests um yeah you know you have the the youth

you have the adults each with a 20 percent share of the vote in the federation you have the pros with 20, and now you have the adults with 33%, I'm sorry, the athletes with 33%. And the athletes plus the pros, which is basically divided into typically MLS and NWS on one side and all the other ones on the other, which would be the USL, NISA, and the NASL, which still maintains, you know, has one share of the MLS council, even though it hasn't played for six years or so. And so there's a great division of what's of an interest. And that's where, as the Federation has grown, the National Ten Conference has grown,

that is all grown and grown bigger because of the interest of the athletes, make sure that it happens. And, you know, not to say that they don't care about the other programs. But it's, you know, it has become a national team-driven federation as it has grown through the year. And are the political disputes mainly about where the money should be spent? Or are there other key battle lines? Because actually, I don't know that many people know that much about the detailed politics

of what goes on there. At least I don't. I agree with you, Chris. Yes, I mean, the example would be things like how much, you know, how, you know, if, if correctly, if the Federation is going to play a big role in this country in developing and improving coaching, say, you want to have a as big a coaching program as possible. You know, obviously you can have a limit of how many people you could find around the country who are great coaching educators. Just like you could say, well, you know, in terms of general teaching, you know, there's a limit of how many good teachers you can find. But the point is, is that if that is important, we should have the most robust coaching education program as possible to be able to reach as many people as possible for as little cost as possible. and you know

the federation has a program but you know without going into each coaching type course whether it's a grassroots coach or a more higher level coach which goes up to a pro coach which is a limited

class of say 30 or 40 men and women mostly men working to get this license every year you know it's not very little of that or none of that's free I'm sure there are like vigorous debates about how best to do that right yeah yeah and obviously you know you have you have also you have state associations who have programs

or you have you know an organization like U.S. club soccer which is another youth organization that runs programs they run programs for many years with with sort of La Lega as a sponsor and collaborator. So, you know, the question is how much do we want other organizations to be helped out by the Federation in all these endeavors? You can say the same thing as with referees, referee development. Soccer America has written a number of stories recently about how hard it is to find and retain referees. The Federation does a number of sort of development small grant programs. And the example being we had a story about one of the programs they did in Iowa to help find and retain teenagers to be referees. So there are all kinds of things that the Federation will, you know, they do a grant program about $3 million.

dollars. You know, in theory, they can do that for $10 million or $20 million. You know, it's just how much I want to spend and things like that. Yeah, you know, me, hearing you talk about your son playing baseball and being able to learn the game, even though there isn't like some licensing program in baseball literally reminds me of something I've talked about on the podcast, which is I live in North Georgia, basketball, wreck basketball, is much more robust and serious than rec soccer is in my county. And it's mostly because parents know the game, you know,

and parents don't know the game of soccer as well. And that to me is a generation example of, you know, that, you know, the only time is going to solve that problem. And, you know, I wrote a story in the last year about that, that, you know, the one thing soccer, never got with time to develop, you know, locally, develop organically, slowly, and things like that. You know, that's something that is all this sports in this country and soccer abroad has it has huge advantages to that. And that's where, you know, all the things of, you know, when it comes to

issues of quote, say pay to play, we pay coaches because we don't have coaches who we believe know enough to do the job. Or we pay coaches because we want to. want our kids to play soccer four or five, seven times a week, whether it's mostly practice, but to have a soccer engagement at that level. And, you know, using, again, the baseball example, all my son's coaches were fathers of his teammates, fathers of his classmates, who all of them grew up, you know, having an experience with baseball, some, you know, quite serious, some just, you know, maybe played high school. But they all had time, whether it was their type of job they had, most of them were either

teachers who could get out of three or four or contractors who would, you know, go to work at six and get out of four and had a flexibility in terms of managing their schedule to be able to get to the little league field at five or six for practice of the game. Yeah. And, you know, soccer, you know, just jumped. jumped that fence and went straight to pay to play. And that, you know, and I could, you know, I've said that, you know, when the development economy came along, one of the great positives was it included a higher level of play

and development and attention to development. But it required a, it required amount of time that was, that was more than, There were coaches available to do that. And so if you had extra two days of practice a week, it meant you had to find someone to pay them, which was in effect, you're also in effect finding a babysitter or a daycare sitter for your kids to do this.

Yeah. I even think, one last thing on that is I even think about, you know, we have a little, in my little rec association, we have a coach's meeting at the beginning of the season. And maybe half of the coaches show up because everybody's a volunteer, and it's like at 5 o'clock in the afternoon or something. and and I think like what if U.S. soccer could do like some big robust initiative where they offer coaching education to all these volunteer rec coaches.

How many of the volunteers would even take them up on it? I don't even know. Yeah. And that goes to how life is different today. You know, a lot of parents assume that every activity has to, you know, you have to do a lot of activities and all have to be paid for somehow. and you know if parents are lucky enough to have the money to do that or they just budget that as part of what their the cost of raising a child these days. Okay, let's go back to Coach Pay a little bit more like you sort of referenced.

I think Burhalter made 1.6 in the most recent fiscal year and Vlako made about 450K. So there's already a disparity, but what would be the implications for the Federation paying the men's coach five times as much as the women's coach, or 10 times as much? To me, you know, the political implications of it is that, you know, once a year when the 1990 comes out, which is the Federation's tax return, which will probably come out sometime in the fall of,

after it's been filed this year, of the coach of salaries. And there'll be a couple of stories about it, and then that'll be the end of it. And I'm sort of joking about it or being facetious, but that's the reality of it in that context, meaning it isn't like the players in their pay where you had some, you know, world champions, world champions who also were worldwide stars like Megan Rapino and Alex Morgan, who spoke well and passionately about their situations and their inequalities and,

and in things that where they had been treated poorly versus, and I don't mean to disparage them at all, but then you have Vlako or any coach speaking. It's just not going to be the same situation to have a voice. The women also were unionized.

And I would say the biggest factor would be is they had a, in their long legal battle, which ended with a settlement of $22 million to players who were last time in a period of time in which they said this week that they just got their first checks last week that they were able to do that because they had a lawyer, Jeffrey Kessler,

who wanted to take on the Federation. And, you know, until there's a Jeffrey Kessler who wants to take on coaches' salaries, it's, you know, it's, you might say it's a, quote, political issue, but nothing's going to change. Okay. And, you know, you look across the board, you know, you have a few examples and say, and, you know, disparities are great in college sports. In some ways, they've gotten greater because of the huge salaries that college football

and basketball coaches can earn. You have a few exceptions to that, say, in a sport like softball, I believe that say the Oklahoma softball makes five times the Oklahoma baseball coach makes, but those are rare. So I think, you know, the one scenario I think it would be very interesting would be is let's say at some point in the future, you have a, the national team will go on a new search and what will happen then?

I'll sort of backtrack and say that probably the most media attention to the salary situation came in the period of between the first and second cycle of Bill Ellis's women's national team coach after the U.S. had won in 2015 and before it won in 2019. And she got a raise. I think it was from like a base salary or something like 300. thousand to 500,000. But the point

would be is that afterwards when they found a replacement for LATCO made less than she did. So it wasn't like they were building on that salary, I think, but I can talk about a couple things. I think

the issue, as I mentioned, will be what's going to be the next coach? And what next coach's salary can be, and again, sort of like, on the same way, on say, on the men's side, are you going to go out and find You know, the, the, the, quote, best coach, there is no, with no dollars being out of the question. And right now, the highest pay in the coach and the women's soccer is Serena Vigman, the Dutch woman who coached in the Netherlands, moved to England, coached England, to the Euro 22 championship.

And she probably makes 800,900,000 euros, so that's probably double what Blackco makes. She has ties to the U.S., she went to UNC for a year. So if I was a federation looking for a successor to Blackco down the road, right now she would be the obvious choice. And they have to pay a lot more money than they're paying Blackco now. So I think, you know, but getting back to the Jill exam, you know there was some stories about it but but the Federation has never you know never budged on it never really responded to it never justified it but it's just so unfortunately that it isn't it hasn't been a big story okay well I'm not

trying to make it a big story no no no but but it's it's interesting me and as I said me and I I was in Los Angeles on this week for the Federation's women's National Team Media Day. Yeah. And, you know, that, you know, was a topic that, you know, it's surprising that it doesn't. And I would just get back to the Federation as an example of what is probably more critical, is just having, you know, we're talking about the women's side of the game, is just finding women to be

coaches is a critical issue and an issue that the Federation is starting to address and it was one of the debates, topics of conversation at the board, the Federation's board in the last year over the fact that there's so few women

coaches out there that the Federation can't even look at. The example was, is that of the 60 candidates for positions on the women, coaching positions on the women's national team, which would include youth national teams. A lot of those positions ended up were filled last year, so they had a number of jobs that they were looking to hire or to fill. And of the 60 candidates, the six were women.

So that's something that the Federation is working on and sort of looking at a mandate of each position. And I think what they would ultimately like to do is even the men's side. is to say that at a certain point, you know, on the men's side that you'd have to have a woman's, you know, one of the coaches on the men's naturally name has to be a woman. Why are there so few? I guess that's kind of a big question, but what are some of the reasons there's so few women candidates? I think it's what I would say is until now it hasn't been considered a, you know, an attractive position. you know, a position to devote your career to.

You know, to be, most of these coaches come from, say, the world of youth soccer, which is a very grueling job. It isn't, you know, you start out probably working two or three jobs, working, working, you know, 60, 70, 80, 90 hours a week. and you know most of the women coming out of college are pretty well educated probably more so than a lot of the men again this is not something just for soccer but from across society and you know the career paths they have a lot more options to you know more attractive

options to develop a career on than just coaching but it comes back to it the end of the day whether it's the Federation or whether it's a club that wants to have a coaches. And obviously it's imperative that they have bar women coaches, that they take the time to develop programs, develop initiatives, to find, nurture, develop, and retain female coaches. And again, that takes time. You know, another, in addition to the disparity between the men's and women's national team coaches' salaries, another thing that doesn't come up very much.

And I wonder if you have any insight on this is the actual mechanics of how the equal pay issue was resolved, which was pretty simply that the men agreed to pool their World Cup money with the women. And I wonder, have you noticed that? That like nobody, that rarely gets mentioned? And it's still framed as if it's the women won a victory against the Federation, which I guess they did. A couple of things I'd say is that obviously that's the first thing to say is how unique that is. And again, speaking earlier this week,

when Megan Rapino and Alex Morgan spoke, and they spoke to on the issues that say some other national teams have as they were preparing for the Women's World Cup. You have federation or teams like Canada and Jamaica where players have been very vocal about the problems they've had, money problems they've had, let alone you can have teams that we don't even know about because the players aren't vocal enough.

And they made the point is that U.S. soccer and the men's and women's national teams are the only team in the world, teams in the world, that put all their prize money, put in a pot and share it equally. So that's the context of what we're talking about. And I think the thing to remember is the men did that. And what they did it without taking a hit in the sense of they got huge increases

in the payments they would receive otherwise, which relate to, you know, game day appearances, bonuses, all things like that that are more than beyond what is a pool of bonus money, which is how far a team goes and a World Cup. So the men, you know, to make it work, the Federation had to make sure the players weren't losing anything. The men's players weren't losing anything. And that's what took place.

one of the things what that meant was that at least on a one-time basis the Federation took a hit and so in the fiscal year that will have ended in

March of this year the Federation is looking at a deficit of about $45 million. And 18 million of that, which was a one-time payment, which was retroactive payments to the men and women

in their new collective bargaining agreement. And that's on top of the $22 million that went to the women as a settlement of the lawsuit, a separate issue last year. So, you know, the point is, is that, you know, the men were made whole. You know, the men, you know, the men didn't really lose anything by, by agreeing to share the pools with the women. And obviously, I think the long term, the point would be is that the women's bonuses will

increase, you know, they're, you know, they'll both come out equally, which is what should have been done in the first place and what they'll help be. happy with. So there's a long-term solution for what was a huge discrepancy in the past. You mentioned Canada, and they're struggling right now. What's going on there? And are they in a, is the U.S. Federation kind of in a different category? Or do they have similar? Are there any concerns coming up? I guess the problem of me is Canada is a mess. and Canada, Canadian soccer is not the only sport.

You've had huge issues with Canadian hockey in terms of sexual abuse scandals, things like that. The problem with Canadian soccer is Canadian sports to begin with, which is one, just the size of the country, it's basically one-tenth of the size of the U.S. So there's not that opportunity for revenues like there is in the U.S. The second thing would be is that until the last two years, which was until World Cup qualifying cycle of 2022, Canada wasn't very good. I mean, most times I forget, you know, previously it was a while before Canada even made the, you know, the hexagonal. Yeah. And so, you know, there was no money in Canadian soccer.

So the Federation had no money coming in. What made their situation worse was they saw the Canadian Federation signed a bad marketing deal, not necessarily in the dollar amount that they were going to get in the short term, but by agreeing to a deal that went over a huge long period of time when they should have recognize that at some point the team would get better, which it did, and at some point the World Cup would come to Canada, which it will in three years. And, you know, so that's sort of some issues that Canada has faced, some of the reasons why, you know, Canada has something like $2 million in the bank versus the U.S. soccer, which, you know, has historically had, you know,

upwards of $160 million in the bank. And even after its program to, at one point it wanted to drive down the amount of money it had in the bank to $40 million, still has probably somewhere of $100,000 million in the bank. Is there any anticipation with these big tournaments coming up that the Federation is going to be a wash in money? I guess I don't know exactly how they make their money from that and if they're planning based on that. I don't know the answer to that. I do know what happened in 94. I know it will happen now, which will be a lot different.

Where in 94, when the World Cup came to the United States, FIFA was at that point very, I'm trying to think of the right word. It was, you know, it was in its infancy itself in terms of how it did its business, how it did marketing. And U.S. soccer benefited from. having some very smart lawyers. Alan Rutherberg, who was the president, and also Scott LaTellier,

were they able to write really good deals so that when the World Cup ended, the organizing committee of the 94 World Cup in the United States had a surplus of about $50 million that started the foundation, which still exists today. So the first point would be made is that

no, that my didn't go to the Federation itself, But what we don't know is how what's sort of the deal between FIFA and U.S. Soccer, the Canadian Soccer Association and the Mexican Football Federation for 2006. But FIFA has gotten wise through the years and now basically controls all the money flows. And because of that, they have. You know, they're also going to control the organization of the World Cup with their own people as opposed to 94 where it was almost all on the ground an event done here in the U.S. Okay. So we might not get a giant windfall.

Is that the short answer? Yes, yes, yes. Or probably won't. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, you know, we're going to have, uh, I forgot how it. the exact number of games, but it's going to, you know, I would imagine FIFA will probably make two or three times. It's about money they've ever been on a World Cup before from this one. So any surges and revenue for the Federation would need to come through their, maybe they get more, you know, sponsors to get money or they make more at games or?

Yes. And that's still something that's tricky in the sense that the question is how will those sponsors sort of be able to get their message out with a U.S. soccer emblem logo, so to speak, and that is putting on games. And there's only a certain number of games that the national team men or women can play in a year. And they're only sort of so many games they can also televise a year. And there are only some of those games for which the Federation, U.S. Soccer Federation, can control. Right now you have the Gold Cup. The Gold Cup, the games are on Fox or FS1, and you have them on Univision and TUDN and Unimath. And none of those are any longer Federation broadcasters.

And so, you know, the Federation went out and cut its own TV deal as opposed to being with S-U-M, which is MLS's marketing arm like it did for a couple of decades, both on the TV side and on the commercial side, which is sponsors. And they'll make more money than they did before, but it isn't like there's going to be a huge windfall because there's only the quote properties they have aren't that great. And also on the men's side, you don't have a World Cup qualifying cycle

to be able to have a series of five to seven or ten games that are quite attractive and get good TV audiences and get, you know, big crowds. So essentially it's only the friendlies. It's basically only those friendlies. On the women's side, you have the She Believes Cup, things like that. The women's side or on the men's side, you had the, you know, the Nation's League qualifiers, which was a game against Grenada, a game against El Salvador.

The Federation controlled those games, but not the final, which was the tournament. that was just held a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas. Okay. Hey, let's take a quick break. We'll be back for patrons in a minute. If you want to join the Patreon, get the link in the show notes. You get the full interviews and the Monday reviews and lots of other stuff, including access to the Discord.

We'll come back and talk about Paul meeting J.T. Batson years ago, the NWSL and its finances, a little bit more on the Federation and how it works and some other things too. In any case, thanks for listening. We'll see you.