Fifa Women's World Cup Quotes

Tom King, the chief operating officer of U.S. Soccer, said that the federation invested $4.4 million on the women's team in 1999 and lost $2.7 million. The federation receives about $3 million from FIFA, soccer's world governing body, for qualifying for the men's World Cup, and $700,000 to $1 million per game, American officials said. The federation receives no money from FIFA for qualifying for the Women's World Cup. The men's team also receives guarantees from other countries when it travels of up to $140,000, King said, compared with zero for the women. 'I don't see the WNBA players asking for the same salaries as the NBA players,' Contiguglia said. In the case of soccer, however, the women are the NBA. It is the women's team that is more popular and higher achieving. And to suggest the men's team is a cash cow is incorrect. The men's team didn't pay for itself either in 1999, King said, losing $700,000 on a budget of $5.9 million. An argument could be made that the American women deserve more money than the men, not just equal pay. They have won two world championships and an Olympic gold medal, while the men have won nothing. The biggest men's home crowds often come at matches where the ethnic population is cheering for the other team.

This time it was with FIFA, the organization that oversees soccer throughout the world and organizes the Women’s World Cup. FIFA, along with the Canadian Soccer Association, or CSA, planned to put every game of the 2015 Women’s World Cup on artificial turf, something that had never been proposed for a senior World Cup before, including all 20 men’s World Cups prior. Artificial turf has become a necessity in some climates where it’s hard to maintain grass or at venues that need to stand up to constant use. Where natural grass isn’t a viable option, artificial turf is the next-best alternative. But generally, soccer is supposed to be played on natural grass. Players report getting injured more and recovery time taking longer when they play on artificial turf. Some studies have supported this perception, while some have been inconclusive. But when Sydney Leroux posted a photo of her legs covered with bloody scrapes from slide tackling on artificial turf, it was a clear example of why there’s a consensus among soccer players. Kelley O’Hara responded to Leroux’s photo: “You should probs tweet that to FIFA.” It may be less of an issue in other sports, but in soccer, turf can be especially hard on a player’s body.

Not only are they long-lasting injuries, but there are long-term effects of playing on turf,” Alex Morgan once explained. “The achiness, taking longer to recover than on natural grass, the tendons and ligaments are, for me at least, I feel more sore after turf. It takes longer to recover from a turf field than natural grass.” For this reason, some players with leverage have refused to play on artificial turf. When superstars Thierry Henry and Didier Drogba joined MLS clubs after careers in Europe, where artificial turf is rare, they refused to play at venues without natural grass. Grass also offers a better quality of ball movement and natural bounces, while artificial turf can negatively affect the flow of the game. In other words, soccer is meant to be played on grass, and that’s especially true during a World Cup, the most important tournament in the sport. When Canada’s bid, which included artificial turf fields, was selected by FIFA for the 2015 World Cup, the decision flew under the radar at first.

They brought in players from other national teams around the world, including Germany, Brazil, Mexico, and others to sign a letter asking FIFA and the CSA to reconsider using artificial turf. When that didn’t work, they filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, arguing the decision to play the tournament on artificial turf was gender discrimination under Canadian law. After all, no men’s World Cups had ever been played on artificial turf, and the upcoming men’s tournaments had been planned to be on grass through 2022.

The reality is, the men would never play the World Cup on field turf,” Abby Wambach said after the complaint was filed. “So for me, it’s a women’s rights issue—it’s an equality issue.” Of course, FIFA treating the Women’s World Cup like it was less important than the men’s event wasn’t new. Take, for instance, the prize money that FIFA offered the winners. For whoever won the 2015 World Cup, a $2 million team prize was on the line. If that seems like a lot, it shouldn’t—the German men’s team won $35 million for winning the 2014 World Cup. That’s roughly six cents on the dollar for the women. The last-place men’s team at the 2014 World Cup earned $8 million, four times what the winner of the 2015 Women’s World Cup would earn. FIFA may have been a so-called not-for-profit organization that was heading into the 2015 Women’s World Cup with around $1.5 billion in cash reserves, but FIFA secretary general Jérôme Valcke argued the women would have to wait 13 more World Cups to see the sort of cash prize the men get.

The national team’s bonus for winning a world championship in 1991 was $500 each, and at the time, the players were thrilled about it—even though FIFA offered prize money of around $50 million for teams at the men’s World Cup. The players were thrilled because there wasn’t any money in women’s soccer, and they knew it.

The prize money certainly said something about FIFA’s priorities, though. The same week the 2015 Women’s World Cup kicked off, United Passions debuted in movie theaters. It was a propaganda film that FIFA produced about itself and bankrolled for around $30 million. That’s double the total amount of prize money FIFA made available to all teams participating in the 2015 Women’s World Cup. The film earned less than $1,000 in its debut weekend in North America, for the worst box-office opening in history, and it went down as the lowest-grossing film in U.S. history. Almost all the millions of dollars FIFA poured into making the movie was lost. The film has a 0% rating on the popular movie-review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, and a New York Times review called it “one of the most unwatchable films in recent memory.” And

The prize money certainly said something about FIFA’s priorities, though. The same week the 2015 Women’s World Cup kicked off, United Passions debuted in movie theaters. It was a propaganda film that FIFA produced about itself and bankrolled for around $30 million. That’s double the total amount of prize money FIFA made available to all teams participating in the 2015 Women’s World Cup. The film earned less than $1,000 in its debut weekend in North America, for the worst box-office opening in history, and it went down as the lowest-grossing film in U.S. history. Almost all the millions of dollars FIFA poured into making the movie was lost. The film has a 0% rating on the popular movie-review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, and a New York Times review called it “one of the most unwatchable films in recent memory.” And remember the uncomfortable encounter at the team hotel between the Americans and Brazilians after the 2007 Women’s World Cup semifinal? That would never happen in a men’s World Cup. That’s because FIFA assigns different hotels and training facilities to each men’s team, to serve as a base camp throughout the tournament. The women don’t get base camps—they jump from city to city and from hotel to hotel during the World Cup, and they usually end up bumping into their opponents, who are given the same accommodations. American coach Jill Ellis said she almost walked into the German meal room at the World Cup once. “Sometimes you’re in the elevator with your opponent going down to the team buses for a game,” Heather O’Reilly says. “It’s pretty awkward.