Portugal Soccer Quotes

As the Protestants celebrate a goal, they're egged on by the team captain, a long-haired Italian called Lorenzo Amoruso, who has the look of a 1980s male model. Flailing his arms, he urges them to sing their anti-Catholic songs louder. The irony is obvious: Amoruso is a Catholic. For that matter, so are most of the Rangers players. Since the late nineties, Rangers routinely field nearly as many Catholics as Celtic. Their players come from Georgia, Argentina, Germany, Sweden, Portugal and Holland, because money can buy no better ones. Championships mean more than religious purity.

The USA-Japan final was watched on television by a whopping 25.4 million Americans, smashing the TV record for the most-viewed soccer game by an American audience. Even more stunning, 43.2 million Americans watched at least part of the final. It beat every game of the NBA finals, happening around the same time, and beat the primetime average of the Sochi Olympics the year before. With 39 percent higher ratings, it destroyed a record set by the U.S. men’s team when it faced Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal during the 2014 World Cup group stage. The 1999 World Cup final, which had held the record for 15 years before that, had been watched by 17.8 million Americans. On social media, the moment was just as big. According to Face-book, 9 million people posted 20 million interactions to the platform about the final during the game. Tweets about the tournament had been seen 9 billion times across all of Twitter, with the final match earning the most engagements. Carli Lloyd’s half-field goal was the most-tweeted-about moment of the match. The national team’s victory touched millions of people—and that probably included plenty of little girls who had no clue who “the ’99ers” were and never saw Brandi Chastain twirl her shirt in the air. For the first time, millions of young girls saw the women of the national team as heroes.

With a quiet post-Olympics year ahead, U.S. Soccer secretary general Dan Flynn informed the players that the national team would “go dark” for 2005 and play between four and six games total that year. Rather than schedule the usual slate of games, the federation would instead focus on scouting new players. “If there are no games, where will the women play?” Langel asked. “The W-League,” replied Flynn. “Are you kidding me?” Langel said. The W-League wasn’t a professional league. It was a development league that included amateur, unpaid players. There was no comparison between playing international opponents with the national team and competing in the W-League. “We told them we don’t necessarily need a residency camp, but we don’t have anywhere to play at all,” says Cat Whitehill, who graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in communications. “They wanted nothing to do with us.” U.S. Soccer argued the next World Cup wasn’t for another three years and there were no major events the team needed to prepare for. It would be similar to the team’s schedule in 2001, when U.S. Soccer hosted just two home games for the national team. But for the players who had now made soccer their living and didn’t have the WUSA anymore, that was unacceptable. It’s not as if U.S. Soccer was simply scaling back friendlies. The federation said it had no plans to send the team to the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal, which the team always competed in. A team wouldn’t be sent to the Four Nations Tournament in China either, despite the competition being a usual fixture on the team’s calendar. The players demanded to know how U.S. Soccer could justify skipping the tournaments. Flynn replied that it was “the technical director’s recommendation” to play a lighter schedule. The technical director? April Heinrichs. The players wanted to figure out if Heinrichs really believed the team should play so few games in 2005, so Julie Foudy reached out to her. “Is that true? Did you tell U.S. Soccer we should only play five games?” Foudy asked. “I never said anything like that,” Heinrichs told her. “I told them you should play 20 games.” If Heinrichs hadn’t recommended such a sparse schedule and, in fact, recommended around 20 games, it seemed that U.S. Soccer was making a decision that went against what was best for the players. The players saw a clear double standard—the men’s team hadn’t played so few games since 1987, almost two decades earlier. They concluded U.S. Soccer’s real reason was the same one behind most disputes between the players and the federation: money. The federation, it appeared, did not want to spend the money for training camps, player stipends, and travel for overseas competitions, even as it was sitting on a $30 million surplus at the time. “In 2005, they had no plans for us and wanted us to go quiet so they didn’t have to pay us the entire year,” says defender Kate Markgraf.

With a quiet post-Olympics year ahead, U.S. Soccer secretary general Dan Flynn informed the players that the national team would “go dark” for 2005 and play between four and six games total that year. Rather than schedule the usual slate of games, the federation would instead focus on scouting new players. “If there are no games, where will the women play?” Langel asked. “The W-League,” replied Flynn. “Are you kidding me?” Langel said. The W-League wasn’t a professional league. It was a development league that included amateur, unpaid players. There was no comparison between playing international opponents with the national team and competing in the W-League. “We told them we don’t necessarily need a residency camp, but we don’t have anywhere to play at all,” says Cat Whitehill, who graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in communications. “They wanted nothing to do with us.” U.S. Soccer argued the next World Cup wasn’t for another three years and there were no major events the team needed to prepare for. It would be similar to the team’s schedule in 2001, when U.S. Soccer hosted just two home games for the national team. But for the players who had now made soccer their living and didn’t have the WUSA anymore, that was unacceptable. It’s not as if U.S. Soccer was simply scaling back friendlies. The federation said it had no plans to send the team to the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal, which the team always competed in. A team wouldn’t be sent to the Four Nations Tournament in China either, despite the competition being a usual fixture on the team’s calendar.

By the time the national team prepared to compete in the 2013 Algarve Cup in late February and early March, collective bargaining agreement negotiations had ramped up considerably. With the team’s existing contract having been expired since the end of 2012, the players were also no longer bound by the no-strike clause in their contract and a boycott was on the table. In February 2013, while the team was in Nashville for their final friendly match before the Algarve Cup started, discussion turned to whether they should go on strike and skip the upcoming tournament in Portugal. “We decided as a team that we want to go on strike to get more money for our new CBA, and we were going to go on strike until we understood everything about the NWSL, before we were forced to decide which team to play for in allocation,” says Hope Solo. “There were a few players in the room that didn’t know how to vote, but the rest of the team raised our hands and said it’s time to take a stand.

Ultimately, the strike never happened. Some players felt, after speaking with the team’s attorney, John Langel, that striking before the Algarve Cup didn’t offer enough leverage. They were better off going to Portugal and continuing negotiations there with striking as an option after the tournament, before the start of the NWSL. They believed the launch of the new league offered the urgency that could make a strike effective. For Solo, who pushed for the strike, it was frustrating to see her teammates back off so quickly. Even though the Algarve Cup was a relatively minor tournament, it was the biggest national team event on the calendar until the 2015 World Cup, two and a half years away. The advice of the team’s longtime attorney to forgo the pre–Algarve Cup strike amounted to taking the federation’s side, as far as Solo was concerned. By that point, she had already lost faith in Langel’s ability to fight for the team and months earlier had started, on her own, looking for someone else who could represent the team. “It was really empowering for us. We finally were taking a huge stance against U.S. Soccer—we said, We’re putting our foot down, we’re going on strike, we mean business,” Solo says. “Well, it took about one phone call from John Langel to scare us into backing down and not going on strike.

It was a moment where I realized that if we can back down that easily and we can get intimidated, then U.S. Soccer has the upper hand on us at all points in time because it didn’t take that much,” she adds. “We had the courage to say we were going to go on strike, and then, within a few days, we decided, no, we’ll get on the plane and play in Portugal.” During the Algarve Cup, discussions within the team continued and Langel met with U.S. Soccer for negotiations while the players were out of the country. By the time they got back, they were close to a deal with U.S. Soccer that would cover them both in the NWSL and in case the league folded. Striking

It was a moment where I realized that if we can back down that easily and we can get intimidated, then U.S. Soccer has the upper hand on us at all points in time because it didn’t take that much,” she adds. “We had the courage to say we were going to go on strike, and then, within a few days, we decided, no, we’ll get on the plane and play in Portugal.” During the Algarve Cup, discussions within the team continued and Langel met with U.S. Soccer for negotiations while the players were out of the country. By the time they got back, they were close to a deal with U.S. Soccer that would cover them both in the NWSL and in case the league folded. Striking was still on the table, but the players no longer felt it was necessary. Asked about a strike, U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati says he was never made aware that the team was considering it. In the end, the contract the two sides agreed to offered large increases in compensation for the national team. If the NWSL couldn’t get off the ground, salaries would go up between $13,000 and $31,000, depending on each player’s tier. But with the new league in place, salaries would stay almost the same while players would get an extra $50,000 NWSL salary. On top of their guaranteed income, more money than ever was available through performance bonuses and a $1.20 cut of every national team game ticket sold that would be put into a team pool. In the end, the biggest sticking point, however, wasn’t the compensation—it was locking the players into the NWSL. It became a requirement in their national team contract, and there was no backing out if the players didn’t like their club teams.