The USWNT got $24m in their equal pay battle. Now comes the hard part

A mere 2,155 days after the US women’s soccer team filed a complaint with the USA’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and 1,082 days since the team filed a lawsuit against US Soccer, the team and the federation announced a settlement on Tuesday.

Unusually for legal action, the terms of the settlement were immediately made public: $24m, with $2m of that money earmarked for “USWNT players in their post-career goals and charitable efforts related to women’s and girls’ soccer.”

Now comes the hard part.

The deal is contingent on the ratification of a new contract between the federation and the players. That new contract is tied up in part because US Soccer president Cindy Cone has insisted that the men’s and women’s national teams come together with the federation to figure out the pesky problem of how to pay both national teams equally when Fifa’s prize money for World Cups is hugely unequal – $440m for the men in 2022 against a proposed $60m for the women in 2023.

On a related note, all parties that take women’s soccer seriously would very much like Fifa to even out that prize money. Today. Yesterday. It’s money Fifa could afford to, considering the organization made around $3.5bn in profit from the 2018 World Cup alone.

“We’re not wondering if the women’s game can make money,” Megan Rapinoe said of Fifa on a Tuesday conference call. “It’s just willful discrimination and willful negligence.”

Since 2018, the US men have been playing under the terms of an expired collective bargaining agreement. The women agreed in December to extend their current deal through March.

Related: US women’s soccer team reach landmark $24m settlement in equal pay battle

Players on Tuesday’s conference call said they’ve been working with