US Soccer’s historic equal pay deal represents a hard-won peace

At long last, peace.

Expensive peace, certainly. But a peace without which US Soccer was never going to progress.

The slogan US Soccer has tried to push for many years is “One Nation, One Team”. That’s difficult to take to heart when women’s team advocates openly mock the men’s lack of World Cup success and men’s team advocates fire back with constant reminders that the women lose to men’s youth teams.

With the new collective bargaining agreements announced Wednesday by US Soccer and the players’ unions, everyone is finally on the same side.

Almost.

The men’s and women’s teams now have equity across the board in every apples-to-apples comparison and even a few that are closer to apples-to-pears – beating the 24th-ranked men’s team on the road is much tougher than getting a home win over the 24th-ranked team in the shallower pool of women’s soccer national teams, but they will now have identical win bonuses. That’s low-hanging fruit that could’ve and should’ve been resolved years ago.

Those comparisons are easier today because the women have finally given up guaranteed salaries that provided stability when women’s pro soccer was virtually non-existent but became a legal albatross because the women negotiated for a deal with a different structure – not just different pay amounts – than the bonus-only deal the men had.

More importantly, each team now directly benefits from each other’s success. Prize money and commercial revenue will be pooled together and split between the two teams. An MNT win in the World Cup round of 16 means more money for the WNT. A WNT World Cup triumph means more money for the MNT. Win-win in the most literal sense.

“We’ll be each other’s biggest cheerleaders, for sure,” said Walker Zimmerman, a US