We’re not playing, Rich. Fuck them, we’re not playing. Just tell them that we’re not playing. That’s what I heard on 10 July 2015, on a call from Christie Rampone, the captain of the USWNT. I was the executive director of the Women’s National Team Players Association, the official collective bargaining unit for the USWNT. Rampone called me five days after the USWNT’s World Cup victory. While Rampone talked with me, the team were on their way from the midtown Manhattan set of Good Morning America to the beginning of the ticker tape parade in lower Manhattan’s “Canyon of Heroes” to celebrate their title.

Just a few days earlier, on the morning after the team’s World Cup victory, Sunil Gulati, the longtime president of US Soccer, called captains Abby Wambach and Rampone to tell them that the team’s request for the weekend off was denied, and they were all going to be forced to play their National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) games.

As recounted to me by Rampone, the response from Gulati was immediate. He told Rampone that the players had to play those NWSL games. He noted that all the NWSL teams had developed huge marketing and promotional campaigns around the World Cup champions to sell out their stadiums that weekend, and that he didn’t care how the players were feeling, that no matter what, they were going to play.

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