By Emily Landers
Dear US Soccer,
As a concerned fan of the US Men’s national team, I am concerned the male players feel neglected. During the last few years, the disparity in social media following has become increasingly apparent; the USMNT holds only 38.56 percent of the followers of the US Women’s national team. Adding insult to injury, Alex Morgan—a USWNT striker—holds a couple million more followers than all the players on the men’s team combined. Now, I’m not trying to say the men have delicate egos, but putting in the work and not getting the validation of millions of strangers following you on social media can be draining.
After narrowly missing qualifying for the Men’s World Cup in 2018, I feel like the men are really feeling down. Especially after watching their women counterparts get appreciated with that Ticker-Tape Parade in New York following their second, back-to-back win of their own World Cup. Rubbing their faces in it, the women got a hundred grand bonus after their win while the men got nothing, missing out on their own $407,000 bonus. Disheartened, the men went on to try to build themselves back up in the Olympics, only to narrowly miss out on qualification again.
With the USWNT’s recent successes, it’s only natural the men feel their accolades are not being amply recognized and appreciated. I mean, they lost the same amount of games as the women’s team last calendar year: 2. Despite similar records for the year, the USWNT got the privilege of medaling in the postponed 2020 Olympic games. It’s this inequality of results that breeds male feelings of inadequacy. I think having the women’s players post about the men’s achievements on social media would be beneficial to their mental well being, bringing them wider exposure.
Exacerbating the difference between the teams, the women’s team has had the audacity to sue you for “equal” pay—clearly an insane plight—aiming to take away from the men’s team. Even though they were paid more per player from 2015-2019, the women claim they had to win more games to make this much. Clearly, the women just want to further rub in their World Cup successes. Given the lawsuit, you must be frustrated by the women’s whining, but it’s very kind of you to continue to pay the men double what you pay them for a win. By doing so, the men feel the comforting weight of your support for their successes, punching them forward to hopefully get closer to getting out of the round of 16 at the world cup for the first time since 1930. Sometimes they must struggle with morale in the world cup having watched the women win four world cups since its inaugural competition in 1991 but failing to do so themselves.
I think you paying them significantly more for wins the last few years has been a good morale boost though. Working to qualify for Qatar 2022, the men feel much more supported by their federation choosing to celebrate their wins with triple the women’s bonus. Thank you for taking the steps to validate the men’s players’ successes monetarily.