‘Tell them we’re not playing’: inside the USWNT’s fight for equal pay

In an adapted extract from his book, the former executive director of the USWNTPA details how the 2015 World Cup winning squad used their leverage to drive change

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.