Disputes over pay mean that the NWSL is struggling to keep hold of top international talent

On the field, the US women’s soccer team has followed up a thrilling NWSL final with a couple of smashing debuts in friendlies against Switzerland. Off the field, the sport is bogged down in the courts and at the negotiating table.

The talent pipeline is still intact, a fact US coach Jill Ellis celebrated by calling in a staggering 11 uncapped players for camp. Lynn Williams, fresh from winning the NWSL Golden Boot and posting clutch performances to lift Western New York to the league title, scored just 49 seconds into her debut on 19 October. That was a new record for the fastest debut goal in US history – until Kealia Ohai scored 48 seconds after taking the field four days later.

But the NWSL, which has given Williams, Ohai and many other players important years to develop and bridge the gap between college soccer and the international game, still faces uncertainty. The league itself is stable, having already outlasted the two previous US professional leagues by playing a fourth season. Yet players are living on meager wages, and efforts to organize players to speak with a unified voice are slow.

And within the fractious US women’s soccer community, many fans and journalists (and players) treat the NWSL less as an earnest effort to expand the sport’s footprint and more as a punching bag for complaints of inequality, rife with comparisons of salary and playing conditions to Major League Soccer. US players ridiculed the league this summer after a game proceeded on a small field in Western New York. Hope Solo took advantage of the occasion to present a laundry list of NWSL complaints – some outdated and some curious, but some serious.

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Yet the league’s capacity to address the salary issue has actually been limited by the US women’s labor agreement with US Soccer, which manages the NWSL and pays salaries of USA internationals who play in the league. That agreement includes clauses limiting the pay of players who aren’t on the US women’s team, and it restricts US Soccer’s ability to change the pool of players currently on the national team.

That labor agreement, the focus of legal action and a threatened strike over an Olympic summer, is expiring at the end of the year. US Soccer has confirmed that the sides met on 26 October in New York and will meet again Tuesday in an effort to agree to a new deal before the end of the year, but neither side is eager to share particulars of what’s on the table.

The lame-duck agreement has limited the league’s ability to sign and keep strong players outside the US women’s talent pool. Each offseason, several players who are consistent starters in the league retire in their mid-20s, exhausted from taking additional jobs to make ends meet. Strong European clubs, who aren’t particularly concerned with league parity, have managed to keep most of their best players away from the NWSL.

Already in this offseason, European clubs have taken back some of the top international talent in the NWSL. Kim Little, the 2014 NWSL MVP, left Seattle to rejoin her old club, Arsenal. Washington’s Estefania Banini will play in Spain, though the door is open for a midseason return to the league runner-up Spirit next year.

The European clubs may also may be targeting USA internationals who aren’t satisfied with their training and living conditions in the NWSL. Olympique Lyonnais have made no secret of their desire to sign Alex Morgan, frequently reaching out to the striker on Twitter.

Another player possibly headed overseas: Hope Solo. She’s out of the picture with the national team, at least for the immediate future. She left her NWSL team and has talked about playing overseas, though she said in a documentary series she co-produced this year that she and her husband are building a house somewhere in North Carolina and plan to relocate (although her current legal issues may tie her up in the US for the immediate future).

So far, NWSL business is proceeding quietly but normally. Some players have been waived, some have re-signed with their current clubs, some have been loaned to Australia for a W-League season that conveniently falls within the NWSL offseason.

But the quiet isn’t likely to continue.