It was a landmark announcement for the National Women’s Soccer League. For the first time in the young league’s history, it was introducing a new spending mechanism called allocation money, which would allow team owners to spend big on stars.

But when members of the U.S. Women’s National team first saw the new compensation rules, something else also jumped out to them. It was a line that read: “Allocation money may not be used for Canadian or U.S. allocated players.” In other words, USWNT players who committed themselves to the NWSL since its inception can’t see a dime of the influx of cash.

Players on the USWNT quickly began messaging each other, raising questions about the new rules, which the league announced on Nov. 1.

“Immediately people were like, ‘Um, you’re telling me we're opening up the money but I’m stuck?’” Megan Rapinoe tells Yahoo Sports. “‘We’re gonna be here for seven years, and then you’re gonna bring in whoever for $200K and I’m gonna be making what I'm making now?’ It's just not fair.”

It’s not that Rapinoe or players on the USWNT don’t support the changes, which should help the NWSL compete against leagues in Europe that have seen growing attendance, sponsorships and professionalism in recent years. Overall, USWNT players are glad that the NWSL has agreed to invest more in its players — but it shouldn’t be to the exclusion of USWNT players.

“On one hand, do we need to pay players more? Yes,” Rapinoe says. “Do we need to have the ability to get a Dzsenifer Marozsan, Eugenie Le Sommer, Lucy Bronze, Wendie Renard, and these types of players here? Yes, 100%. But you’re not cutting me out of that upside.

“There has to be some sort of structure where teams are incentivized to pay their national team players or else that player gets to choose where they want to go,” Rapinoe adds. “I don’t know what the best option is, but I’ll tell you what the best option is not: to do all of this behind closed doors, to not bring the national team players in at all. The best way is not to drop this on us and then, in the middle of the text, slip in that all national team players are excluded.

“I’m sorry, that’s just so disrespectful and such a slap in the face to everything that we do to grow this sport in this country.”

View photos North Carolina Courage striker Jessica McDonald (14) and Chicago Red Stars midfielder Julie Ertz are two of the many USWNT players who ply their trade in the NWSL. (AP Photo/Karl B DeBlaker) More

The new compensation structure, which was approved by the NWSL board of owners for the 2020 season, will allow teams to purchase up to $300,000 in allocation money to pay players above the maximum salary of $50,000. Additionally, allocation money can be traded, so teams could conceivably spend several hundred thousand dollars on a single star player if they wanted.

But USWNT players, who are prohibited from receiving allocation money under the new rules, will be stuck at a maximum salary of $77,500, with some USWNT players earning $72,500. That salary is paid by the U.S. Soccer Federation for USWNT players to be assigned NWSL teams as set by their collective bargaining agreement, which expires in 2021 and is currently the subject of a wage discrimination lawsuit.

As part of the CBA, the players earning separate national team salaries from U.S. Soccer are required to play in the NWSL — a deal USWNT players agreed to because they wanted a domestic league to grow and thrive.

In some cases, USWNT players committed themselves to the NWSL even though they could’ve earned more elsewhere. Rapinoe, for instance, earned the equivalent of around $170,000 per year in Lyon, and her club salary dropped to a fraction of that when the NWSL first launched and she left Lyon for the Seattle Reign.

In drafting the new rules, the NWSL competition committee set out to ensure the league would attract and retain certain types of players it struggled to get ahold of: big-name internationals who could earn huge paychecks in Europe, quality domestic players on the cusp of the USWNT, and draft picks who can often earn more going overseas because of the NWSL’s low $20,000 minimum salary.