The women’s team brings huge revenues – and trophies – for US Soccer. But the federation knows its coach is unlikely to be tempted to go elsewhere

Jill Ellis, the manager of the US women’s national team, has been getting results. She led the USA to a spectacular Women’s World Cup victory in 2015 – which turned out to be very lucrative for her bosses at the US Soccer Federation – and just recently, the US women qualified with ease for this summer’s tournament in France.

But the financial rewards for her success have been limited, at least compared to her male colleagues who have achieved far less. According to US Soccer’s newly filed public financial disclosure, Ellis was paid less than four different coaches who worked on the US men’s failed qualifying campaigns for the 2018 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics, including two youth coaches.

Quick guide US Soccer salaries, 2017-18 Show Hide 1) Jürgen Klinsmann (ex-USMNT coach) $3,354,167 2) Bruce Arena (ex-USMNT coach) $1,274,957 3) Dan Flynn (chief executive officer) $836,517 4) Jay Berhalter (chief operating officer) $609,271 Andreas Herzog (ex-USMNT assistant coach) $363,534 6) Tom King (managing director, administration) $352,235 7) Tab Ramos (U-20 USMNT coach, youth technical director) $345,297 8) George Chiampas (chief medical officer) $342,600 9) Brian Remedi (chief administrative officer) $338,845 10) Jill Ellis (USWNT coach) $318,533 Note Base salary + additional compensation, 1 April 2017 to 31 March, 2018

In fact, Ellis was the 10th-highest paid employee at the federation with $318,533 total compensation for the 2017-2018 fiscal year – even though she’s the only one on the list who has won a world championship for the federation. Those who were paid more? Jürgen Klinsmann, who was issued $3.4m in severance after being fired over the US men’s disastrous start to 2018 World Cup qualifying. Also paid more was Bruce Arena, who earned $1.4m for taking over as coach and losing to Trinidad & Tobago, a result that ensured the US missed out on Russia 2018.

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As if the optics weren’t bad enough, the men’s under-20 coach, Tab Ramos, who works with other youth teams, was also paid more than Ellis at $345,297. Andi Herzog, an assistant coach to Klinsmann who led the under-23 men’s team in a failed bid to qualify for the Rio Olympics and was fired shortly thereafter, also got paid more than Ellis last year at $363,534.

While Ellis has out-performed all those coaches on the field, she has also helped bring more money into US Soccer through the success of the US women’s national team. According to US Soccer’s own financial disclosures, the senior women’s team brought in more revenue than the men’s team over the last three years. That’s partially due to the women winning the World Cup in 2015, which resulted in a windfall for US Soccer (the TV audience for the final was the largest for a soccer game – men’s or women’s – in US history). But it’s also due to the men failing to qualify for last year’s World Cup, which cost the federation millions in prize money and lower revenues from friendlies. (Last year, average attendance for US-hosted men’s national team games was the team’s lowest in 12 years.) Meanwhile, the U-20 and U-23 men’s teams – the purview of Ramos and Herzog – don’t bring in revenue for the federation: those teams don’t host friendlies that make money, and they don’t compete for prize money in tournaments.

For US Soccer, which is still the subject of an unresolved wage discrimination complaint from women’s national team players, the jarring salary breakdown among coaches represents another series of decisions that have required course-correction. Late last year, the federation reviewed Ellis’ salary and decided to give her a six-figure raise that will not be disclosed until next year’s tax filings, US Soccer tells the Guardian. That raise, the federation says, will put Ellis’ salary well above what Ramos and Herzog earned in the latest filing. It wasn’t a raise triggered by bonuses in her contract, and it wasn’t part of a contract extension – the federation just felt it was the right thing to do.

But Ellis earned less than Herzog and Klinsmann for years, from at least 2015 until her pay raise last year, and it’s worth considering how the disparity happened in the first place – and why it could happen again. From the federation’s standpoint, it made sense to pay average men’s coaches more than a World Cup-winning women’s coach for one primary reason: market value. The market dictates what a coach should be paid, the argument goes. Klinsmann and Herzog could conceivably have gone to another federation and earned similar salaries to what US Soccer paid them. Ellis, meanwhile, is believed to be the highest-paid women’s coach in the world: it’s unlikely she could make more elsewhere.

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Indeed, the market conditions for coaches of women’s teams are grim across all sports compared to their counterparts on men’s team. According to the last NCAA Gender Equity Report published in 2012, head coaches for men’s teams at US Division I universities were paid, on average, $2.3m more than those on women’s teams. It’s a similar story at the professional level, where coaches earn far more in MLS than in the NWSL, for instance, with little evidence the gap will close.

Instead of this unfortunate reality exonerating US Soccer’s decisions, however, it raises larger, more important questions. If one of the most successful women’s coaches in the world can’t help shape market conditions, who can? And shouldn’t US Soccer, an organization that exists to promote and grow soccer in the United States, help elevate the status of coaches for women’s teams in the sport?

Sticking to a rigid set of factors in making decisions, like relying on “market conditions,” has caused US Soccer problems before. When five players on the US women’s national team accused the federation of wage discrimination in 2016, the most powerful ammo in the public relations battle became the indefensible discrepancy in per diems between the men’s and women’s teams: male players were given $75 when traveling abroad while female players only got $60. Carli Lloyd sarcastically quipped: “Maybe they figure that women are smaller and thus eat less.” The federation seemed embarrassed and moved to restructure contracts going forward so the per diems would never be different again.

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of Carlos Cordeiro assuming the US Soccer presidency, and he is yet to deliver any real change. But ample opportunity lies ahead. The federation will hire someone for the new women’s general manager position. Cordeiro recently vowed a “strategic review” and “a complete inventory” of all women’s programming after struggles at the U-20 and U-17 Women’s World Cups. And negotiations over the men’s team’s expired CBA are ongoing, which offers US Soccer an opportunity to make pay between the men’s and women’s teams equal, something that Cordeiro said he supported during his presidential campaign.

US Soccer has been taking steps in the right direction. After the women’s team complained about having to play games on artificial turf while the men did not, the federation started scheduling their games on grass. The CBA signed in 2017 didn’t offer the women equal pay but it boosted compensation and included non-financial provisions, like a framework for better communication and collaboration with the federation. And Ellis did eventually get her pay raise, at a figure US Soccer has declined to share.

But there’s still more work left to do. Too often, discrepancies between the men’s and women’s teams have only been fixed after someone complained. And besides, when the women head to France this summer, fans will crowd around their TVs in hopes of seeing the United States hoist a major trophy – when is the last time the men’s team did that?