AUSTRALIA’S female soccer players are asking for a minimum $11,500 wage in a maiden collective bargaining agreement, as the game faces a huge challenge from a the AFL’s women’s competition.

The proposal, if adopted, is expected to push the cost of running a W-league team such as Adelaide United’s to about $200,000 a year. At the moment, clubs receive just $50,000 in funding from FFA for their women’s team.

With the AFLW taking women’s sport by storm over summer, Professional Footballers Australia (players union) chief executive John Didulica believes soccer cannot afford to allow another W-League season to pass without putting structures in place in a bid to become professional.

“Now is a great opportunity to elevate the sport and the way we structure the players is fundamental to creating a genuine profession for the current players and a genuine aspiration for the young girls coming through now,’’ Didulica said.

“We need a decent workplace driving that.

“The research we done is that players are putting in 22 hours per week (for their clubs).

“We found that a lot of these players get zero dollars.”

PFA calls for the league’s stop 60 players to be paid $60,000 in a CBA in a four-year cycle in its “Grassroots to Greatness Roadmap for Women’s Football” document.

As it stands the W-League has amateur status with the game making a small inroad last season when, for instance, Adelaide United W-League captain Stella Rigon was guaranteed $60 per week during the season.

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Matildas teenage Adelaide attacker Alex Chidiac believes women’s soccer has to make the right moves to remain relevant in a changing sporting landscape.

“We have shown how committed we are to football and we know what increasing the levels of professionalism will do for the W-League,’’ she said.

“Other codes like AFLW and cricket have come a long way in a short space of time and so too have our rivals overseas. Now is the time for the W-League too make a leap forward.

“The W-League can be one of the world’s very best leagues, which will help the Matildas to be the best team in the world and win Australia’s first World Cup or Olympic gold medal.”

The W-League — the pinnacle of women’s soccer in Australia — is currently well behind other key women’s sports in the pay stakes.

Netball’s Super League is the clear pay leader with a CBA and players collecting about $67,000 for seven months’ work, while the AFLW pays players $8500 for three months.

Cricket’s W-Big Bash League has a $7000 players reward for three months while W-League players get, on average, between $2000 and $5000 for three months of competition.

Didulica believes the current W-League pay structure makes it harder for the Matildas — the 2010 AFC Asian Cup champion — to win the FIFA women’s World Cup, an achievement coach Alen Stajcic aims to achieve in two years.

“We want a genuinely professional league, if we want women’s football to do what we think we can do then we need to improve the base here so we can achieve that,’’ he said.

“The negotiations depend on whether the FFA shares our vision in that regard, we’re committed to build a model where players can balance football with the other things in their life.

“At the moment they’re having to prioritise to this competition but they’re having to make huge sacrifices to do it and we don’t want them making those sacrifices, we want them to focus on their football and become the best players they can be.

“The timing of this is important because we’ll have one chance to make it happen.

“We saw last season the acceleration of the AFLW and the danger of being swamped by the competition.”

The emphatic rise of AFLW has seen super W-League players such as SA-born Canberra United W-Leaguer Jenna McCormick become a “cross code girl” due to the better fiscal rewards the sport has on offer compared to soccer.