In a decade playing soccer internationally for Canada, Kara Lang first saw a paycheque last year after she helped the women’s national team qualify for this summer’s World Cup.
Grand total? Less than $4,000, she says.
Money is the primary theme at the heart of a threatened boycott by the women’s national team, ranked No. 9 in the world and considered a podium contender both in Germany at the World Cup and at the 2012 London Olympics.
Lang, recently retired because of chronic knee woes, remains the athlete’s representative on the Canadian Soccer Association board and supports her teammates as they said this week that they wouldn’t play another international game until the association has resolved its differences with head coach Carolina Morace. The former Italian international has a 19-8-5 record with the national team and led Canada to Germany by winning the World Cup qualifying tournament last November.
Morace, under contract through 2012, said last Friday she would resign following the World Cup. Details of the dispute are being closely held but midfielder Carmelina Moscato said money is a factor there, too: “She doesn’t want more money, but she wants the discretion to spend it how she thinks it should be spent,” Moscato said. “If she thinks we need to spend it on another game or on fitness testing it should be boom, done. Right now she has to jump through hoops.”
Concurrent with the coaching issue, the women’s team has gone public with a dispute over compensation that it first raised with the CSA in 2009 but says has been ignored.
“They’ve brushed us aside before and we’ve tried everything else,” Moscato said of the boycott. “This seems to have got their attention.”
According to the CSA and the players’ lawyer, Jim Bunting, an offer has been made and negotiations are on-going, but so far the players haven’t received what they want – a predictable stipend that will allow them to anticipate their financial needs year in and year out through the four-year Olympic cycle.
As national team athletes, players receive $18,000 annually, tax free, from the federal government, but players like Lang and Moscato say that hardly covers their needs considering they train nearly full time – the women’s team will be together for 122 days in 2011, including several lengthy trips abroad.
The money they have received comes in the form of bonuses – often negotiated during the competitions – that are provided out of prize money paid by FIFA.
“There’s no way you could hold a job and do this,” Lang says. “And $18,000 isn’t much to live on. The bottom line is most of their girls live at home with their parents and have zero assets and zero savings. It’s not what you envision yourself doing at 27 or 28 years old.”
The Canadian women’s hockey team gets a stipend while training and competing for Canada, though Hockey Canada wouldn’t comment on the amount.
The soccer team is seeking compensation in line with what the men’s national team receives. While the CSA hasn’t revealed what the men get, executive secretary Peter Montopoli said Wednesday that the amount was based on revenues generated from ticket sales. It’s believed the men receive a predetermined fee per game played, believed to be in the low-four figures per appearance.
Comparing the two teams is problematic because the women’s team trains together three times longer than the men do, but Moscato says it seems reasonable that the women receive a comparable amount overall, even if it’s for more time spent training. “We’re not seeking the same arrangement,” she said. “But the bottom line should be the same.”
The women’s team gets 18 per cent of the CSA’s budget of $18-million to $19-million, says Montopoli, compared with about 13 per cent for the men – though that might be expected given the women are in a World Cup year and the men aren’t.
For players such as Lang and Moscati the balance is to fight what they believe they deserved without seeming ungrateful for what they have. “We don’t feel neglected,” said Moscato, who has played 44 times for Canada and gave up an opportunity to earn about $2,000 a month playing for a club side in Italy in order to devote herself to the World Cup build-up. “But there are things that need to be fine-tuned.”
