Category: Soccer/Union

Washington Spirit president of soccer operations Haley Carter knows better than anyone that Trinity Rodman’s future is the biggest story in the women’s game right now.

Carter also is sworn to secrecy over the superstar’s contract talks, a fact she reiterated as she spoke Thursday at the United Soccer Coaches Convention here at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. But that did not stop her from talking about Rodman in other ways, including her impact on the NWSL and the sport as a whole.

Carter saw The Inquirer’s recent feature on U.S. captain Lindsey Heaps, which made the point that only five teams in Europe are at a truly high enough level to be worth it for the top American talent: England’s Arsenal, Chelsea, and Manchester City, France’s OL Lyonnes, and Spain’s Barcelona. All but Barcelona have top U.S. players, with City signing Penn State product Sam Coffey this week.

A veteran of two NWSL teams’ front offices, two national team coaching staffs, and the Houston Dash bench as a player, Carter agreed with the point. Many other teams in Europe are trying to raise their games, but none has reached the level of those five yet.

Does that matter when trying to sign not just Rodman, but other players from around the world?

“We’re not necessarily competing with leagues, per se, for U.S. talent — we are competing with very specific clubs, and we have to be cognizant of that” Carter told The Inquirer. “That being said, though, more teams and more leagues are starting to make major investments. So the number of teams that we’re competing with is going to grow every year, right?”

Indeed it is, and many have said the NWSL should compete accordingly. Raising the salary cap by $1-2 million this winter would be the fastest way to do it, and far less controversial than the league’s High Impact Player status that is set to take effect in July.

The NWSL Players Association formally filed a grievance against that on Wednesday, six weeks after filing a grievance over commissioner Jessica Berman’s veto of a contract that Spirit owner Michele Kang offered Rodman.

It is widely understood that Rodman wants to stay in Washington but wants a deal that will pay her what she’s worth. Kang, who also owns OL Lyonnes and England’s London City Lionesses, is clearly ready to offer it.

Rodman isn’t just a star in the U.S.

For now, everyone else is stuck waiting. But that did not stop Carter from offering a few words in a seminar Thursday that will raise the heat a bit.

“The reasoning behind having a salary cap is to have competitive parity,” she said. “And I think you hear the phrase ‘best league in the world’ thrown around a lot about the NWSL, but the reality is we are the most competitive league in the world; we are not the best league in the world. I wouldn’t even know how you would measure that.”

There surely are ways, whether subjective or statistical. The former would include the endorsements international players make when they come over here, such as one Gotham FC and Spain striker Esther González gave to Sports Illustrated last year.

“Every match you play in, you have to prepare like it is a final,” she said. “There are a lot of international players who are at the top of their game and want to play in the NWSL, and there’s a reason for that.”

Carter said that point “still resonates with players. Players want to play in a league where every match is a meaningful match.”

But some of her other remarks, on the business side of the game, might have framed Rodman’s importance even more strongly.

“How can we tap into that international fan base and find a way to monetize that?” Carter said. “If you look at Trinity Rodman for instance — Trinity Rodman’s kit sells like crazy in the U.K. How can we do that for more of our athletes? How do we create that buzz and excitement?”

Rodman’s jersey sells plenty well in the U.S. too, whether it’s her Spirit one or her U.S. national team one. Just the potential of her presence at Washington’s Audi Field on a game day helped the Spirit draw an average attendance of 15,259 last year, third-best of the NWSL’s 14 teams.

“One of the reasons I came to the Washington Spirit was because of the work that Michele Kang has done specifically to make the Spirit a cultural icon within that city,” said Carter, who took the job in early December.

She tied that to the Spirit’s grassroots work in Washington as much as anything else, but specter of Rodman still hung over the moment for many people in the room.

The next global measuring stick

A milestone of a different kind will come later this month when FIFA stages its inaugural Women’s Champions Cup in London. In the semifinals, Gotham will play Brazil’s Corinthians, and Arsenal will play Morocco’s AS FAR — all winners of their respective continental championships.

Those games will be single moments among many, but they’ll still be a measuring stick.

“It may not necessarily reflect whether your league is the best league in the world, but it gives a good opportunity for us to put our best teams against other best teams,” Carter said.

It might also make a point about another measuring stick that gets attention: player rankings by the international media. This year’s edition strongly favored European players, partially because some major U.S. players have been out of action — Rodman and Rose Lavelle with injuries, Sophia Wilson and Mallory Swanson while pregnant.

But beyond that, many voters are based in Europe, so they might favor players whom they see more. And now the rankings have even more significance because the NWSL is using them to judge players’ eligibility for HIP status.

“I always take those player ratings with a bit of a grain of salt,” Carter said, and wondered aloud why the players should care about things “that in the big scheme of things are very subjective, anyhow.”

But there is a reason, she admitted: “Now you look at the HIP criteria, and so much of the HIP criteria is based on these ranking and ratings.”

U.S. women’s soccer team captain Lindsey Heaps will join NWSL expansion team Denver Summit in June, ending a four-year tenure at France’s OL Lyonnes to move to her hometown’s new club.

The move had been speculated about on both sides of the Atlantic for some time, but was not finalized until now. Heaps will depart OL at the end of the ongoing European season, in which she will almost certainly win a fourth French league title and could add a second Champions League crown.

From the moment the Denver team was announced last January, the Golden, Colo., native knew she wanted to play there someday.

“One thing I wanted to do was kind of take the Denver aspect out of it, and really look at it from a football perspective — what the ownership was doing and what we were trying to create here at Denver Summit,” Heaps said Monday. “As hard as it was to to take the Denver and the home aspect out, it was something that was very intriguing to me. And it aligned with everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted it to be the right move for my career.”

Once Heaps was satisfied with that, the emotional part was easy. Along with being closer to her husband, San Diego FC sporting director Tyler Heaps, she’ll get to play in front of her parents, the rest of her family, and many friends in Denver far more often than she can now.

“It was amazing once it finally became real,” she said. “The feeling of going and being able to play in my home state, and for such an incredible community, and also a club that just wants to do things in the right way — I’m very, very thankful and I’m just excited to get going.”

She later added: “Knowing that I could play in my home state with my family and friends close by, obviously closer to my husband as well, it is really hard to pass up that opportunity with everything being said.”

‘Always seek a new challenge’

She previously played in the NWSL from 2016 to 2021 with the Portland Thorns, after starting her career with Paris Saint-Germain in 2012 — famously becoming the first major American women’s soccer prospect to spurn college as a teen.

Heaps won the 2017 NWSL championship and two regular-season titles with the Thorns, and with the U.S. won the 2019 World Cup and 2024 Olympics. Her 170 U.S. caps rank 19th all-time, tied with Carla Overbeck.

The timing of the announcement will be noted by fans who have a close eye on the battle between the NWSL and European clubs for U.S. stars. Sam Coffey still seems to be on the cusp of moving to Manchester City, and the former Penn State star was at the team’s home game Sunday.

Trinity Rodman’s future, meanwhile, remains undecided. The NWSL’s “High Impact Player” (HIP) provision designed to keep her in the league remains contentious, and the NWSL Players Association wants to take the league to arbitration over it.

It was no surprise that the subject came up again Monday.

“I think the most important thing I want to put out there is, with other national team players, younger players, my message is always: one, you want to do the right thing for you,” Heaps said. “But also, that you should always seek a new challenge. I always give the advice that I think it is so special to go play in a different environment, in a different culture.”

She also applied the principle to players from European nations who’ve come to the NWSL, such as the San Diego Wave’s French veterans Kenza Dali and Delphine Cascarino. Heaps has played with both over the years.

“I think it is so special to see how they’re thriving and doing so well,” she said.

The HIP controversy

Heaps qualifies for HIP status, which means she can be paid beyond the league’s salary limits. Denver GM Curt Johnson said the team had wanted to sign Heaps no matter what and for some time, but will use the status on Heaps’ contract if it stays in place.

“This was something that predated the HIP rule,” he said. “Our intention was to sign Lindsey, then the HIP rule came along.”

The rule doesn’t take effect until July 1, which puts teams in the awkward position of having to sign contracts now that are backloaded to incorporate the status — while also waiting to see how the arbitration plays out.

Each team will have a pot of $1 million to spend beyond the salary cap on players who qualify. There is no limit on how many players per team can be given the status, but there is a natural limit on how many ways it makes sense to divide the cash.

“When a player is assigned the HIP category, the salary cap charge is in the salary cap, and then there’s a pool of money outside the salary cap, is how it works,” Johnson said. “But we’re moving forward with the assumption that this will fall in the HIP category, and hopefully we’re moving on to finding our next player that fits that category.”

He deferred the rest to the league. A spokesperson there confirmed how Johnson described things, and declined further comment.

Although some of Lindsey Heaps’ games in Europe aren’t easy for American fans to watch, the chances that do come along show why she’s so comfortable there.

The 31-year-old midfielder plays for her club, France’s OL Lyonnes, as more of a facilitator than the do-it-all general she’s often been cast as with the United States — not just by fans, but by coaches over the years.

It’s easy to focus on Heaps not scoring, especially given that she started her career as a forward before moving into midfield. But her last game for OL, against Spain’s Atlético Madrid in the Champions League, showed a different side of Heaps.

She completed 42 of 44 passes that night, continuing a pace of a 90% pass completion rate in Champions League games this season, and had eight defensive recoveries. The players around her did most of the creating, especially midfielder Melchie Dumornay and wingers Tabitha Chawinga and Kadidiatou Diani.

Any team would dream of having OL’s squad of superstars. The club was the standard-bearer in Europe long before American businesswoman Michelle Kang bought it in 2023 (she also owns the NWSL’s Washington Spirit and England’s London City Lionesses), and it has remained at that level.

No team in France comes close to OL’s 18 league titles, all won in the last 19 years — as in, every season except one. Nor is any team in Europe close to OL’s eight Champions League triumphs from 2011-22, even though Barcelona is the continent’s top team right now.

Heaps has three league winners’ medals and one from the European Cup, and could add to both totals this season. OL is running away with the French league, and earned a round-of-16 bye in the Champions League thanks to an unbeaten group stage run.

“It’s unbelievable, I think this year especially,” she told The Inquirer. “New coach, new culture a bit, standards, competitiveness. The training is unbelievable in everything that we’re doing, and obviously you see it on the pitch as well. But we take each game at a time, and we just keep rolling.”

A high value on high standards

That new coach is a familiar name: Jonatan Giráldez, who joined OL from the Washington Spirit in the summer. It was a controversial move, since Kang was accused of taking from one of her teams to boost another.

But that claim is above Heaps’ pay grade.

“Honestly, I think I speak for everyone on the team: he is such a quality coach,” Heaps said. “You just learn so much, and even for me, I want to continue learning, or looking at the game in a different way, or tactical adjustments, or things like that. … He wants us to win so badly, and he wants us to do so well as players, and he cares about us — he cares about how we do and how we perform, but also us as people.”

Giráldez returned the praise.

“A very, very important player,” he said of Heaps. “Her role on the field is beyond the tactical, because she’s able to understand a lot of situations on the field — when the team has the ball, when the team doesn’t have the ball. … I’m very happy to have her in the team.”

Heaps mentioned the team’s “training environment” a few times in the interview, praising the high standards there. That counts for a lot, especially among U.S. national team stalwarts.

For lack of a better way to put it, the top American players have long relished getting their butts kicked on a daily basis, whether by the NWSL’s competitive balance or the famed ferocity of U.S. practices.

Heaps is the latest in a lineage from Mia Hamm through Abby Wambach, Heather O’Reilly, Julie Ertz, and Carli Lloyd, all of whom spoke just as bluntly (and sometimes more so). Now Heaps wants to pass it on to a new era.

She gets to do that in Lyon, not just with the national team. The club’s squad includes 22-year-old American midfielder Korbin Shrader and 18-year-old Lily Yohannes, the latter of whom is starting to meet the hype as a generational talent.

‘The best midfielder in the world soon’

Unfortunately, Yohannes hasn’t gotten to play much in the Champions League this season. She didn’t play at all against Atlético Madrid, where the tactical matchup would have been a great lesson.

Heaps also wanted that, but she preached patience.

“We all need to remember that she’s 18 years old,” she said. “At the end of the day, she needs to keep doing her thing, because she’s been playing so well — she’s been playing well with the national team, she’s training well here. And like I said before, it is just such a competitive environment.”

But Heaps is not immune to the buzz around Yohannes, and didn’t mind indulging in some.

“I know these games mean a lot for her, but her ceiling is so, so high,” she said. “I just said to her that no matter what, in a few years from now, you’re going to remember games like this that maybe you don’t come into. But you’re going to be a starting player and a non-stop player, and I believe the best midfielder in the world soon to come.”

Yohannes has played her entire career in Europe, and Heaps has played eight of her 14 professional years there. The American contingent across the Atlantic keeps growing, with Penn State product Sam Coffey soon to join it at England’s Manchester City.

Will playing overseas fit other Americans as well as it does Heaps? The question is always on the table, but it’s in bright lights above Trinity Rodman’s head right now. Her standoff with the NWSL over getting paid what she’s worth — with Kang on her side, trying to structure a contract within the league’s salary rules — has naturally led to European suitors chasing her.

It might also reveal a truth that Europe’s chattering class doesn’t like admitting. Very few European clubs are truly at a high enough level to be right for elite U.S. talents.

Lyon is one for sure, but there would be an even bigger uproar if Rodman moves there. Barcelona is another, but the Spanish giants don’t sign Americans. Manchester City, Arsenal, and Chelsea measure up in England, but Chelsea’s roster looks too loaded to have room for Rodman right now.

‘Do what’s best for her’

Beyond them? Paris Saint-Germain was in that class, but has fallen hard this year. Germany’s Wolfsburg is far from its past glories, and Bayern Munich still has a ways to rise. Real Madrid and Manchester United have stars, but their ownerships aren’t trusted to build truly top programs.

The highest tier is really just the first five clubs you read above, and that’s not much.

Then add in Rodman’s huge commercial impact, which would be diminished going abroad — less so in England, but still notably.

Many clubs outside England also have poor attendances. OL averages just over 5,000 in a 59,000-seat stadium despite all its stars. PSG plays almost all its French league games at a 1,500-seat field within the bigger club’s practice facilities, far out in the Paris suburbs. Both are a far cry from the 15,259 that Washington averaged this year, or the even bigger crowds in Los Angeles and Portland.

Not for nothing, then, did U.S. legend Tobin Heath — who played for PSG, Manchester United and Arsenal amid many years in American leagues — recently say Rodman should stay in the NWSL.

“I advise a lot on players going or staying, and 95% of the time, I will usually say go,” she said in an interview on fellow former superstar Megan Rapinoe’s podcast. “I think that her game will be 1000% louder here. I think she can be the face of the league.”

At the time Heaps was asked, the NWSL was still putting together its new High Impact Player rule. She had heard about it, but the details hadn’t all been published yet — including the controversial rules on how players qualify. So Heaps chose her words carefully, but she had plenty of them.

“I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” she said, tying in what she has seen over the years from MLS’s Designated Player rule. (Her husband Tyler is San Diego FC’s sporting director.). “If you want some of the best players in the world to come and play in the NWSL, some things do have to change. … We want to continue growing the league. So, what’s the best way of doing that? We’ve got to get the best players there.”

It was also easy to think Rodman’s situation would be settled by now. Heaps wondered if it might not just come down to salary, but she encouraged Rodman to do what she feels is right.

“Trinity needs to do what’s best for her,” Heaps said. “The money is kind of on the side of it — obviously, that’s a big thing for us professionals. But Trinity, she’s going to make the decision that’s best for her, and I think that’s the most important.”