u.s. soccer is losing the uswnt's recipes

Playing word association with the U.S. Women’s National Team will evoke several responses. Winning is certainly one, also arrogance, because of course, and that’s what winning begets. However ‘transcendent’ is another. The word encapsulates generations of prior teams handing off an expectation to push for social causes and societal restructurings like a baton. In contrast, U.S. Soccer’s meager response to Korbin Albert sharing homophobic and transphobic content, and liking of a post that wished injury on a USWNT legend, the federation is losing the team’s recipes.

It’s not an unsurprising reality. Players of the last generation battled this same federation openly. Their fight for equal pay peaked at the 2019 World Cup, with the team eventually winning both in defiant fashion. Prior to the recent years long struggle for equal pay, it was their defiance through sporting accomplishment that restructured society’s view of women and women athletes. They proved they could captivate large audiences through their skill and athleticism, which helped to legitimize women’s sports. This moment was enshrined in Brandi Chastain’s iconic 1999 World Cup celebration.

A default for national teams around the world is cultivating a fandom based upon playing under their country’s flag. For the USWNT, throughout the years, goals, trophies and Olympic medals, this team has curated something more: community. A significant part of the fanbase is connected to the team through representation and shared identity.

Throughout the history of the team they’ve also represented the LGBTQIA+ community, with many players coming out and living openly and proudly as members of the community. Briana Scurry was the only Black player on the 1999 team, and was also the team’s first openly gay player. After the USWNT won the 2015 World Cup, a global audience watched Abby Wambach celebrate the moment by kiss her wife. Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger were teammates who became partners and an instantly iconic couple who threw a wedding all of U.S. women’s soccer fandom wanted to attend. Megan Rapinoe boldly, and prophetically, exclaimed “You can’t win a championship without gays on your team” after the team’s quarterfinal win over France en route to securing the team’s fourth World Cup.

“It’s our responsibility to make this world a better place. I think this team does an incredible job at taking that on our shoulders, and understanding the position that we have and the platform that we have within this world,” Rapinoe said onstage during the team’s 2019 championship parade. “Yes we play sports, yes we play soccer, yes we’re female athletes – but we’re so much more than that.”

This community, through shared identity and struggle but also pride and freedom, elevates the team beyond what they accomplish on the pitch. Particularly in this country where marginalized communities can (and do) become focal points of far-right culture wars. The visibility, defiance and indeed camaraderie from iconic athletes represent important societal counters to the marginalization hate attempts to bestow.

The primary (and 99% disingenuous) argument from people who agree with Albert, or feel sympathy for her, is to condemn the false argument that there’s an expectation for everyone to share the same opinion. Obviously, people living as who they are and loving who they love is not the same as someone choosing to believe that others are ‘wrong’, ‘living in sin’, and need evangelicals’ god to help them deny themselves to become something they’re not.

The argument also attempts to frame Albert’s posts as merely a difference of opinion, rather than the invalidation of individuals. I’s also plainly true that there’s a difference between personally believing something and sharing targeted and harmful content about the identity of teammates (current and potential) and the proud queer community within the USWNT’s fanbase. For those supporters, the minimum expectation of a USWNT player isn’t the forcing of a shared ideology – an extreme read often projected by extremists – but to simply not target them with harmful rhetoric.

But that’s exactly what Albert has done, and in response we have heard only that U.S. Soccer and the team are handling the matter internally. From the outside, where Albert’s harm was done, all anyone sees is her continued selection for every national team camp since, and an underwhelming apology posted through a mechanism designed to disappear after 24 hours.

Without a further showing or detailing of ongoing work, the message sent is that protecting Albert from any semblance of accountability is paramount. Work is supposedly being done, but the nature of the work has not been defined. Leaving fans with the only and unsettling option of trusting the same federation that required significant leadership change so that ‘women are lesser than men’ wasn’t a core legal argument in their case against equal pay.

An improvement, but a low bar, and clearly unworthy of the benefit of the doubt.

In new head coach Emma Hayes’ latest comments about selecting Albert to go to Paris for the Olympics, she was spoken of as a victim. Hayes stated that being booed at various venues since has affected her, and that she is ”a tremendous human being.” The former is understandable as a fact, but was a justified consequence of her actions. Albert’s feelings do not supercede the damage done to the communities targeted by her posts. Damage which U.S. Soccer, and now Hayes, seem to be unaware of, or at the very least underestimate.

Given the nature of this country, anyone can be used as a weapon against marginalized people and communities. Anyone sharing their disappointment in Albert and the lack of action shown by USSF is met with replies from people who now get to use her as an entryway to spew hate and harm directly.

This is a dynamic Albert has created and hasn’t yet grown enough to denounce. Clearly she personally has a lot to unlearn if she is ever going to get there, and therefore it is understandable. But this is where U.S. Soccer’s lack of public action is causing the most harm. Through their silence an invite has been extended to those who want to torment the LGBTQIA+ community through the USWNT – a place in where many used to feel safe and seen, and protected by and through the players themselves.

Instead, a just arrived USWNT player has opened a gateway to their harm without anyone reinforcing or reestablishing the standard set by former players. Many of which have noticed. Retirements, injuries and failed team transitions have left the team without many of the standard bearers it once had. The ones who would have passed the baton.

Former USWNT players Tobin Heath and Christen Press discussed the situation on the Re-Cap Show, which they host together. Press, who has missed the last couple years with an ACL injury, said that the situation was the first time she missed being in the USWNT environment.

“I haven’t played for the USWNT since the last Olympics three summers ago, [and] I get asked ‘do I miss it?’, and for the first time I wished I was in that camp,” explained Press. “Having the opportunity on that team to show the right response, to show the way, to show how to speak about it and how to push and how to challenge … I just wanted to be there to try, because I loved that. I loved that opportunity that we had on that team to try to forge a path that could help set a precedent.”

Tobin Heath also addressed the disingenuous attempts to shield Albert from consequences on the basis of religion. “I thought that the national team for me as a Christian actually gave me the first safe environment as a queer Christian, which shows the power of that community and the space that that community gives,” Heath also expressed on the show. “So I get sad to see religion brought in as a weapon against a community that I am very much a part of.”

Sam Mewis, retired USWNT legend turned content machine at Women’s Game MIB, noted that work needed to be shown. “I believe that people should be given an opportunity to change and grow, but there are endless opportunities to demonstrate this growth to the community that has been hurt,” said Mewis. “The actions that were a problem were out in the open, and so to some extent the growth should be out in the open as well, and I think that is what’s missing from this equation right now.”

Without action or a showing of the work being done to underscore the line of protection around a unique community that makes up a large portion of the team’s fanbase, U.S. Soccer has misplaced the USWNT’s recipes in the process.