Emma Hayes, Equal Pay

So, there we have it. Emma Hayes will be departing Chelsea at the end of the Women’s Super League season to become manager of the United States women’s national team.

I’ll level with you all – as an Arsenal fan, I am delighted at the thought of Chelsea’s WSL domination finally coming to an end. But, as an England supporter, I’m terrified of the idea of a US team with Hayes at the helm at the 2027 Women’s World Cup. 

I completely understand why Hayes is heading across the pond, though. The job will give her more of a work-life balance, and more time to spend with her young son. While she has said money isn’t a motivation, a £1.3m annual salary is also not too shabby.

The wage means Hayes is paid the same as the manager of the US men’s team, Gregg Berhalter. It has also promoted discussions around equal pay in football, which is the topic of today’s newsletter. 

I wavered over choosing equal pay as a topic, because, in all honesty, sometimes it can send shivers down my spine. When I think of conversations about equal pay in football, I envisage a faceless Twitter account posting a video of a mistake by a women’s football player – guaranteed to have happened 100 times over in men’s football – with the caption “AnD THEy WanT EQUal PaY”.

For these people, equal pay is a catch-all phrase which – they presume – means female players want Kylian Mbappe’s £1 million a week. But, as I’m sure many of The Cherry on Top subscribers know, it’s a lot more nuanced than that. 

At an international level, a lot of national federations already give their male and female players the same amount of match fees and bonuses. This includes England, Wales, Ireland, Brazil, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, and after a protracted battle with their governing body, the United States. So, if some federations are paying their male and female players the same, why is this not the standard across international football? The likes of Canada, Nigeria and Jamaica are still struggling to receive their fair dues. 

What about prize money at international tournaments? Spain received $4.3 million for winning the 2023 Women’s World Cup, while Argentina pocketed $42m after triumphing at the 2022 Men’s World Cup. 

“But men’s football brings in more revenue!!!”, our faceless Twitter account chirps. Yes, of course this is objectively correct. But women’s football brings in less revenue, because, after years of being ignored and underfunded, it hasn’t been able to develop at the same pace. FIFA is a nonprofit organisation which invests most of its income back into the development of football, so isn’t it kind of its responsibility to rectify the underinvestment in the women’s game and balance things out?

If we’re talking about the domestic game, trust me – most women’s footballers are still searching for equal treatment, let alone equal pay. The average professional player is probably more worried about having adequate medical care, decent training facilities and enough money to survive playing football full-time, than earning the same annual salary as their male counterparts.

We haven’t even discussed equal pay for backroom staff, or for managers. The below graphic from The Athletic highlighted the disparity between pay for the head coaches of men’s and women’s national teams.

After screaming for more nuance in conversations around equal pay in football, it was nice to see England manager Gareth Southgate mention the complexities of the situation when he was asked about the above disparity.

“Equal pay for the same roles is important,” he said last week. “There’s lots of economics behind that. For example, if you’re a CEO of a company and you’re male and a female it should be exactly the same. 

“In football the criteria depends on what the income is of the team. A League One manager wouldn’t get the same as a Premier League [manager]. A Premier League footballer would get more than a Championship footballer.

“I think with the US women’s team, they have huge economic power and success over a long time. It’s probably a closer alignment between what the female and men’s teams generate. Whether that’s translatable for clubs or other national federations is an interesting debate to have.”

Again, what Southgate says is objectively true. Even though Sarina Wiegman has been more successful than him, the market forces in men’s football dictate that Southgate can be paid about 12 times more. But with so much of this, perhaps the mindset has to be about finally giving women’s football the chance to catch up, and subsequently ignoring market forces as much as sustainable growth of the game allows.

It’s all a bit chicken and egg really. Someone needs to go first and see how the rest of the football world responds. This is essentially what the US has done with Hayes, and it’s going to be very intriguing to see if there’s a domino effect on equality/equity throughout the rest of the sport. 

If anything, I hope it will lead to a decrease in reductive conversations around equal pay in football, which – as the headache I’ve developed writing this attributes to – is a highly complex and multifaceted topic. 

Winning Women

Celebrating the impressive achievements of female athletes across the world

• Congratulations to Ali Krieger, who ended her football career with a bang after winning the NWSL Championship with Gotham City. Shoutout to OL Reign’s Megan Rapinoe too, who sadly picked up an achilles injury during her final match and had to come off after just a few minutes. Two legends of women’s football who will very much be missed on the pitch!

• Katie Archibald won the women’s endurance title at the Track Champions League, a nice boost as she seeks another Olympic gold medal at Paris 2024. Her husband Rob Wardell died suddenly after a cardiac arrest during an incredibly tough 2022 for Archibald, which makes her continued success at the highest level of cycling even more remarkable. 

• Marie-Louise Eta has become the first female assistant coach in the Bundesliga. She is the assistant to Union Berlin’s new manager Marco Grote, who has replaced the outgoing Urs Fischer on an interim basis. Eta, who won the Frauen-Bundesliga as a player with Turbine Potsdam three times, was already the under-19 assistant coach at Union Berlin.

Bits and Bobs

Women’s sport news and content that you may have missed

• Last weekend saw the return of Premiership Women's Rugby, previously known as Premier 15s. Abbie Ward scored a try during Bristol Bears’ 48-5 victory against Sale Sharks, just 17 weeks after giving birth to her daughter Hallie. I love the photos of Abbie walking out with Hallie before the match.

  
  

• Sticking with Premiership Women’s Rugby, I was obsessed with the launch campaign for the competition, “Powered Differently”. I think it showed a different side of women’s rugby, and makes me very excited for this new era of the sport. There’s more insight into the campaign in the video below.

• After Arsenal Women were criticised for their all-white squad photo earlier this year, Arseblog’s Tim Stillman has produced a deep-dive on the issue. It is a long article but only because it thoroughly interrogates the situation from a number of angles, so it is very much worth reading.

  
  

• By the time this newsletter hits your inbox, I’ll probably be on my way to St Mary’s for Southampton’s match against Arsenal in the Continental Cup. At the time of writing, 12,510 tickets have been sold, which will be a record crowd for Southampton Women. I know they are very keen to get this number even higher, so if you want to be spontaneous, you can get tickets here. Also, as an aside, I hope you’ve all seen the photos of Beth Mead and Vivianne Miedema’s new puppy, Myle Meadema.

• Former England cricketer Isa Guha has set up a non-profit organisation Take Her Lead, which works to ensure that cricket is a place where every woman and girl can fulfil her potential and thrive. They’re currently running an online fundraiser, including an auction and prize draw, while cricketing and podcast-hosting duo Alex Hartley and Kate Cross are hosting an exclusive No Balls Live YouTube stream this evening in support.

  
  

• I thought this was a really cool story. BBC Sport presenter and Framed Snooker podcast host Shabnam Younus Jewell swapped her microphone for a cue as she competed in her first World Women's Snooker event last weekend. She wrote on Instagram: “I thought I wasn’t good enough or young enough for ages but finally took the leap after being inspired by the women of all ages and abilities who play on the WWS tour.”

• Final one from me. I attended the Women’s Sport Collective meet-up in London earlier this week, and it was great to make so many new connections with women working in sport! Hi to anyone I met who has now subscribed to the newsletter. The Women’s Sport Collective is free to join and I really recommend doing so.

That’s all for today’s newsletter. If you enjoyed it, please share with your networks and anyone else you think may be interested. Thank you!