Imagine if, two years after resigning amid the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon had run for president again.
It’s not a perfect analogy for the current state of US soccer politics, but it’s close. Two years after resigning in the wake of a legal filing that claimed female players had less ability than their male counterparts, Carlos Cordeiro is running for his old gig as president of US Soccer.
The election will take place on 5 March. And Cordeiro has a legitimate shot against incumbent Cindy Parlow Cone, the Hall of Fame player and NWSL champion coach who was elevated from vice-president after Cordeiro’s departure. It is fair to say not everyone is happy at the prospect of his return.
He’s going to run and likely going to win and US Soccer will be garbage because of it. In what world does his return improve the game, men’s or women’s, in the US? He’s proven himself unable to lead and Goldman Sachs alum running football in the US has never been a good idea. https://t.co/syDT1vew6t
— Haley Carter (She/Her) (@H_C_Carter) January 5, 2022
If casual fans who aren’t well versed in US Soccer’s labyrinthine politics are surprised, they’re not alone.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Alan Rothenberg, who oversaw World Cup 1994, the launch of Major League Soccer and the early organization of the 1999 Women’s World Cup during his eight years as federation president. “I don’t know what he’s thinking. When you think about how he left in disgrace, what he failed to accomplish, how he set the federation back – how could he think he’d be welcomed back?”
To answer that question, it’s important to remember that US Soccer isn’t just the overseer of the men’s and women’s national teams, writing paychecks to Christian Pulisic and Christen Press. Its mandate is to grow the game at all levels and in all its forms. Its constituents include the feuding factions in youth soccer, organizations for disability sports, and the largest group, the state associations charged with minding the sport at its grassroots in the US. The latter are Cordeiro’s biggest supporters.
Cordeiro says figures within US Soccer have approached him with a laundry list of concerns, ranging from youth programs to the federation’s status within Fifa. Some state associations think Cone went overboard with budget cuts, particularly to the grassroots, in the wake of Covid and has not paid heed to their concerns.
“Cindy’s cuts to youth programs and grants were extreme,” says Dave Guthrie, executive director of Indiana Soccer. “It’s as if the grassroots didn’t even matter to Cindy.”
For her part, Cone says some decisions were made specifically for the Covid era, and funding will return to many areas as we emerge from the pandemic.
“We all had to make really hard decisions, both on programming and personnel,” Cone says. “One of the things we did was shifting our Innovate to Grow grant program to Covid relief so members could apply for Covid relief during that time. We’ve now shifted it back, and it’s fully funded for all of our non-professional members.”
Another issue that grated on the states is voting representation. Congress passed legislation requiring federations like US Soccer to give athletes one-third of the voting power, up from 20%. The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee amended its bylaws accordingly. US Soccer had little choice in how to adapt to the new rules, but some states still harbor resentment.
Meanwhile, the backlash to a Cordeiro candidacy has been severe. Some major players in US soccer are outraged that Cordeiro would consider himself the best choice to fix any federation issues after his own tenure.
“So much of that happened under your watch, buddy,” says Julie Foudy, a Hall of Famer who played with Cone on the national team. “She’s actually trying to clean up your mess.”
NWSL Players Association executive director Meghann Burke sees a correlation between the condescending legal briefs that brought down Cordeiro and the systemic abuse of women’s players from youth level to the pros that was brought to light in 2021 and continues to unfold.
“The president of the governing body of our sport needs to be as dedicated as the players are to making the game safer and better for everyone,” Burke says. “Those briefs tell us everything we need to know about whether Carlos Cordeiro shares our commitment.”
Cordeiro, of course, didn’t write the legal briefs in question, and the team that came up with them were pushed out along with Cordeiro himself. But one factor in that quagmire was a lack of leadership among US Soccer staff. The president is an unpaid volunteer, not a CEO. The longtime CEO, Dan Flynn, announced his retirement early in Cordeiro’s tenure. The process to replace him, as well as the men’s national team coach, proceeded at a glacial pace
“As president, I worked closely with the board to put a search process in place, including hiring an outside search firm [for CEO],” Cordeiro says. “When that initial search did not produce the results we wanted, we brought in a second firm to continue the search. We were determined to find the absolute best person to help lead the federation into the future.”
That’s far from the only complaint against Cordeiro during his reign. Rothenberg points to a “needless fight” with the US Soccer Foundation charity. The charity has broken its own precedent during this presidential campaign by endorsing Cone, who moved quickly to settle the lawsuit between the two entities.
Meanwhile Ricardo Fort, a consultant who led global sponsorship efforts for Visa and Coca-Cola, wrote a blistering piece saying Cordeiro damaged relationships with sponsors that were only resolved when Cone effectively assembled a new management team to repair the damage.
And these are the parts of the job at which Cordeiro is supposed to excel. He’s a Goldman Sachs alumnus whose business and financial acumen added to his appeal as a candidate when he won the 2018 election.
“How well did that business background serve him when he actually had that job?” Foudy says.
Rothenberg also scoffs at Cordeiro’s signature accomplishment: ensuring the success of the joint USA-Mexico-Canada bid for the 2026 World Cup. “You or I could’ve gotten that awarded,” he says.
In the public-facing parts of the job, Cordeiro was never at ease. At a victory parade following the USWNT’s victory at the 2019 World Cup, he exacerbated the tension around the equal pay lawsuit between the team and federation with badly timed comments about the US investing more in women’s soccer than any country in the world. It was not an outlandish statement, but neither was it the sort of thing to say when the focus should have been on the players and coaches. To top it off, he mispronounced the name of Megan Rapinoe, the team’s most prominent player.
To be sure, the women’s lawsuit stokes some resentment among the rank and file. But Cone, as a distinguished women’s player and coach, is uniquely positioned to plead US Soccer’s case without coming across as an out-of-touch mansplainer.
She has overseen a partial settlement in the case and deftly recast the debate to focus on what US Soccer says would be a financial catastrophe if the women win their case on appeal, saying a payout would “likely bankrupt the federation.” That claim might be slightly overstated, but anyone who has done the accounting can see that a payout of $67m, the back pay calculated by an expert witness for the women’s team, would necessitate major cuts in the development programs for future generations that the states rightly hold dear.
Cone also called the men’s national team’s bluff when it comes to their statements backing the USWNT. She urged both teams to come to the table to figure out a fair deal that somehow accounts for the wild disparities in prize money that Fifa awards to the winners of the men’s and women’s World Cups.
While Cordeiro has the states associations’ support, he will struggle elsewhere. The Professional Council has 20% of the vote, and it’s difficult to imagine MLS alienating sponsors, or the NWSL alienating its players with a Cordeiro vote. The Athletes Council has 33.3% of the vote and swung the election for Cordeiro in 2018. But it isn’t likely to support him again, at least not unanimously. The 23-person council has 12 women, including recent national team stalwarts Becky Sauerbrunn, Ali Krieger and Alex Morgan.
Cordeiro, though, is seizing the initiative. While he agrees that the federation would struggle to pay its bills if it acceded to the USWNT’s pay demands, he pledges a capital campaign for a one-time payment to settle the suit. He also wants to push for a National Training Center and a bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup, which could be a difficult sell given that the US is already hosting the men’s tournament in 2026 and the 2028 Olympics.
But then again, Cordeiro was underestimated in 2018. He could pull off the upset once again. And a lot of important people in soccer would be upset.
