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For months, NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said the league would do what it takes to keep star forward Trinity Rodman in the league.
Apparently, though, there are limits.
The Washington Spirit and Rodman agreed to a backloaded multimillion-dollar deal, multiple sources confirmed to Front Office Sports, but it was nixed by Berman.
Bloomberg first reported the NWSL’s decision to veto the proposed contract. (The NWSL is a single entity, meaning that team owners are invested in the league and all player contracts are with the league.) The deal would have resulted in Rodman earning an average of more than $1 million per year over four years.
“Our goal is to ensure that the very best players in the world, including Trinity, continue to call this league home,” a league spokesperson said in a statement to FOS. “We will do everything we can, utilizing every lever available within our rules to keep Trinity Rodman here.”
The NWSLPA filed a grievance on Wednesday night, giving the league 14 days to respond. This was one of two grievances the union filed on Wednesday and its 12th of the season. FOS obtained a copy of the grievance associated with Rodman’s proposed contract. It states, in part, that the NWSL violated multiple sections of the new CBA ratified last summer. Specific violations cited include the league violating Rodman’s free-agency rights as outlined in the CBA.
The grievance says the NWSL’s actions are “arbitrary at best and, at worst, were taken to improperly restrict Rodman’s free agency rights and/or unilaterally impose upon her and Washington a de facto maximum salary rule.”
“If the NWSL can interfere with Trinity Rodman’s free-agency rights, they can interfere with anyone’s,” NWSLPA executive director Meghann Burke told FOS. “We won’t stand for that.”
According to the grievance, the league accused the team of “salary cap circumvention” and said that the proposed terms violated the “spirit” of league rules.
The new CBA has no maximum player salary, but a salary cap remains in place for teams.
In 2025, the base cap was $3.3 million. By 2028, that number will be $4.7 million. The base salary cap each year, according to the NWSLPA, is not final. The NWSL’s media-rights deal expires in 2027; a new deal could cause the cap to rise significantly.
The league also has the ability to unilaterally increase the salary cap in any given year. If Rodman’s contract was in breach of the cap, the league could just adjust it.
There is a strong belief among players that the NWSL’s salary model is not competitive with the global market. As a result, an increasing number of star players have left the league to play in Europe.
League rules allow teams to buy out one player contract per year, meaning the Spirit could buy her out of the deal to comply with the salary cap if they had to. The exact terms of Rodman’s proposed contract have not been disclosed, but 2028 is believed to be the year that the league is concerned with violating the salary cap.
“Rest assured we would not file a grievance over one player’s contract if 21 other players’ contracts would be compromised by it,” Burke said. “That is not the case here.”
The second grievance filed by the union on Wednesday was over its claim that the NWSL is imposing a prohibition against players negotiating performance incentives for Concacaf and FIFA tournaments. Those prohibitions are not in the CBA, and the NWSLPA is contending it violates the players’ free-agency rights.
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