NWSL OK's 'Rodman rule' even as union objects

The NWSL on Tuesday implemented a "High Impact Player" rule (HIP), which would allow teams in 2026 to spend up to $1 million outside of the salary cap on star players, such as the Washington Spirit 's Trinity Rodman , who meet certain criteria. The news came minutes before the NWSL Players Association voiced their opposition, issuing a statement saying they would now take action to "to enforce the rights of the Players we represent." In Tuesday's statement, the union said: "The NWSL Players Association opposes the League's decision to move forward without bargaining over the High Impact Player Rule. "Under federal labor law, changes to compensation under the salary cap are a mandatory subject of bargaining -- not a matter of unilateral discretion. Fair pay is realized through fair, collectively bargained compensation systems, not arbitrary classifications. "A league that truly believes in the value of its Players would not be afraid to bargain over it. "The NWSLPA has put forward a clear, lawful alternative: raising the Team Salary Cap to compete in a global labor market. "Additionally, we have proposed that through collective bargaining, we work together to create a system for projecting revenue sharing numbers in future years so that Teams and Players can negotiate multi-year deals with certainty. The Union remains ready and willing to engage in good-faith bargaining." Earlier this week, NWSLPA executive director Meghann Burke told ESPN that the creation of any such rule requires collective bargaining and that the union opposed it. "Our position is actually that this exceeds the scope of the league's authority," Burke told Abby Wambach and Julie Foudy on their Welcome to the Party podcast. "Our position is that they must bargain with us over this kind of proposal, not that they merely consult with us." Burke told ESPN: "The league is trying to control and interfere by trying to dictate which players get paid what with this pot of funds. Our position is that teams -- GMs, soccer ops, business folks at the team level -- are uniquely positioned to make judgment calls about how to structure their rosters, how to negotiate deals. The league said on Wednesday that under the new rule, each club may exceed the league's established salary cap by up to $1M for high impact players beginning in 2026. The NWSLPA had proposed that the NWSL raise the salary cap by $1M beginning in 2026, which is the same amount of money that the league has now cleared for each team to spend through the HIP rule. The league said on Wednesday that the threshold will increase year-over-year at the same base rate as the salary cap. The additional allotment may be applied to a single player or distributed among multiple players, providing clubs with meaningful flexibility to recruit and retain high impact talent while preserving competitive balance. For any contract using this provision, the cap charge of the high-impact player must be a minimum of 12% of the base salary cap. The league called...

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