U.S. women’s national team midfielder Sam Coffey said she and her teammates have a responsibility to speak out about social justice issues but said they are still figuring out what that looks like for the current generation compared to the past.
Coffey, 27, spoke to reporters in Nashville, Tenn., ahead of the SheBelieves Cup this weekend and was asked how she sees her role on the USWNT developing when it comes to advocating for change.
“I think it’s a really good question, and something I’ve been personally wrestling with a lot lately,” Coffey said. “And what does that look like for this iteration of this team?” she said, pointing out that she and her teammates “no longer have the Beckys (Becky Sauerbrunn), the Klings (Meghan Klingenberg), the Pinoes (Megan Rapinoe), Alex Morgans.”
Coffey on Thursday said that while it was “easier as a younger player to just look up to them and know that they always knew kind of what to say or what to do,” now “that responsibility is on us, and responsibility is the exact word. I think we have a duty to this team and a standard to uphold.”
Rapinoe, Morgan and Sauerbrunn were among the five USWNT players to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2016 over unequal pay and treatment between the U.S. men’s and women’s teams. In 2019, 28 USWNT players sued U.S. Soccer over pay discrimination, a dispute heightened by their winning World Cup campaign in France and Rapinoe’s prior declaration that she would not visit the White House to celebrate.
On Feb. 22, 2022, six years after their initial complaint to the EEOC, the USWNT reached a $24 million settlement with U.S. Soccer. The federation paid $22 million in back pay to the players and put the remaining $2 million toward a fund for players’ post-playing careers.
One day later, the USWNT capped off its victorious 2022 SheBelieves Cup campaign in Frisco, Texas, by wearing “Protect Trans Kids” wristbands along with their uniforms. Striker Cat Macario pointed to the wristband after scoring one of the five goals the USWNT put past Iceland in that match; the gesture was part of the team’s protest against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s directive that licensed professionals from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services report trans children and their parents to local authorities, and to investigate gender-affirming care as child abuse.
Five players from that 2022 SheBelieves Cup roster — Emily Sonnett, Trinity Rodman, Rose Lavelle, Emily Fox and Lindsey Heaps — are on this year’s roster.
Coffey said that part of the USWNT’s appeal has always been “its ability to be such a beacon of light in times of darkness, and also doing what is good, right and just and using your platform as a tool and to be an advocate for the voiceless in whatever kind of context that might be.”
She was also candid about where she views the current U.S. squad in that regard.
“I do think we’re still figuring out what that looks like for this iteration of the team,” she said. “I think we do need to be better in the ways that we’re being vocal and standing up and speaking out about a myriad of topics.”
Coffey, however, maintained, “I think we can rest assured that we are doing that work, and that we are going to figure it out and figure out what it looks like for us and what feels authentic to this team, because no team is the same.”
Those generational shifts, she said, “are part of the beauty of the U.S. women’s national team, too, (that) we always are evolving and kind of going through phases, and so it’s an honor to be a member of this team, especially in this regard.”
Coffey transferred to Manchester City from the Portland Thorns in the Women’s Super League in January and has been a fixture on USWNT head coach Emma Hayes’ roster despite a year of dynamic experimentation and new faces. Her comments Thursday were an extension of statements made to the BBC in an interview published last week, in which she described the aforementioned players as “the epitome of using your platform for good,” citing their fight for equal pay.
“We all have a voice, and they set such a standard for what this team means to people,” Coffey told the BBC. “It is so much more than a soccer team. We have always been this pillar of what it means to stand up and speak up for social justice issues, whatever that might be, most recently equal pay.”
The U.S. faces Argentina on Sunday, followed by matches against Canada in Columbus, Ohio, on March 4, and Colombia in Harrison, N.J., on March 7 in the round-robin tournament.