On Friday, the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) announced that it has hired former FIFPro director of global policy Sarah Gregorius as its new senior sporting director.
Gregorius will be responsible for “player progression and development, optimization of performance standards and centralization of best practices and minimum standards,” according to the league’s announcement. She will work under chief sporting director Tatjana Haenni, whom she has known for years and interacted with in her role at FIFPro, the global football players’ union.
The hiring is a strong signal from the NWSL about its commitment to player standards.
In addition to its advocacy, FIFPro has a watchdog-like status in relation to the various leagues and governing bodies of the game. Gregorius’ work in particular over the past five years has addressed everything from mental health to maternity protections to planning overload. The league approaching her about taking on a player welfare and development role is an invitation to be seriously criticized from within.
“I asked them why (they wanted to hire me) many times,” Gregorius said during a call with The Athletics. “Because I’m also curious to understand, because of not only my work at FIFPro, but also my background as a player – and not exactly a quiet player. Even when I was still playing, I was pushing boards and things like that to be a little more accountable and to be a little more honest in their decision making.
“That was not just because I worked at FIFPro. That is very internal. I firmly believe that if you want a sustainable, prosperous football industry, you have to (centre) the players in everything you do.”
Gregorius won 100 caps in almost a decade with New Zealand. (Photo by Elsa, Getty Images)
Gregorius wasn’t exactly looking to leave FIFPro, but when the NWSL said it was interested in her, it spurred her to consider the next step in her career. Her work at FIFPro was in a good place – by no means complete, but in a place where Gregorius felt she could pass it on to the next person. This was also an opportunity to start directly effecting change; while FIFPro can guide and advise, it does not make policy.
“I’m very eager to learn and be exposed to other sides of football that I wouldn’t see working at FIFPro, which, the scope is very narrow,” Gregorius said. “It’s player welfare, player rights protections, moving the needle, changing the balance to make it more favorable to the players. So I’m also looking forward to finding out what I don’t know about the game and seeing how I interact with those others important pieces that go into a decision.”
This is an interesting time to be able to run politics in a women’s professional sports league. The NWSL wants to be globally competitive, demonstrated in its recent collective bargaining negotiations that eliminated entry drafts, expansion drafts and discovery rights, bringing the league more in line with how the rest of the sports world handles player movement and contracts. But the NWSL is also in growth mode, while international women’s teams look to the US as a growth market as well.
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“I’m really looking forward to being in an organization that has self-determination,” Gregorius said of NWSL. “It exists for one reason only, and that is for the women’s professional league that it controls and those players. This is it. It has that autonomy. It has that independence. And I think what’s super interesting about women’s soccer in the U.S. is that it doesn’t deal with the Premier League or The League – this very dominant men’s soccer industry or hierarchy.
“I’m interested in being in such an environment where – that is to say – I feel less like a sales process to the men and the male part of the organization, which is certainly part of the experience in Europe the most. part.”
It’s that lack of institutional history that Gregorius believes will allow the NWSL to innovate and differentiate itself from other leagues. One of the things she wants the league to avoid is a growing gap between its haves and have-nots, while maintaining a basic standard where any team can attract quality players.
“The best players, they won’t any team in France, huh? They go to the top two,” she said. “It’s the same in Spain. You don’t want that in America, I think you have to be able to say: ‘This is the quality of care in everybody, and that’s guaranteed whether you sign for the team that finishes one to two, or the team that finishes 12 to 14’.”
NY/NJ Gotham FC won the 2023 NWSL title (Photo by Kyle Terada, USA Today)
Gregorius’ work as part of Haenni’s team will ensure that standards rise across the board in the league to provide 14 – eventually 16 – good markets, not just three or four. If players see that the NWSL is a league where they can universally have a good off-field experience, the word will spread as internationals tell their old teammates and their national colleagues about it. Next, she hopes that if the NWSL can innovate on issues including player standards and labor relations, it will spread to other leagues just as the NWSL has embraced global standards.
“I think when you see someone else do it, it becomes less scary. I think early adoption in the European soccer context — because you have men’s football, it’s so big and it’s so entrenched — is very, very difficult here,” Gregorius said.
One example she gave of other leagues pushing forward was in the most recent collective bargaining agreement (CBA) process, in which the league voluntarily opened early negotiations with the NWSL Players Association (NWSLPA). Not necessarily the exact collective bargaining process – different countries have different labels and standards around how that process works, and other player associations may represent different types of membership – but the use of collective action itself.
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“I actually just hope that some of the international players that are within the NWSL now see what the players association can do, what a union can do,” Gregorius said, “and start pushing their own national team, their own federations, because they have this taste of what collective action can provide for them.”
It does not have to be in the form of a CBA; Gregorius pointed out that while CBA can be an indicator of good governance, there are many things leagues can do to provide a positive environment. In any case, CBA is a very difficult process even when negotiations are voluntary. Case in hand: the 10 months NWSL and the NWSLPA spent negotiating on several details. But leagues can implement things like maternity leave, safeguarding and travel policies if they want to, or if pushed hard enough by their employees.
Initially, Gregorius will be back and forth between Amsterdam, the Dutch city where FIFPro is based, and New York while she relocates and finalizes her visa, but she should be permanently moved by the end of the calendar year. In the meantime, she would like to be able to visit all 14 NWSL teams, as scheduled.
“I hope I can go around the clubs, meet everyone, understand a little bit the similarities and differences, because there’s no point in sitting in a fancy office in New York and trying to guess what’s going on out there. ,” she said.
“The NWSL is in such a unique position to do some really great things that hopefully, if it can continue to break the mold in some way, the other leagues will also learn and embrace it.”
(Top photo: Elsa / Getty Images, Nick Tre. Smith / USA Today)
