Rodman’s NWSL future highlights a looming talent drain as salary caps clash with rising global investment in women’s soccer.
Trinity Rodman represents the exact player the NWSL should build around. She’s talented, charismatic, marketable, and has the aura, charisma, and Q score of a superstar who resonates far beyond the soccer pitch. The Washington Spirit‘s right-footed forward will play for her second career domestic championship in Saturday night’s title match against Gotham FC, a potential coronation of Rodman as the league’s marquee player moving forward.
There’s also a strong possibility that Saturday will be Rodman‘s final NWSL game, a scenario that should send shudders and chills reverberating throughout the league office. The 23-year-old is someone the NWSL cannot afford to lose. It may also not be able to afford to keep her.
According to multiple reports in recent days, at least three English Women’s Super League clubs are interested in Rodman, who is an unrestricted free agent this offseason. Under the NWSL’s current salary cap rules, the WSL teams can offer far more money than the Spirit or any other team in the league. While the current NWSL salary cap is $3.5 million and rising, teams have to fill out rosters that are in excess of 25 players, making it difficult for teams to offer a player like Rodman a salary she deserves, especially when there are teams overseas unencumbered by these American restrictions.
Rodman’s representatives have reportedly spoken directly to NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman, whose three-year contract extension was finalized Thursday, about new deals to stay in the league.
“As it relates to Trinity and candidly, any other top player in the world, we want those top players here in the NWSL,” Berman said Thursday in her pre-finals annual state of the league press conference. “And particularly we want Trinity in the NWSL, and we will fight for her.”
But the NWSL isn’t the only American league with legitimate interest in Rodman. The DC Power of the USL‘s Gainbridge Super League, a U.S. Soccer-sanctioned Division I league without a salary cap, reportedly offered a contract that’s “significantly larger” than what the Spirit can offer without her having the leave the city she already calls her home.
Of the 15 NWSL general managers polled in ESPN’s annual survey, 85% of respondents said the salary cap is holding the league back. After superstars Naomi Girma and Alyssa Thompson both left the league for Chelsea in recent months, there’s justifiable fear that losing Rodman would only intensify a talent drain from the NWSL to deeper-pocketed, less constrained clubs overseas.
“Right now, top talent is going only one way,” one GM told ESPN. “We’re not seeing players that are in top clubs in their prime coming this way.”
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Rodman is simply a player the NWSL cannot truly thrive without right now. She’s an electric, effervescent, foundational player who attracts both soccer diehards who flock to home and away matches and casual fans who will help grow the league’s reach. The league’s four-year, $240 million media rights contract, signed in late 2023, was built around the starpower and staying power of players like Rodman, and the NWSL’s best chance at improving on those numbers in the next TV deal hinges on players like Rodman becoming a perennial household name for soccer fans of the U.S.’ premier domestic outfit.
The NWSL surely sees itself as the best women’s soccer league in the world. But leagues in England and Spain have become more serious about investing in the women’s game, and enough top stars have left to ring alarm bells, as the GM survey indicated. If Saturday is indeed Rodman’s last game as an NWSL player, the league would not only lose its most recognizable superstar but also signal to the league’s other big names and the WSL that it’s too costly to keep its best players in-house. That, maybe, the NWSL is destined to be a secondary or feeder league of sorts to Europe.
“It is in commissioner Jessica Berman’s hands now to decide what to do with the cap space,” Rodman’s agent Mike Senkowski said to The Athletic. “Soccer is a global game; it’s nice to have global options.”
Fans ultimately watch sports to see the best players on the planet do extraordinary things. Right now, Rodman says she’s focused on winning a championship, and she’ll be able to fully focus on her future after Saturday. Keeping Rodman around in the NWSL would indicate that the world’s best women’s soccer players still have a stable, welcoming, lucrative place to call home in America. Losing her would further cast doubt on the NWSL’s elite status.
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