A day that ended with Washington Spirit fans zipping across the skies like meteors began, contrastingly, with frustration-induced eye rolls. The Athletic’s Tom Bogert broke news about the status of Trinity Rodman’s contract negotiations, and it was news most feared. Rodman, a global superstar in talent, name recognition and personality, is out of contract this offseason and in line to earn a weightier wage than current NWSL salary cap limits allow. Now, teams in England, where there is no salary cap, are sensing opportunity.

The news led to multiple league officials making statements, including NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman. Among them, you’ll read from a league spokesperson that ‘The league is doing everything they can to keep Trinity Rodman in the NWSL’, and another from the Commissioner asserting ‘the reason that three of four games in the quarterfinals went to extra time is because of the salary cap.’ Clearly, the caveat to ‘doing everything they can’ doesn’t apply to the one mechanism that would likely solve the problem: raising the salary cap beyond the figure projected in the latest collective bargaining agreement, signed in 2024 ($3.5m for 2026).

While Rodman has in the past noted that she ‘would kick myself’ if she retired without playing in Europe, she’s 23-years-old, far from retirement, and hasn’t positioned herself as aching to go overseas just yet. Part of the reason is because of the home she’s found in Washington, DC. Skipping college to turn pro, the Washington Spirit and the D.C. area has been the place where she’s grown up. From talented teenager bursting with energy and raw ability, to a superstar capable of dominating matches singlehandedly in domestic and international competition.

For as much of a global superstar as Rodman is — one who can inspire hairstyle changes from girls around the globe — she still adores ‘home’. Since her first professional game (which she scored in), Rodman has always spent a substantial amount of time postgame signing autographs, gifting her boots and/or shirt, and making TikToks with fans.

The venue she’s done this the most at is Audi Field, where reporters awaiting players in the mixed zone always hear belts of “TRIN-UH-TEE” from tiny voices, and when their desperation turns to cheers we know she’s made her way nearby. Everyone smart enough to buy a ticket and head to Audi Field to watch the Washington Spirit becomes part of the foundation-shattering roars when she receives the ball, or as was the case in the semifinal, steps on the pitch in the 90th minute.

This tier of superstar is rare, and commands fair market compensation as an athlete and icon of women’s sports. Given the specific growth across women’s soccer, with millions being invested from owners and sponsors, player transfer fees and salaries are rising. After decades of underfunding and artificial wage suppression, we’re finally catching up. So it seems antithetical that a league which boasts large figure investments from its many well-monied owners, and has raked in a combined $381-million in expansion fees from Bay FC, Boston Legacy, Denver Summit, and the to-be-named Atlanta NWSL team, would stand so firmly in a desire to not offer competitive salaries to upper echelon talent.

Angel City — whose controlling owners are Willow Bay & Bob Iger, CEO of Disney and whose net worth was estimated by Forbes to be $690-million in 2019 — were reduced to bystanders as Chelsea tempted their homegrown star, Alyssa Thompson, to head to London midseason. Angel City, who at the time were in the midst of a tense fight for the playoffs, lost six of their final eight games after Thompson’s departure.

The reality of this sort of sudden talent loss, and inability to offer a competing salary to make it a fair fight, contradicts Berman’s assertion that the NWSL is the most competitive league in the world because of the salary cap. The Thompson move showed the opposite, and isn’t the only example.

Several teams in this league could not remain competitive on a week-to-week basis without their primary superstar talent. Through injuries, we’ve seen the impact in the first two rounds of the playoffs. The best team in NWSL regular season history lost their opening playoff match in part because of how much their standard gameplan relied on Golden Boot winner Temwa Chawinga, who was unavailable due to an adductor injury. Eight seed (of 8) Gotham FC then made it to the NWSL Championship by beating Orlando Pride, whose superstar goal creator, Barbra Banda, was watching from a suite due to a late season injury as well. Superstars on maternity leave reveal the same. Ask Portland how their semifinal against the Spirit may have gone with Sophia Wilson, or Chicago Stars supporters if they’d finish last with Mallory Swanson.

To claim that the salary cap is the sole reason the NWSL is as competitive as it has been is disingenuous at best — manipulative at worst. In fact there are several reasons. There’s a plethora of women’s soccer talent in this country, with new potential superstars joining from the college ranks each year; free agency; investments in recruitment, analytics, facilities, scouting and coaching; most teams being comprised of homegrown and international talents; and on and on.

The last point stands out even more when coming across additional quotes from NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman in Pardeep Cattry’s article on Rodman and the salary cap for CBS Sports. “If you are a star and a top player,” said Berman, “I am certain that there is no other country that you could be celebrated as a cultural icon the way you will be in this country.” Berman points to next year’s men’s World Cup in the States (which the NWSL will step aside for when games begin in June), and the Women’s World Cup coming to the country in 2031, as ‘important considerations’ for a top player.

Several MLS teams have NWSL clubs and support between the two has rarely transferred (or even overlapped in a significant way), so it’s a stretch to expect interest in the men’s World Cup to leak over into the NWSL. Aside from that, the Women’s World Cup she spotlights is just under six years away, and we’ve seen how hollow World Cups can be for host nations without the proper infrastructure and commitment beyond the weeks-long party of an every-four-years event. The last Women’s World Cup was hosted by Australia and New Zealand in 2023. In early November of 2025 a report was released that ‘highlighted stagnation’ of Australia’s domestic women’s league (A-League Women), and claimed it to be at a ‘tipping point.’ The report also notes that ‘…A-League clubs are increasingly losing top players — particularly Matildas [Australia National Team players] — to overseas leagues.’

A claim often propped up in concert with the NWSL being the most competitive league in the world (yet somehow ignored in this round of salary cap adulation), is that it is also the best league in the world. But it’s hard to have the best league in the world without some of the best players in the world. A major selling point of the NWSL versus other well-known leagues is that you don’t have to wait for top-of-the-table matchups to see some of the best players in women’s soccer competing against each other. While it’s unlikely that every superstar will lock arms and stride across the ocean to Europe, the larger point is the message sent by a too low and inflexible salary cap — European clubs will know they can eliminate the league as competition if they hit a certain number, current superstars will know the league is unwilling to pay them what they’re worth, and superstar talents outside of the NWSL will know to immediately cross the league off its list when considering a move.

In the past the NWSL has been quick to act to shed unhelpful relics of the past and unnecessary financial restrictions to enhance the allure of the league. Player’s rights are no longer a thing (yes, wild that they ever were), full free agency has been instituted, the college draft has been abolished, player salaries are guaranteed, and players can no longer be traded without consent. This makes it even more curious that there’s so much public championing of the salary cap, as if it alone is the Infinity Stone powering the success of the league.

My personal stance is that salary caps are artificial wage suppression, and that artificial wage suppression is bad. But the NWSL has a plethora of options between my personal thoughts as an unpaid blogger, to a bevy of solutions available to people who earn salaries to consider the strength of the league. At the moment a $10-million salary cap would essentially function as a removal of the salary cap, and is a figure that shouldn’t bother any NWSL owner — particularly after the $381-million in expansion fees (with more on the way). An increase to $7-million would likely be enough to keep Rodman around, and possibly even $5m, which is just $1.5m above 2024’s projections.

It’s been discouraging, and rather infuriating, to witness the media blitz to defend the salary cap in the face of questions about keeping one of the NWSL’s brightest global stars in the league. The message seems to be that the salary cap is more important. If this thinking remains, and indeed leads to Rodman beginning her Euro adventure before she might’ve planned, Jessica Berman and the NWSL Board of Governors will have signaled to every outside club with more than $3.5m to spend on player salaries that they should view the NWSL as their feeder league. Its stars can be your stars, for the bare minimum price of what they deserve.