Graham Zusi is going to want these four minutes back.
The United States men’s national team and Sporting Kansas City midfielder was recently on SI Now with Maggie Gray to discuss the U.S. women’s national team’s push for equal pay to their male colleagues.
And the interview was disastrous for Zusi.
He stumbled over whether or not women’s national team players deserve equal pay to men’s national team players, eventually answering “sure,” when pressed for an answer.
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And then he said that he thought U.S. teammate Alejandro Bedoya’s was applauding Abby Wambach for the way she handled her DUII arrest. Gray then pressed Zusi, noting that Bedoya’s tweet was particularly unfriendly, and although Zusi correctly notes that Bedoya followed up with an attempt to justify the tweet (read: dig a bigger hole), Zusi’s point was lost at that stage.
Seriously. Just watch the video above.
As we wrote at the time of Bedoya’s (and Altidore’s) tweets, this all underscores the friction between the men’s an women’s national team players, and further exemplifies the a farce that is U.S. Soccer’s “One Nation. One Team” marketing slogan. It’s very clear that the men’s and women’s teams aren’t on the same page; there is not use in continuing the pretend they are.
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