Salary details from latest USSF tax return

Every year US Soccer posts its tax return Form 990 on its website, giving us all a glimpse into their financials. The latest return for the period from April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016 is now out. Here are some of the most interesting details from a fiscal period that included the Women’s World Cup, accounting for who was among their highest-paid employees.

USSF listed $126.7M in revenue for the current fiscal year, with $110M in expenses.

At end of year their net assets were listed at $98M.

Secretary General/CEO Dann Flynn made $584.7k in base compensation, plus $110k in bonuses, for $694.7k total.

Jurgen Klinsmann made $3M in base compensation with no bonuses for the fiscal year. His assistant coach Andi Herzog made $399k base, also with no bonus.

Jill Ellis made $216k in base compensation plus $90k in bonuses for $306k total.

USSF’s highest-paid employees for the fiscal year WNT players who participated in the 2015 World Cup. They each received $126k base pay and $99,450 in World Cup bonuses. Though the return initially lists the first four alphabetically on the list, 10 players total received this $225,450 total. They were:

Tobin Heath
Lauren Holiday
Meghan Klingenberg
Ali Krieger
Carli Lloyd
Alex Morgan
Kelley O’Hara
Heather O’Reilly
Christen Press
Becky Sauerbrunn

By comparison, the five highest-paid employees in the previous fiscal year (4/2/2014 to 3/31/2015), which obviously included the 2014 Men’s World Cup, were:

Clint Dempsey, $428,002
Geoff Cameron, $405,209
Jozy Altidore, $404,703
Tim Howard, $398,495
Jermaine Jones, $395,920

And in the fiscal year running 4/2/2012 to 3/31/2013, which covered the 2012 London Olympics in which the WNT took the gold medal, the three highest-paid players were:

Alex Morgan, $282,564
Becky Sauerbrunn, $274,871
Christie Rampone, $272,913

But in that year those players had significantly less base pay, with Morgan the highest at $100k and Sauerbrunn and Rampone both around $90k. Their giant Olympic bonuses helped boost them into the top tier.

Of course, the WNT just negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement with USSF which includes a big boost to base pay, which, with bonuses, could make the new max for a WNT player in a non-tournament year much closer to $300k.

US Soccer is clearly doing pretty okay in the money department; when you add in all the money they made after the fiscal year in this report, thanks in large part to the Copa America Centenario, fans should be looking forward to what USSF puts down for their next tax return.