There are a number of issues that make Cindy Parlow Cone, the president of U.S. Soccer, stand out among the many sport’s high executives.

She’s a former World Cup champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist who made 158 worldwide appearances. She was inducted within the Nationwide Soccer Corridor of Fame and coached the Portland Thorns to a league title within the NWSL’s inaugural season. She’s a volunteer,operating one of many world’s largest, richest and most advanced soccer federations totally free.

Then there’s her gender: Of the 211 nationwide federations that belong to FIFA, solely 9 have feminine presidents. But misplaced amongst all these vital and uncommon accomplishments is the truth that Cone’s quick reign has arguably been among the many most impactful of any U.S. Soccer president.

“Whenever you put a girl on the desk,” mentioned Julie Foudy, a former teammate, “they get s— achieved.”

Possibly. However Cone, the one lady president in U.S. Soccer’s 109-year historical past, would like to assume her skills and life experiences have extra to do together with her success than her gender or taking part in profession.

“Is it as a result of I’m a girl? Is it as a result of I’m a former participant? Is it due to my management fashion?” Cone requested after showing as one of many keynote audio system at November’s ESPN W convention in Ojai. “I don’t know. I’m who I’m. And I don’t attempt to be another approach.

“For me, one of the crucial essential issues is keep true to myself and keep true to who I’m as an individual in order that I can sleep properly at night time.”

She ought to sleep like a child contemplating what she has achieved since turning into federation president in 2020, the day earlier than President Trump declared COVID-19 a federal emergency.

Cone — one of many youngest federation presidents on the earth at 44 — led U.S. Soccer into and out of the unprecedented coronavirus disaster and oversaw a males’s nationwide crew program that gained a Gold Cup, the primary CONCACAF Nations League, returned to the World Cup after an eight-year absence and certified for the Olympics for the primary time since 2008. The ladies’s crew, ranked No. 1 on the earth, earned bronze on the Tokyo Video games and gained the CONCACAF W Championship, qualifying for subsequent summer time’s Girls’s World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Cone additionally commissioned the groundbreaking Yates Report, which documented systematic abuse in girls’s soccer within the U.S. from the youth degree by means of the NWSL, abuse earlier leaders knew about however did little to appropriate.

Her crowning accomplishment, nevertheless, was negotiating historic collective-bargaining agreements with each nationwide groups that made the U.S. the primary nation to attain gender equality, a aim that U.S. Soccer’s previous two presidents pursued however by no means achieved.

“She’s a former athlete, she cares in regards to the sport deeply, she cares about nationwide groups deeply and she or he cares about environments deeply. And with that she makes selections. Easy as that,” Earnie Stewart, a three-time World Cup participant and now U.S. Soccer’s sporting director, mentioned when requested what makes Cone efficient. “She’s easy. When she decides, she stands by it and she or he goes ahead.”

She additionally trusts these like Stewart who work beneath her.

“In case you don’t, why rent individuals?” she requested. “You’re not going to empower them to do the work. I’m a crew participant. Nobody desires to be micromanaged.”

Requested whether or not her gender influenced Cone’s strategy, Stewart was as easy as his boss.

“I’m a male, so I can’t completely reply that query,” he mentioned. “I definitely hope not. I consider that the world has advanced.”

There’s little doubt that the ladies who’ve earned a seat on the desk in what has historically been a male-dominated sport are making a distinction. Shortly after former Norwegian worldwide participant Lise Klaveness grew to become the primary lady to go that nation’s soccer federation, she negotiated a truce that returned Ada Hegerberg, a former Ballon d’Or winner and onetime teammate of Klaveness, to the nationwide crew following a five-year boycott. Klaveness has additionally been among the many most outspoken critics of FIFA’s indifference towards the remedy of migrant staff in Qatar, website of the just-concluded World Cup.

Cone was the federation’s vice chairman when Carlos Cordeiro resigned as chief government, taking accountability for demeaning language included in a authorized transient issued by federation legal professionals in a gender fairness lawsuit introduced towards U.S. Soccer by members of the ladies’s nationwide crew. That gave Cone the reins; she was then elected to her personal four-year time period in March of this yr, defeating Cordeiro on the primary poll.

The job doesn’t get any simpler over time. Cone, who’s liable for greater than a dozen nationwide groups and a employees of 250, should now oversee preparations for the most important, most advanced World Cup in historical past. The 2026 match will embrace a file 48 groups taking part in within the U.S., Canada and Mexico, however 60 of the 80 matches might be staged within the U.S., unfold throughout 11 cities and 4 time zones.

Foudy, who gained a World Cup and three Olympic medals alongside Cone, is amongst these assured she will be able to deal with it.

“I’m not stunned in any respect by how properly she’s doing,” she mentioned. “There’s no bull—. It’s very clear. Her ethical compass is implausible. She’s keen to be susceptible, she’s keen to confess what she’s doesn’t know. But she’s actually good at making selections when she does know or asking for assist when she wants it.

“All these issues make nice leaders. She checks all of the containers.”

U.S. soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone speaks after a match between the U.S. girls’s nationwide crew and Nigeria in September.

(Julio Cortez / Related Press)

But the gender query stays. As a result of the breakthrough settlement on pay fairness and the beautiful revelations contained within the Yates Report largely have been seen as benefiting the ladies’s sport, Cone’s administration has been seen in some circles as furthering an agenda she held as an activist participant and later as an NWSL coach who pushed again towards sexual harassment.

That criticism is each unjust and incorrect. Unequal pay and sexual harassment have been by no means a male-female downside, they’ve all the time been a soccer downside. Cone is fast to credit score the lads’s crew with serving to remedy it.

“It’s been over twenty years that I’ve been concerned within the equal-pay struggle,” mentioned Cone, who, after successful the 1999 Girls’s World Cup, joined Foudy, Mia Hamm and a handful of others in refusing to play till they obtained higher compensation and dealing circumstances. “To make the progress that we’ve made, it took plenty of issues to come back collectively. I give enormous credit score to the lads’s nationwide and their [union] to get on board with this and to essentially be part of the answer.”

Nonetheless, it was Cone who compelled the difficulty. With the collective bargaining agreements for each the lads’s and girls’s groups being negotiated on the similar time final spring, she introduced each side to the desk and refused to endorse any deal with out an settlement on FIFA prize cash. The consequence was historic: each groups would place their winnings in a single pot and cut up the cash equally.

With the lads reaching the ultimate 16 of the Qatar World Cup, that meant the groups cut up the $11.7 million in prize cash evenly. The $5.85 million the ladies received practically matched the $6 million in mixed earnings for successful the final two Girls’s World Cups.

Cone has been deeply invested within the investigations in misconduct within the NWSL, each the Yates probe, commissioned by U.S. Soccer, and the not too long ago launched report from the league and its gamers’ associations. The reviews have been damning each in what they uncovered and within the element through which it was described. Cone is much less within the issues then she is within the options.

“What I used to be most trying ahead to are the suggestions,” mentioned Cone, who has already applied a lot of these contained within the Yates Report. “As onerous as it’s to learn each reviews, for me, my guiding gentle is ‘OK, now now we have pathway out and [for] how we begin to change it and ensure that our sport is as protected as potential.’ And hopefully, that this by no means occurs once more.

“I’m glad the report’s out now so we are able to actually deal with making the systemic adjustments that we have to make.”

So whereas nothing Cone has achieved was completed as a result of she’s a girl she does deliver a further consciousness to the job of what it feels prefer to be marginalized, ignored or dismissed. The 2026 World Cup isn’t the primary in North America since 1994, she corrects; there have been three Girls’s World Cups performed right here since then. Pushing grassroots soccer isn’t about getting boys to play the sport, she emphasizes, it’s about getting boys and ladies to play the sport.

Language and context matter.

“Why girls are profitable after they’re given these management positions is that they convey empathy and instincts and an understanding and a willingness,” mentioned Foudy, a former president of the Girls’s Sports activities Basis. “The ability set that girls deliver to the desk is big and massive.”

Cindy Parlow Cone, second from proper, poses with Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi, proper, and U.S. girls’s soccer gamers (from left) Briana Scurry, Margaret ‘Midge’ Purce, Kelley O’Hara and Julie Foudy whereas on the White Home to have fun Equal Pay Day on March 15.

(Patrick Semansky / Related Press)

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The problem Cone faces now’s to not solely unite and restore U.S. Soccer on the nationwide crew {and professional} ranges, however on the grassroots as properly. And that’s an enormous elevate. Greater than 12.6 million Individuals performed out of doors soccer a minimum of as soon as in 2021, in keeping with Statista. That’s greater than the registered variety of gamers in Germany, France, Spain and the Netherlands mixed.

The way forward for the sport within the U.S. is about planting seeds, which is why Cone, along with being president of U.S. Soccer, can also be a director for a youth soccer membership in North Carolina, the place her duties embrace ordering uniforms for all of the gamers as a result of someone has to organize them.

That want to roll up her sleeves and do what must be achieved is what led her to the very best job within the sport within the U.S., but it surely hasn’t stopped her from pitching in at lowest ranges as properly.

“I really, deeply care in regards to the sport, from the grassroots degree all the best way up,” Cone mentioned. “I used to be sort of on the skin, annoyed with various things, even offended with sure issues. And I spotted that until I used to be keen to leap in and work, I couldn’t maintain complaining or maintain getting annoyed.

“I used to be by no means seeking to change into vice-president and even president of U.S. Soccer. I believe all of it sort of occurred accidentally. However now that I’m right here I’m seeing that I’m capable of make constructive change.”