It will be interesting to see if Mallory Pugh leaves UCLA early now with the increase in pay for WNT players. Especially, since she is a sure lock for the 2019 WWC roster.
Won't happen. The details have yet to be finalized and the only years that the US WNT makes good bonuses are World Cup and Olympic years. Just take a glimpse at how the men are paid to get an idea of what they will get. Also remember that they did not get equal pay and US Soccer pays the women's salaries not the men. I think that a lot of the increase is for the veteran players and the fringe (occasional call up players) that play in the NWSL. Here is a decent comparison.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/women-earn-the-glory-while-men-earn-the-money-in-u-s-soccer/
At the end of the day we will see. There are only 2 games on the schedule after these two against Russia through July. She definitely is not going to jump ship this year in order to play in the NWSL (she would have to wait until January anyway).
Here are some key lines:
The result of all those long days and late nights is the team’s new collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer, which was announced on Wednesday morning. The agreement includes a sizable increase in base pay for the players — more than 30 percent, initially — and improved match bonuses that could double some of their incomes, to $200,000 to $300,000 in any given year, and even more in a year that includes a World Cup or Olympic campaign.
Yet while the women’s players can claim significant gains, including on noneconomic issues like travel and working conditions, the new deal does not guarantee them equal pay with the men’s national team, which the women had made the cornerstone of their campaign for much of the last year. For the union, that reality — a consequence of the teams’
different pay structures and an eight-figure gap in FIFA bonus payouts to U.S. Soccer for the men’s and women’s World Cup — was balanced by progress elsewhere. It is those changes, including control of some licensing and marketing rights, which the union views as an opening to test the team’s value on the open market, that the players and their lawyers feel could pay off in future negotiations.
“We tried to completely change the methodology for how to define our value, and we made progress in that regard, and it changes the equation for the future,” Becca Roux, the union’s executive director, said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/sports/soccer/uswnt-us-soccer-labor-deal-contract.html?_r=0