Welcome back to full time with Meg Linahan. I'm Meg. You are listening to a show all about

women's soccer on the Athletic Podcast Network. Now, it is a full travel week for me here at the Athletic covering women's soccer. So I wanted to bring you inside the coverage. I was just in D.C. Basically, as soon as I record this, I am off to the airport for another trip. So to really get a sense of what it's like in terms of post-game coverage. I'm going to take you inside the mix zone,

inside the press conference. But first, full-time with Megalinihan is presented by Klarna, the new smart way to pay when you shop online for tickets, team merch, and everything else. So, and of course, before we get to the rest of today's episode, if you want to show your

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All right.

So, D.C., big game win over Nigeria, two to one. We had a debut in

Sam Coffee. But really one of the big moments was the signing of the collective bargaining agreement,

both between the women's national team and U.S. soccer, but also the men's national team and

U.S. soccer. And there was actually a ceremony. It felt like an event. It felt like a moment. So I wanted to bring you in not just to all the stuff that got talked about the game, but also the CBA signing. So first, let's start with captain and U.S. women's national team Team PA president, Becky Sauerbruns.

Now, she had a whole speech right on the field. Yes, it is basically a big thank you list, but I think it's worth listening to again because she's highlighting all of the people who worked on the CBA and equal pay fight for years. So here's Becky. All right. Well, I'm going to keep this pretty short and sweet because we have a celebration that we need to get to, but I've got a lot of people to think.

First and foremost, I want going to keep this pretty short and sweet because we have a celebration that we need to get to, but I've got a lot of people to think.

First and foremost, I want to thank the players past and present for our persistence and basically never shying away from asking the question, why not?

And I think us players really knew that we were on the right track when we started attracting some of the most brilliant minds in their fields to our cause. And so to our labor lawyers,

Brett Hoff and Kaiser, to our litigation and appeals, Winston and Strawn, Mayor Brown, our communication

strategist at the Levinson Group, also from the NFL PA, from numerous

commercial partners and supporters of the PA, thank you so much. Your work is unbelievable,

and we will be forever grateful for that. To Secretary Walsh and the other labor leaders that are here tonight, thank you so much.

This is a huge win for the labor of movement and for workers' rights.

And I would be remiss if I didn't shine a huge spotlight on our Players Association Executive Director, Beckeroo.

We had a vision for RPA, and without this woman right here, without this brilliant woman, we never would have seen this vision through.

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