NISA’s Chicago House AC pays groundbreaking solidarity payment

Six years after US Soccer and MLS went to court to defend their right not to pay amateur or youth clubs after their players are signed by professional clubs, Chicago House AC has decided to do things differently. 

The incoming NISA club announced today that it has paid a solidarity payment, believed to be the first in US soccer history, to Joliet, IL’s Steel City FC (guests on a recent episode of our podcast) when their player Damien Almazan was signed by CHAC. 

Such payments are a universal and very much routine part of the global soccer landscape where players come through youth systems and clubs at lower levels of the pyramid before moving to larger clubs. The mechanism is slightly different, in that it is triggered when a professional player is transferred to another professional club, any club that has contributed to his education and training receives a cut of the transfer fee.