The U.S. women and U.S. Soccer will meet later this month in a series of sessions in the hopes of agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement.

NEW YORK – As November turns into December, U.S. national team defender and co-captain Becky Sauerbrunn has more on her mind than end-of-year festivities. Not with the U.S. women’s players in the middle of an equal pay dispute with their employers at the U.S. Soccer Federation. Not with the players’ filing with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) still under review. And not with the players’ collective bargaining agreement with U.S. Soccer expiring at the end of the month.

The U.S. womens’ fight for equal pay has been going on for some time, and with things set to come to a head, SauerbrunnMuch of his appeal lay in the fact that he always seemed to be a resolutely ordinary man catapulted into extraordinary circumstances. Even his birthplace has an absurdist Ringo-ish charm to it – the Dingle. He worked as a barman on the Mersey ferry and as an apprentice joiner before, in 1962, John Lennon sought him out at Butlins in Skegness, where he was playing in a group called Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and offered him the job with the Beatles. The pay was £25 a week, on the condition that he shave off his beard and brush his hair forward. He was, however, allowed to keep his "sidies".