Australian womens' football team cancels US tour amid pay dispute

Australia's women's national football team has canceled plans to tour the United States on Thursday, as a pay dispute with Football Federation Australia (FFA) continues to escalate.

The decision to call off the tour, which would have pitted the Matildas against the world champion United States women's national team, follows the cancellation of a public training camp in Sydney on Tuesday.

The Matildas revealed this week that they have not been paid for two months - since their contracts expired - and negotiations between the FFA and Professional Footballers Australia (PFA) have since resulted in a stalemate.

The FFA is already reeling after the men's national team canceled a fan appearance two days before a World Cup qualifying match in Perth last week.

The Socceroos are also locked in a pay dispute with the football body.

PFA chief executive Adam Vivian said the decision to cancel the Matildas' tour was made after the players held a meeting on Wednesday evening.

"The players are currently uncontracted and are under no obligation to participate in any Matildas related activities," Vivian said in a statement.

"The players feel they have been left with no option other than to take this course of action. They were hopeful that FFA's position would alter following (Tuesday's) breakdown in negotiations.

"However, the interim letter agreement offered to the players (on Wednesday) proved this had not been the case."

Vivian said the Matildas - the first Australian national team to make the quarterfinals of a World Cup - were only asking for what was fair.

He said their current, part-time pay was a reflection of the days when female players were amateurs, and was not considerate of their current professional status.

"The Matildas are in a very interesting situation, they fundamentally have a full-time workload with part time pay, so we're looking for an immediate correction to their pay scheme - that's not a huge correction by the way, that correction sort of circa 105,000 U.S dollars in total, in terms of the addition of what's been offered," Vivian told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

"It's not a huge amount of money considering we're talking about over the next four years... a 440 million U.S economy for professional football."

The FFA is also under pressure to increase wages for players in the national A-League. Endi