U.S. women's national team begins Olympic qualifying under dark cloud

Just seven months after they hoisted the 2015 Women's World Cup, the United States women's national team will begin their campaign to win a fourth straight Olympic gold medal when qualifiers kick off in Texas on Wednesday.

[ WATCH LIVE: U.S. women in CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying Championship ]

The event itself should be fairly straightforward, even though the lady Yanks are now without Abby Wambach, Lauren Holiday, Lori Chalupny and Shannon Boxx – all of whom have retired – and will also miss Megan Rapinoe, who is injured, and Sydney Leroux and Amy Rodriguez, both of whom are pregnant.

They have been replaced by a wave of young talent. Nine players to make the 20-woman qualifying roster are 23 or younger, and eight of them have just eight caps or fewer. Collectively, they may well represent the biggest one-time rejuvenation in the program's recent history.

But the unusual amount of turnover isn't what complicates this qualification. In fact, it may prove an asset as head coach Jill Ellis can finally set about modernizing her team and implementing a more technical approach. Indeed, with the likes of Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn and Christen Press still around and in their prime, this probably remains the world's best team.

Nor is the relatively tricky group stage an impediment. The draw of Mexico, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico won't likely prove to be a major obstacle, even though it's a much tougher bunch than rivals Canada received in Group B with Guatemala, Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana. Because all the U.S. has to do is advance as one of the two best teams in Group A and win its semifinal to secure a place in Rio this summer. Even the congested schedule of five games in 12 days isn't a big deal because the Americans still have easily the deepest team in the region.

And lest we forget, the last time around the U.S. rampaged through this CONCACAF Women's Olympic Qualifying Tournament with a 5-0-0 record and an absurd 38-0 goal ledger.

So what could make the next 12 days difficult for the USA?

Well, this: On Thursday, the Women's National Team Players Association was taken to court by U.S. Soccer over a disagreement involving the collective bargaining agreement between the two sides – or lack thereof.

The case is a complicated one. What it boils down to is that their last CBA expired on Dec. 31, 2012 – this much both sides agree on – and U.S. Soccer contends that the memorandum of understanding the two sides signed afterwards acts as a fully fledged CBA in its place while the players say it's merely an outline of their employment terms. (The USWNT players draw a full-time salary and benefits from the federation and are considered employees. The men's national team, it is worth noting, does not and is only compensated in bonuses, meaning the women's gripe that their bonuses are smaller rests on a false equivalency.)

The distinction matters because if a judge finds that the MOU acts as a working CBA, the players don't have the right to strike should the sides get deadlocked in their negotiations for a new deal. If the MOU isn't legally a CBA, the players do reserve the right to a work stoppage – although they say they have no intention of enacting one in this Olympic year.

When the players' representative wouldn't sign away their right to strike while they work out a new deal, U.S. Soccer filed suit in Chicago, where it is headquartered. It said in its filing that it was deeply concerned that the players might sit out the Olympics, a move that could have far-reaching consequences for the federation – up to and including bans for all national teams in international competition, it claims.

But at its base, this is a tussle for leverage and bargaining power.

And things have quickly turned ugly. In its filing, the federation included emails as evidence that not only disclosed the players' salaries – these were no great secret – but also their private email addresses and physical home addresses as of a few years ago. The players were understandably livid over this.

On Monday, they filed their response and accused the federation of consciously misrepresenting and misleading the court with the evidence it submitted, claiming it cut short relevant passages and depositions just as language or statements were about to be made that supported the players' case.

But this is not the only point of strife. The women are also fed up of being made to play on artificial turf by U.S. Soccer. After winning a World Cup on turf – in spite of a global lawsuit by female players against FIFA and the Canadian Soccer Association, the local organizing committee, instigated and widely supported by U.S. players – eight of their 10 Victory Tour games were put on plastic fields as well. A December game in Honolulu had such a wretched surface that the players refused to appear for their game – after Rapinoe had torn her ACL on a bad field in practice the day before.

The federation has acknowledged its mistake in Hawaii and vowed to do better. But this incident didn't do much to soothe fraying tempers on the women's side, with the team feeling, fairly or not, that it wasn't treated equally to the men, who always get real grass. And then the lawsuit happened, bringing things to a head.

Ellis and her players will no doubt claim that none of this will matter when they play Costa Rica on Wednesday, Mexico on Saturday and Puerto Rico on Monday – or indeed the semifinals on Feb. 19 or the final on the 21st. It's their job to rise above this and perform.

But if anything is to trip the U.S. women's national team up in the coming two weeks, it probably won't be anything they face on the field.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.