Becky Sauerbrunn said any official found to have failed to protect players “should be gone.” As she spoke, the owner of her club, the Portland Thorns, said he would leave the team temporarily.
LONDON — The captain of the world champion United States women’s national soccer team said Tuesday that any owner or executive implicated in a damning report on abuse in women’s soccer “should be gone” from the sport. That group of people, the captain, Becky Sauerbrunn, made clear, includes the owner and several top executives of her own club team, the Portland Thorns.
“You have failed in your stewardship,” Sauerbrunn said of soccer leaders and executives whose behavior was detailed in a scathing report, released Monday, that revealed years of abuse in American women’s soccer. “And it’s my opinion that every owner and executive and U.S. Soccer official who has repeatedly failed the players, and failed to protect the players, who have hidden behind legalities, and who have not participated fully in these investigations, should be gone.”
As she was speaking, the Thorns’ owner, Merritt Paulson, released a statement in which he said he was “removing myself effective today” from the team’s decision-making. But Paulson gave no indication that he planned to sell the team in Portland, Ore., a stance that, for the moment, put him directly at odds with Sauerbrunn, one of his club’s most decorated and popular players.
Asked to clarify if her remarks included Paulson, Sauerbrunn, citing specific accusations against the owner and the Thorns but not speaking his name, left little doubt that Paulson was among the targets of her comments.
“It includes everyone that has continued to fail the players time and time again,” she said of those who should be ostracized from soccer.
Paulson and at least two team executives were accused in a report compiled by the former Justice Department official Sally Q. Yates of hiding their knowledge of abuse by a former Thorns coach; of dismissing the claims of a player who raised such concerns; and of staying silent while the coach moved from team to team in the National Women’s Soccer League.
Sauerbrunn and her teammate Alana Cook, who spoke on the same call on Tuesday evening, were unsparing in their view that strong action, including the forced sale of teams and the firing of officials known to have hidden or abetted the abuse of women, was overdue.
“I think it’s time,” Sauerbrunn said, “for those that are in authority and leadership positions to start holding each other accountable, and asking for the change that needs to happen.”
Cook, like Sauerbrunn, said that with players having come forward to reveal and document years of abuse, the responsibility to remove problematic coaches, executives and owners lay with the sport’s leadership.
“For so long it’s been on the players to speak out,” Cook said. “It shouldn’t be on us anymore.”
Sauerbrunn and Cook spoke in London, where the United States will play the European champion England in an exhibition game Friday night. Both players, and their coach, Vlatko Andonovski, said the team was reeling from the revelations in the Yates report, and struggling to focus on Friday’s game.
“The players are not doing well,” Sauerbrunn said. “We are horrified and heartbroken and frustrated and exhausted and really, really angry.”
Andonovski said that he and his staff were respecting that each player was processing the report differently, and that all have been given room to do that. Allowances have been made, he said, for players to skip meetings, training sessions and even Friday’s game.
Paulson’s statement was his first public comment since the release of the report. He said in the statement that two other top Thorns executives whose personal and professional behavior was criticized in the report, the president of soccer Gavin Wilkinson and the team’s president of business Mike Golub, would also step aside while a separate investigation is conducted by the N.W.S.L. and its players’ union.
But Paulson gave no indication that he planned to sell the team, and Sauerbrunn and Cook along with other players quickly signaled that stopping short of a complete exit would be inadequate.
“I think that a lot of trust has been broken,” Sauerbrunn said. She added, “At the end of the day, if people continue to fail the players, and they don’t comply with anything that gets asked of them in these reports and gets implemented in these reports, they need to be gone gone.”
Source: Soccer - nytimes.com
