Raphael Stevens

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    How Arsenal Found Its Voice

    LONDON — On the night before the biggest game of Arsenal’s season so far, the fans slipped inside the Emirates Stadium to make sure everything was in place. Their leader and a handful of friends had spent weeks drawing up their plans: raising money, contacting suppliers, brainstorming themes, designing images, cutting out stencils, spray-painting letters.Now, late on a Friday night, there was just one job left to do. They had to check that every seat in Block 25 of the stadium’s Clock End contained a flag, either red or white, for the culmination of the display.The next day, they saw their vision realized. As the players of Arsenal and Tottenham took the field at the Emirates, Block 25 was transformed. “We Came, We Saw, We Conquered,” read one banner. “North London Is Red Since 1913,” ran another, a reference to Arsenal’s controversial relocation to this part of the city — and Tottenham territory — a century ago. Hundreds of flags fluttered under a clear blue sky.The display lasted barely more than an instant, all those hours of effort expended for a single, fleeting moment, a reverie that broke as soon as the whistle blew. Its impact, though, lasted substantially longer.After the game, Arsenal’s manager, Mikel Arteta, described the atmosphere inside the Emirates that afternoon as “probably the best I’ve seen in this stadium since I’ve been involved with the club,” a relationship that covers more than a decade. His captain, Martin Odegaard, made a point of thanking the fans, too. “It was amazing to play out there,” he said.In part, of course, that can be attributed to the result: Arsenal had beaten Tottenham, and victory in the North London derby is always something to be celebrated. The context helped, too: The win ensured that Arsenal remained at the summit of the Premier League for another week, a point ahead of Manchester City heading into this weekend, when Liverpool visits the Emirates.Color and crowds are part of every stadium matchday, but at Arsenal it’s the sound that is new.But this was not an isolated case. Over the last year or so, it has not been uncommon for Arteta and his players to gush over how noisy, how passionate, how ardent the Emirates has become. Inside the club, there is a sincere belief that the raucous atmosphere is a cause, rather than a consequence, of the team’s surge in form.In a stadium long derided as among the quietest in English soccer, a crowd that had come to be seen as an advertisement for the dangers of the game’s gentrification — too posh, effectively, to push its team — has suddenly found its voice.That transformation can be traced not only to the energy and impetus provided by the group that has coalesced around a handful of founders — the Ashburton Army, inspired by the ultra faction factions common in European and South American soccer but still relatively rare in England — but to the determination of the club itself to allow them to solve a problem that dated back at least a generation.After all, the night before the biggest game of the season, as they sought to put the finishing touches on their work, someone had to let them in.Fans were never the problem at the Emirates. The atmosphere was.Ray Herlihy of RedAction, an Arsenal fan group.The blame for Arsenal’s reputation as a sedate, subdued sort of place is often placed on its departure from its longtime home at Highbury for the grand, sweeping bowl of the Emirates in 2006. Arsène Wenger, the manager who oversaw the relocation, always felt that Arsenal had “left its soul at Highbury.”It is a poetic, faintly romantic telling of history, but it may not be an accurate one. “The reputation started at Highbury,” said Ray Herlihy, founder of RedAction, a group that has been working to improve the atmosphere at Arsenal for two decades. “It was at Highbury that I got involved. That was where the Highbury Library nickname began.” All that was lost in the move, it turned out, was the rhyme.Unquestionably, the new stadium accentuated the issues. Clusters of fans who had sat together at Highbury suddenly found themselves separated. The Emirates’ design meant there was no obvious focal point where the noisiest, most fervent fans could gather. Highbury had boasted the twin poles of the Clock End and the North Bank; the Emirates had no natural equivalent.Most damaging of all was the divergence between the cost of tickets and the success of the team. The Emirates, famously, was home to the most expensive season ticket in English soccer. With younger fans priced out, the crowd started to skew older. “For a while, I think we had the highest average age of season-ticket holder,” Herlihy said. “And you’re not as animated at 65 as you might be at 25.”At the same time, Arsenal’s fortunes were waning. Wenger’s later years were marked not by title challenges but by an annual struggle simply to qualify for the Champions League, a decline that gave rise to a bitter, internecine debate over whether the Frenchman had outstayed his welcome.“There had been years of the Wenger Out campaign,” said Remy Marsh, a founder of the Ashburton Army (though he has, he said, subsequently “stepped away” from the group.) “There was an undeniable toxicity.” Much of it was captured, every week, by the cameras of Arsenal Fan TV, full of furious rants and factional squabbles. “It ruined a whole generation,” Marsh said.By the end of the last decade, pretty much everyone agreed that the atmosphere at the Emirates was in dire need of repair. One described it as “flat.” Herlihy admitted the club’s games “struggled” to generate much noise. Marsh called it “lackluster.”“The chants were lacking,” Marsh said. “There wasn’t much variation. It had become a stigma for the club.”Arsenal, it turned out, was harboring much the same thought.The Ashburton Army, at the outset, was hardly a heavyweight organization. It was an attempt to bring elements of the ultra spirit to Arsenal — the big tifo displays, the pyrotechnics; “they were always singing, always supporting,” one of the group’s leaders said, “and I didn’t see why we couldn’t have that here” — but it was based around a single group chat. The Army, then, had barely more than a dozen members.That was enough, though, to catch the club’s eye. Arsenal was not unique among Premier League clubs in trying to solve the riddle presented by the league’s global appeal: how to maintain an atmosphere when its stadium was, increasingly, filled by corporate guests and day-tripping tourists there to sample the experience, rather than contribute to it.Its solution may offer a blueprint to other teams with precisely the same problem. “We encourage our staff to listen informally to fans,” said Vinai Venkatesham, Arsenal’s chief executive.When Marsh emailed the club to outline what the group hoped to achieve, they were invited to meet with the fan liaison team. The Ashburton Army wanted to remain independent, but the club was happy not only to tolerate them, but to help.Flags placed by the Ashburton Army before the Tottenham match.A band playing the fans out after the home team’s 3-1 win.That resolve was only strengthened, Venkatesham said, by the coronavirus pandemic. “We had 62 games without fans,” he said. “It gave us perspective and time to evaluate ourselves, to ask if we were listening enough, if the fans felt like they were at the center of every decision.”The sight of the Emirates “standing silent” for a year, he said, reinforced the idea that “fans were not just an ingredient for football, they were the ingredient.” We want fans to feel close and connected to the club,” Venkatesham said. “The Emirates Stadium is the epicenter for that, and from there it spreads out across the globe.”Herlihy, a veteran of Arsenal’s fan outreach programs, had long felt the club paid lip service to the idea of listening to their views. “They talked a good game,” he said. “But there was no real engagement.”That changed, Herlihy said, after the onset of the pandemic and the controversy over Arsenal’s involvement in the short-lived European Super League. “You know what they say: The streets don’t forget,” he said. “After that, there was a real change of tone. They engaged properly with these issues.”The effects of that have been many and varied. The club has, at the instigation of the players, embraced the work of Louis Dunford, a local songwriter; one of his songs, known as “North London Forever,” has become a sort of unofficial Arsenal anthem, played before the start of every game at the Emirates. “It happened organically,” said Venkatesham. “None of it can be forced.”Arsenal officials think the increasingly raucous atmosphere at the Emirates is a cause, rather than a consequence, of the team’s surge in form. Arsenal leads the Premier League heading into a weekend visit from Liverpool. Other changes have been small, barely perceptible — the club has made it easier for fans to sell tickets for games they cannot attend, and has warned that season-ticket holders who regularly leave their seats empty will be stripped of their rights to them — but have contributed, Herlihy said, to a sense that fans are being heard.None more so than the Ashburton Army. When fans returned to stadiums, the club helped to move its growing ranks — now comprising a couple of hundred members — en masse. “When we started, we were sitting at the back of a block,” one of the group’s leaders said. “That made it hard for the noise to travel.” Their new slot, in what has been known since 2010 as the stadium’s Clock End, is at the very front. The acoustics there, they say, are much better.“We try and support fan groups however we can,” Venkatesham said. The banner RedAction unfurled at the North London derby — spanning the width of the stadium — had, for example, been financed by the club. Arsenal does not have the same relationship with the Ashburton Army, but it does, he said, “give them access to the stadium so they can set up before games.”After two decades of trying, the approach seems to have worked. Nobody is under any illusions: It helps, of course, that Arteta has put together not just a bright, young team, stocked with homegrown players, but a winning one, too. But just as they have driven the atmosphere at the Emirates, so the atmosphere has driven them.“The Ashburton Army have shown the rest of the stadium how it should be done,” Herlihy said. His seat, at the opposite end of the stadium, affords him a perfect view of the group in action: 90 minutes of “noise and movement,” every single one of them dressed not in club colors, but in the black uniform of any self-respecting ultra.“They’re doing what we all did years ago, and what we thought you couldn’t do any more,” he said. “They’re going to the football with their mates, and they’re having fun. And it’s more fun to have fun at football.” More

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    The Portland Thorns Become the Face of a Scandal in Women’s Soccer

    The Portland Thorns were once the pride of U.S. women’s soccer. But after a report said the club shielded a disgraced coach and thwarted an abuse investigation, even the players are demanding a housecleaning.Everybody knew Paul Riley was a problem.The first tangible sign came after the 2014 season, when players on the women’s soccer team he coached, the Portland Thorns, complained about his behavior in an anonymous survey.“We got used to being called dumb, stupid, slow, idiotic, retarded,” one player wrote. Another said, “Being subject to verbal abuse and sexism shouldn’t exist in this league by any coach.”The comments were distributed to executives throughout the National Women’s Soccer League and the United States Soccer Federation, which effectively ran the N.W.S.L. at the time. No one did anything about them, according to a withering report on abuse in women’s soccer. Riley did not respond to messages asking for comment when the report was released on Monday.The indifference of Sunil Gulati, who was the president of U.S. Soccer, demonstrates how the soccer world thought of the Thorns. Gulati told investigators that while the surveys contained important feedback, he did not remember reading the comments from Thorns players.Why not? He suspected, he told investigators, “that he overlooked them because he assumed Portland was squared away.”The report — conducted by Sally Q. Yates, the former deputy U.S. attorney general, at the behest of U.S. Soccer — issued a clarion call for dramatic change throughout women’s soccer, from the professional ranks down to the youth game, and within every organization that oversees the sport.But nowhere is that call louder than in the place that calls itself Soccer City USA, where the Thorns seemingly embody both the best and worst of women’s soccer in America.Becky Sauerbrunn suggested this week that the Thorns’ owner and others should be forced out of the N.W.S.L.Andy Lyons/Getty ImagesMerritt Paulson, the owner of the Thorns, said on Tuesday that he was temporarily “stepping away” from the team’s decision making, as would two other Thorns executives. But Paulson gave no indication that he planned to sell the team, even as one of his most team’s popular players, the defender Becky Sauerbrunn, called for him and others to be forced from the league.“You have failed in your stewardship,” Sauerbrunn said in a conference call with reporters. “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.”The N.W.S.L. has been on precarious financial footing since its founding a decade ago, but the Thorns had for years been viewed as a beacon of what women’s professional sports in the United States could be. In the same season in which players reported that Riley called them dumb, the team set a record by drawing more than 19,000 fans to a game. Some of the world’s best players competed for the Thorns in front of the league’s most rabid supporters, and others, including national team stars like Sauerbrunn, Lindsey Horan and Crystal Dunn, found ways to join the team. The Thorns won two league championships, and went to the playoffs almost every season.And while some N.W.S.L. teams were run on shoestring budgets, with players provided substandard housing and inadequate training facilities, the Thorns always presented themselves as a first-class operation, professional in every sense of the word.As his two Oregon teams — Paulson also owns a men’s team, the Portland Timbers of Major League Soccer — won games and titles and packed Providence Park, Paulson cultivated a reputation as a fan- and media-friendly populist, the kind of owner who would banter on Twitter and shake hands on game day. That image, and his team’s commercial and on-field successes, made him a serious player in American soccer — and one with powerful supporters.The responses of Merritt Paulson and the Thorns to investigations into abuse are also under the microscope.Diego Diaz/Icon Sportswire, via Getty ImagesEven after some revelations about the Thorns’s inaction with Riley, and after the Timbers were fined by M.L.S. for failing to disclose accusations of domestic violence against a player, Paulson was praised by Don Garber, the commissioner of M.L.S. and a U.S. Soccer board member.“I have enormous faith and confidence in Merritt Paulson, who’s built from scratch one of the great sports teams, in any sport, in our country, if not throughout North America,” Garber said in February. “I know that he’s very passionate about his teams, both the Portland Timbers and the Portland Thorns, and is going to cooperate in anything that is being reviewed.”Garber and the M.L.S. did not respond to a request for comment.That faith and confidence may be shattered by allegations that the Thorns ignored complaints of sexual and verbal abuse against Riley, covered for him despite firing him for his behavior and encouraged his moves to new teams, and then worked to thwart Yates’s investigators.For a year, Thorns fans have been torn about how to straddle the line between supporting the players on a team run by people they believe are failing them, with some still attending games but boycotting merchandise and concessions stands, and others simply not going.“Many friends and volunteering colleagues stopped attending games long ago,” said Rachel Greenough, 39, who is a member of the Rose City Riveters, a Thorns supporters group that has called for Paulson to sell. “They felt like they could not be in that stadium because it felt like an emotional burden they didn’t want to take on, or they didn’t want to give money to the organization. I totally understand that.”The team’s inaction over player complaints about Riley, and the steps several Thorns executives — including Paulson — took to help him find another N.W.S.L. job, cannot be blamed on ignorance. As the report makes clear, the team knew everything.The Thorns, in fact, dismissed Riley after the 2015 season, days after a player, Meleana Shim, made a formal complaint to the team that Riley had sexually harassed her, presided over a toxic workplace and coerced her and another player to kiss in front of him.That decision was made, however, only after years of complaints. Riley’s sexual misconduct was an “open secret” by then — known by players, a coach, an owner and an assistant general manager for another team, according to the report. Players complained in surveys. The Thorns’ athletic trainer told her superiors that Riley went against medical recommendations and endangered players. Riley also had multiple sexual relationships with players throughout his career as a coach.Altogether, the report painted a picture of a coach who crossed every line imaginable and whose conduct was reported to those in charge, and yet his contract was only terminated after his team missed the playoffs for the first time. The Thorns then actively assisted Riley with getting another job in the N.W.S.L., with the Western New York Flash.The Thorns did not say publicly that Riley’s contract had been terminated after a formal complaint and a human resources investigation that substantiated many of the complaints. They publicly wished him well. When a Flash executive spoke to Gavin Wilkinson, then the Thorns general manager, Wilkinson told him Riley was “put in a bad position by the player” and that Wilkinson “would hire him in a heartbeat.” Reached by phone, Wilkinson declined to comment.Riley speaking to the media after a Thorns practice in 2014.Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian, via Associated PressRiley coached six more seasons on the strength of that recommendation.In the year since the stories of Shim and Sinead Farrelly, a former Thorns player who said she was coerced into a sexual relationship with Riley, were made public, leading to his firing by the North Carolina Courage, immense scrutiny has been focused on the Thorns front office.Besides endorsing Riley, Wilkinson jokingly called a player a demeaning name and was critical of another’s sexuality, according to what players told investigators. Wilkinson denied both claims, but he was placed on administrative leave by the Thorns last October. Three months later he was reinstated.This summer The Oregonian reported on “an atmosphere of disrespect and intimidation toward women” at the Thorns cultivated by Mike Golub, the team president. Cindy Parlow Cone, the president of U.S. Soccer and a former national team player, told investigators that while she was coaching the Thorns in 2013, Golub asked her, “What’s on your bucket list besides sleeping with me?”When Cone informed Paulson, the Thorns owner, about the incident months later, he told Cone that he wished she had told him about it when it occurred. According to Paulson, Golub is currently undergoing “remediation” and was not allowed to speak to investigators for the report. Golub did not respond to messages seeking comment.Both Golub and Wilkinson were “relieved of their duties” by the Thorns on Wednesday. The responses by Paulson and the Thorns to investigations into abuse are also under the microscope. Last year Paulson pledged transparency and to cooperate with any and all investigations. But according to the Yates report, he and the team did anything but that.“The Portland Thorns interfered with our access to relevant witnesses and raised specious legal arguments in an attempt to impede our use of relevant documents,” the report said.There could be more revelations to come, as a joint investigation into abuse by the N.W.S.L. and its players’ association is expected to be completed this year. The Thorns could win their third championship later this month, but some players, at least, would not see it simply as another success by the sport’s best-run team.“The jerseys that we’re wearing — it’s hard to be happy in them,” said Dunn on Wednesday. “It’s hard to find joy in wearing it.”Andrew Das More

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    Portland Thorns Owner Steps Aside as U.S. Soccer Stars Call for Change

    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.Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Portland Thorns, said he would step aside from his duties while the National Women’s Soccer League and its players’ union investigate widespread claims of abuse.Troy Wayrynen/USA TODAY Sports via ReutersSauerbrunn 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.” More

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    Abuse in Women’s Soccer Left Players With Nowhere To Turn

    A report on dysfunction in women’s soccer showed that abuse of players in the National Women’s Soccer League was “an open secret.” Players had nowhere to turn.The New York Times is investigating abuses in soccer. Share your experiences with us in the form at the end of this article.The women’s professional soccer players felt as if they were caught in a vise.They could speak up and tell the leaders of the National Women’s Soccer League about coaches who abused their authority and even coerced players into sex — and get ignored.Or silently endure abuse so as not to damage a nascent league and harm the fight for equality on the pitch and beyond.There seemed to be no way out.Players would raise concerns, but the teams, the league and the United States Soccer Federation would either minimize them, blame players for trying to harm the league, or ignore the stories altogether.In 2015, a player decided she needed to tell her story of abuse at the hands of one of the most prominent coaches in the game. But she found the prospect so frightening — and potentially damaging to her career — that it took her six years to come forward. “I just wanted to not rock the boat,” she told investigators.Her approach was “Just do what they expected me to do so I could continue” playing, she said.That quote distills a dynamic at the heart of a lengthy, stomach-churning report produced Monday by Sally Q. Yates, the former deputy U.S. attorney general hired to investigate claims of misconduct and abuse of N.W.S.L. players. Yates found a troubling history of abuse in the sport, from youth leagues to the professional ranks. The voices of powerful female athletes were either cast aside or diminished. Too often they felt they had nowhere to turn. Coaches controlled careers and held nearly unfettered sway.One of those accused coaches, Paul Riley, was so highly thought of that he’d once been a candidate to lead the U.S. women’s national team.In nearly 300 pages, the report details behavior to which we are in danger of becoming inured, given the number of similar stories emerging in sports. The specifics should sicken anyone who cares about human rights, the struggle for women’s equality and the place sports should have in a healthy society.For example, the report notes that Riley’s controlling and sexually aggressive behavior was considered by many to be an “open secret” in the league. Riley did not respond to calls asking for comment when the report was released.Paul Riley on the field during a match between the Portland Thorns and North Carolina Courage. His mistreatment of players was “an open secret,” according to an investigative report.Adam Lapierre/The Oregonian, via Associated Press“Witnesses from each part of the professional landscape — players, a coach, an owner, an assistant general manager — recalled hearing stories about his ‘relationships’ with specific players, or just generally that Riley ‘sleeps with his players,’” the report said.Yet little was done.Of course many players kept quiet. It is hard to go against authority and power when you are just trying to survive and keep playing the game you love.This whole ugly story is about power.Who has it, and who does not. Who wields it with wisdom. Who can’t seem to help using it to dehumanize, belittle, abuse, cross every boundary of decency.It’s about the awful treatment female athletes — even some of the best in the world — must endure as they push for viability and respect.A single sentence from early in the report gives a startling summary and sets an ominous tone for all that is to come:“Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches, and victims.”You need read only a few pages to realize what the N.W.S.L. has been for years: a league with a culture that left players with almost no power. Stuck at the bottom, desperate to earn a living wage and advance their sport, many were easily preyed upon and exploited.The N.W.S.L. became a perfect hunting ground for abusers.As Yates tells it, the league began in the shadow of a gold medal performance by the United States women in the London Olympics of 2012. It was put together on a shoestring budget and started quickly to take advantage of a surge in the public interest.Safeguarding the athletes was never paramount. The league had no anti-harassment policy, anti-retaliation policy or anti-fraternization policy.Everyone knew what was at stake. The N.W.S.L.’s predecessor league had failed amid legal battles with a team owner who had reportedly bullied and threatened players, according to the report.As a society, we’ve done a terrible job supporting women’s sports, and the way the N.W.S.L. must scrape through to survive is the fruit of that neglect. Throughout its history, many players in the league have made roughly the same as frontline McDonald’s or Walmart workers — minimum salaries stood at $22,000 a year until a recent change increased the amount to $35,000. Players were left vulnerable in practically every way.Cue the coaches whose abuse reads like a horror show. Just one example: Christy Holly, formerly of Racing Louisville F.C.According to the report, Holly invited a player to his home to review game film. He ended up showing the player pornography and masturbating in front of her. On another occasion, the report says, he lured her to his home again on the pretext of watching game footage. This time he groped the player’s genitals and breasts each time the film showed she made a mistake. Reached by a reporter, Holly declined to comment.Christy Holly, left, coaching during a Racing Louisville F.C. game against the Chicago Red Stars in 2021.Tim Nwachukwu/Getty ImagesCue the ownership and league administration that coddled such behavior. Riley was eventually fired for his habit of coercing players into sex, according to the report. Yet the Thorns failed to disclose to the league or the public exactly why he was terminated.And when the Western New York Flash subsequently hired Riley, the report says, the Thorns owner Merritt Paulson congratulated the Flash’s president. “I have a lot of affection for him,” Paulson said of Riley, the report notes.One of the most prominent team owners speaking warmly about a coach like Paul Riley is obscene. Paulson and other senior leaders of the team on Tuesday removed themselves from team operations while the league and the players union investigate.What a horrific mess. We can only hope the league will live up to its promises to reform. Hiring a new commissioner appears to be helping. Calling for and publishing the Yates report is a good first step in the league’s self-examination.Still, as recently as the spring of 2021, according to the report, the league received four complaints about Riley. The report states that it largely ignored the complaints, and indeed, that then-Commissioner Lisa Baird was “actively trying to keep Riley from resigning over his anger about the postseason schedule.”The N.W.S.L lost its moral compass and protected those who held all the power. It must start living up to its professed values and treating its talented athletes like they matter. Right now, until real change happens, they don’t.The Times has reported extensively about abuse in sports and now wants to hear stories from current or former soccer players, at any level, who endured verbal, emotional or physical abuse at the hands of a coach or sports administrator. We won’t publish any part of your submission without contacting you first. If you prefer to share your story anonymously, please visit our confidential tips page.Were you a soccer player, or the parent or guardian of a soccer player, who was abused by a coach? Share your story. More

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    Takeaways From the Report on Abuse in Women’s Soccer

    The report focused on three coaches who have been accused of abuse and criticized the inaction of leaders at U.S. Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League.A report published Monday detailed “systemic” verbal abuse and sexual misconduct by coaches at the highest levels of women’s soccer in the United States, and found that leaders in the United States Soccer Federation, the National Women’s Soccer League and throughout American soccer had failed to act over the years on reports from players.The report was commissioned by U.S. Soccer, which asked Sally Q. Yates, a former U.S. deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to lead an investigation after news media reports documented accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against N.W.S.L. coaches.The report focuses on three coaches — Christy Holly, Paul Riley and Rory Dames — highlighting a history of sexual misconduct allegations against them and executives’ failure to investigate and act on the accusations. It also warned that girls face abuse in youth soccer.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday, and Holly declined to comment. Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Here are six takeaways from the report:Christy HollyHolly was fired as the coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year, during the team’s inaugural season, with minimal public explanation from the team. While accusations against Riley and Dames had been detailed in news media reports, the accusations against Holly were not publicly known.Christy Holly, left, was coach of Racing Louisville F.C.Getty ImagesThe report found that Holly’s misconduct while coaching Louisville included sexual contact, inappropriate text messages, abuse of power and retaliation. In one instance, Holly invited a player to his home to watch game film but instead masturbated in front of her and showed her pornography. While watching game film with the player on a separate occasion, Holly groped the player’s breasts and genitals whenever the film showed she had made a mistake.Holly also sent the player nude pictures of himself and asked her to send sexual pictures of herself to him, according to the report. The player said that she felt “guilted” and “forced” to send photos. The player told investigators that “Holly constantly reminded her to ‘loosen up,’ telling her that having ‘fun’ with him would improve her performance on the field.”Paul RileyAnother narrative in the report centers on Paul Riley, who was fired from the North Carolina Courage last year. The report found that Riley had “leveraged his position” to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships.“Paul Riley’s abuse was prolonged and wide-ranging,” the report said. “It spanned multiple leagues, teams and players. It included emotional misconduct, abuse of power and sexual misconduct.”Paul Riley was coach of the North Carolina Courage.Getty ImagesOne player said Riley made sexual advances toward her on several occasions. In one instance, the player said, Riley asked her to watch game film in his hotel room. When the player arrived at his room, she said, Riley answered the door wearing only underwear and told her to get on the bed. The player said she left once she realized that there was no game film on the television.“I just didn’t feel safe,” the player said. “I didn’t enjoy playing. It was a bad situation.”Rory DamesThe report also details accusations against Rory Dames, who resigned from the Chicago Red Stars last year and was also coach of the Chicago Eclipse Select youth soccer team. It found that he created a “sexualized team environment” at the youth club that “crossed the line to sexual relationships in multiple cases, though those relationships may have begun after the age of consent.” It also said that he verbally abused his players and that he joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Rory Dames was coach of the Chicago Red Stars.Getty ImagesOne player who played for Dames on the Eclipse team said that on one occasion, Dames offered her a ride home from practice and asked her questions about sex. The player said that Dames “wouldn’t take me home until I answered the questions.”The report also said that it was not uncommon for Dames to spend time alone with girls from youth teams without another adult present, including in their childhood bedrooms.Lack of oversightThe report also detailed how allegations of abuse or misconduct were often not fully investigated. When they were, the accused coaches later had opportunities to coach elsewhere. The report found that several investigations across the league “failed to successfully root out misconduct.”After the 2015 N.W.S.L. season, one player reported Riley’s sexual misconduct to the Portland Thorns, where he was then coaching, and the league. The Thorns conducted an investigation that lasted one week, and Riley was promptly terminated from the team. But the Thorns did not inform their players, other teams or the public about the reason for Riley’s termination. Riley was later hired by another women’s league team.The report said that several players tried to raise concerns about Dames over the years, including in 2014, 2015 and 2018. A report by the United States Women’s National Team Players Association in 2018 prompted Lydia Wahlke, U.S. Soccer’s chief legal officer, to hire outside counsel to investigate Dames. By October 2018, the investigation had found that Dames created “a cycle of emotional abuse and manipulation” at the Chicago Red Stars. But Wahlke did not share the findings with the Red Stars or the N.W.S.L.One player said she had realized that reporting Dames’s conduct “was a lost cause.”Youth soccerThe investigation did not directly examine youth soccer in the United States, but the report found several instances of verbal and sexual abuse of players.“The culture of tolerating verbal abuse of players goes beyond the N.W.S.L.,” the report said. “Players also told us that their experiences of verbal abuse and blurred relationships with coaches in youth soccer impacted their ability to discern what was out of bounds in the N.W.S.L.”One example cited in the report details an anonymous complaint that Riley had created an “unsafe environment” in his F.C. Fury Development Academy girls’ program and that a coach in the program had “inappropriately touched a minor player.” The person making the complaint said that Riley had not reported the incident and expressed “fear of reprisal from Riley for speaking out,” adding that Riley is “known to be vindictive to anyone who crossed him.”RecommendationsAmong its recommendations, the report said that teams should be required to disclose coaches’ misconduct to their leagues to ensure that the coaches cannot move freely from one team to another, and that the N.W.S.L. should be required to meaningfully vet its coaches and investigate allegations of misconduct.The report also recommended that the N.W.S.L. conduct an annual training for players and coaches on issues of misconduct and harassment, and that teams designate an individual responsible for player safety.The report also advised U.S. Soccer to examine whether it should institute other measures in youth soccer to protect young players. More

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    Report Details ‘Systemic’ Abuse of Players in Women’s Soccer

    A yearlong investigation found U.S. Soccer executives, N.W.S.L. owners and coaches at all levels of American soccer had turned a blind eye toward years of reports of abuse from players.One coach called in a player to review game film and showed her pornography instead. Another was notorious at the highest levels of women’s soccer for alternately berating his players and then quizzing them about their sex lives.A third coach coerced multiple players into sexual relationships, behavior that one top team found so disturbing that it fired him. But when he was hired by a rival team only a few months later, the original club, which had documented his behavior in an internal investigation, said nothing. Instead, it publicly wished him well in his new post.Those details and others fill a highly anticipated investigative report into abuse in women’s soccer that found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the game’s top tier, the National Women’s Soccer League, and issued warnings that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.The report was published Monday, a year after players outraged by what they saw as a culture of abuse in their sport demanded changes by refusing to take the field. It found that leaders of the N.W.S.L. and the United States Soccer Federation — the governing body of the sport in America — as well as owners, executives and coaches at all levels failed to act on years of voluminous and persistent reports of abuse by coaches.All were more concerned about being sued by coaches or about the teetering finances of women’s professional soccer than player welfare, according to the report, creating a system in which abusive and predatory coaches were able to move freely from team to team at the top levels of women’s soccer.“Our investigation has revealed a league in which abuse and misconduct — verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct — had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches and victims,” Sally Q. Yates, the lead investigator, wrote in the report’s executive summary. “Abuse in the N.W.S.L. is rooted in a deeper culture in women’s soccer, beginning in youth leagues, that normalizes verbally abusive coaching and blurs boundaries between coaches and players.”Read the Report on Abuse in Women’s SoccerAn investigative report commissioned by the United States Soccer Federation found sexual misconduct, verbal abuse and emotional abuse by coaches in the National Women’s Soccer League. It also issued warning signs that girls face abuse in youth soccer as well.Read Document 319 pagesLast year, U.S. Soccer commissioned Yates, a former deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to look into the sport after reports in The Athletic and The Washington Post detailed accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against coaches in the women’s league. After the news media reports, and after games were postponed as furious players protested publicly, league executives resigned and were fired. Within weeks, half of the 10-team league’s coaches had been linked to allegations of abuse, and some of the world’s top players had recounted their own stories of mistreatment.Cindy Parlow Cone, the U.S. Soccer president and a former member of the national team, called the findings “devastating and infuriating.” Cone said there are “systemic failures within soccer that must be corrected,” and that the federation would immediately implement a number of the report’s recommendations.A National Women’s Soccer League game between Gotham F.C. and the Washington Spirit last October.Monique Jaques for The New York TimesThe report made a lengthy list of recommendations that it said should be adopted by U.S. Soccer, and in some cases the women’s league, including making a public list of individuals suspended or barred by U.S. Soccer, meaningfully vetting coaches when licensing them, requiring investigations into accusations of abuse, making clear policies and rules around acceptable behavior and conduct, and hiring player safety officers, among other requirements.The report also raises the question of whether some team owners should be disciplined or forced to sell their teams, as it recommended the league “determine whether disciplinary action is appropriate for any of these owners or team executives.”Even with so much of the worst abuse publicly known, the Yates report is stunning in how meticulously it details how many powerful soccer officials were told about abuse and how little they did to investigate or stop it. Among those whose inaction is detailed are a former U.S. Soccer president; the organization’s former chief executive and women’s national team coach; and the leadership of the Portland Thorns, one of the league’s most popular and best-supported teams.“Teams, the league and the federation not only repeatedly failed to respond appropriately when confronted with player reports and evidence of abuse, they also failed to institute basic measures to prevent and address it,” Yates wrote. She added that “abusive coaches moved from team to team, laundered by press releases thanking them for their service,” while those with knowledge of their misconduct stayed silent.In a statement, the women’s league said in the report, and an investigation it is undertaking with the players’ union, “will be critical to informing and implementing systemic reform and ensuring that the N.W.S.L. is a league where players are supported, on and off the pitch.” The players’ union said in a statement that players who had spoken to investigators “have shown profound courage and bravery, and we stand with them.”The national team players association released a statement saying it was “dismayed” that some clubs and U.S. Soccer staff “impeded the investigation,” and urged U.S. Soccer to implement the report’s recommendations. National team players largely did not respond publicly to the report, as they were on a plane to London for a match against England as the report was released.The report said the sport does little to train athletes and coaches about harassment, retaliation and fraternization. It noted that “overwhelming” numbers of players, coaches and U.S. Soccer staff members remarked that “women players are conditioned to accept and respond to abusive coaching behaviors as youth players.”From left, Rory Dames, Christy Holly and Paul Riley.Getty ImagesWhile the report details complaints made about several coaches, it focuses its narrative on three: Paul Riley, Rory Dames and Christy Holly. The accusations against Riley, who last coached the North Carolina Courage, and Dames, who coached the Chicago Red Stars, have been well documented in news media reports. The accusations against Holly, who was abruptly dismissed as coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year with little explanation, have not been aired publicly before.Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Holly declined to comment.Holly sexually coerced a player, according to the report, by inviting her to his home for what he said was a session to watch game film. Instead, he showed the player pornography and masturbated in front of her. Another time, according to the report, after calling in the player again under the pretense of watching game film, Holly groped the player’s genitals and breasts each time the film showed she made a mistake.While coaching in the women’s league years earlier, the report also found, Holly drew complaints of verbal abuse and mistreatment and had a relationship with a player “that caused a toxic team environment.” Yet little vetting of his past occurred as he moved from job to job.The report found that Riley “leveraged his position” as a coach to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships while working previously in a different women’s soccer league, and it said that investigators received “credible reports of sexual misconduct with other players” that were not detailed in the final report.Dames, a longtime youth soccer coach, fostered a “sexualized team environment” that included speaking to youth players about their sex lives, according to the report. That environment “crossed the line to sexual relationships” in multiple cases, which the report says “may have begun after the age of consent.” Dames also screamed at and belittled players, and joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Portland Thorns fans lit a smoke bomb last November as part of a protest of the sexual misconduct scandal in the league.Steve Dykes/Getty ImagesIn the cases of all three coaches, the report found, the women’s league and U.S. Soccer officials, as well as individual team owners and executives, were repeatedly made aware of complaints of inappropriate behavior but largely did nothing to address them or prevent them from occurring elsewhere.Sexual misconduct allegations were brought against Riley each year from 2015 to 2021, for example, and an anonymous player survey in 2014 also identified Riley, then coaching the Portland Thorns, as verbally abusive and sexist. The survey results were seen by U.S. Soccer and league officials, and feedback was distributed to the Thorns owner Merritt Paulson.In 2015, after the Thorns conducted an investigation, Riley was terminated. But the team said publicly that it had chosen not to extend his contract, and Riley was not disciplined. When he was hired by another team months later, no one from the league or the federation — which at the time effectively ran and bankrolled the league — provided his new team with any of the complaints or information used to substantiate his termination by the Thorns.Players also complained about Dames for years, beginning in 2014, when they told Sunil Gulati, then the U.S. Soccer president, and Jill Ellis, then the women’s national team head coach, that Dames had created a hostile work environment with the Chicago Red Stars, according to the report. Dames was also called abusive by his players in anonymous surveys, and in 2018 he was investigated after another prominent player complained. Yet while a U.S. Soccer investigation into that case substantiated many of the complaints, the report was not distributed throughout the organization or to the league or the Red Stars, and Dames was not disciplined.Jeff Plush at a news conference in 2017.Craig Barritt/Getty Images for LifetimeIn addition to detailing the behavior of several prominent coaches and the inaction of others, the report also took note of individuals and organizations who were not forthcoming or who actively tried to stymie the investigation — even as some publicly said they were cooperating.Jeff Plush, who was the commissioner of the women’s league from 2015 and 2017 and is now the head of U.S.A. Curling, did not respond to the investigators, the report said. Dan Flynn, the retired U.S. Soccer chief executive, responded only to written questions and would not sit for an interview.The Thorns, meanwhile, “interfered with our access to relevant witnesses and raised specious legal arguments” to impede the investigation, according to the report. Racing Louisville F.C. declined to provide documents about Holly’s tenure, and told investigators that current and former employees could not speak about him because of nondisclosure and non-disparagement agreements the team had signed with Holly when he was fired.The Chicago Red Stars also delayed production of documents for months.Rectifying the problems identified in the report will be difficult. Soccer in the United States is run by a number of organizations — federations, professional leagues, youth clubs and state soccer organizations — that have overlapping authority, a tangled web that the report suggested may have played a role in reports of abusive behavior going unheeded.And the revelations may not be over. A separate joint investigation by the women’s league and its players association has not been completed, and the report also did not investigate youth soccer, even as it made clear that the investigators believe abuse is prevalent there as well.“The roots of abuse in women’s soccer run deep and will not be eliminated through reform in the N.W.S.L. alone,” investigators wrote. More

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    6 Takeaways From the Report on Sexual Misconduct in Women’s Soccer

    The report focused on three coaches who have been accused of abuse and the lack of action by leaders at U.S. Soccer and the National Women’s Soccer League.A report published Monday detailed “systemic” verbal abuse and sexual misconduct by coaches at the highest levels of women’s soccer in the United States, and found that leaders in the United States Soccer Federation, the National Women’s Soccer League and throughout American soccer had failed to act over the years on reports from players.The report was commissioned by U.S. Soccer, which asked Sally Q. Yates, a former U.S. deputy attorney general, and the law firm King & Spalding to lead an investigation after news media reports documented accusations of sexual and verbal abuse against N.W.S.L. coaches.The report focuses on three coaches — Christy Holly, Paul Riley and Rory Dames — highlighting a history of sexual misconduct allegations against them and executives’ failure to investigate and act on the accusations. It also warned that girls face abuse in youth soccer.Riley and Dames did not respond to requests for comment Monday, and Holly declined to comment. Holly spoke with investigators and denied some, but not all, of the claims made against him. Through his lawyer, Dames declined to speak with investigators. Riley agreed to provide written responses but never did.Here are six takeaways from the report:Christy HollyHolly was fired as the coach of Racing Louisville F.C. last year, during the team’s inaugural season, with minimal public explanation from the team. While accusations against Riley and Dames had been detailed in news media reports, the accusations against Holly were not publicly known.Christy Holly, left, was coach of Racing Louisville F.C.Getty ImagesThe report found that Holly’s misconduct while coaching Louisville included sexual contact, inappropriate text messages, abuse of power and retaliation. In one instance, Holly invited a player to his home to watch game film but instead masturbated in front of her and showed her pornography. While watching game film with the player on a separate occasion, Holly groped the player’s breasts and genitals whenever the film showed she had made a mistake.Holly also sent the player nude pictures of himself and asked her to send sexual pictures of herself to him, according to the report. The player said that she felt “guilted” and “forced” to send photos. The player told investigators that “Holly constantly reminded her to ‘loosen up,’ telling her that having ‘fun’ with him would improve her performance on the field.”Paul RileyAnother narrative in the report centers on Paul Riley, who was fired from the North Carolina Courage last year. The report found that Riley had “leveraged his position” to coerce at least three players into sexual relationships.“Paul Riley’s abuse was prolonged and wide-ranging,” the report said. “It spanned multiple leagues, teams and players. It included emotional misconduct, abuse of power and sexual misconduct.”Paul Riley was coach of the North Carolina Courage.Getty ImagesOne player said Riley made sexual advances toward her on several occasions. In one instance, the player said, Riley asked her to watch game film in his hotel room. When the player arrived at his room, she said, Riley answered the door wearing only underwear and told her to get on the bed. The player said she left once she realized that there was no game film on the television.“I just didn’t feel safe,” the player said. “I didn’t enjoy playing. It was a bad situation.”Rory DamesThe report also details accusations against Rory Dames, who resigned from the Chicago Red Stars last year and was also coach of the Chicago Eclipse Select youth soccer team. It found that he created a “sexualized team environment” at the youth club that “crossed the line to sexual relationships in multiple cases, though those relationships may have begun after the age of consent.” It also said that he verbally abused his players and that he joked about the age of consent for sexual activity.Rory Dames was coach of the Chicago Red Stars.Getty ImagesOne player who played for Dames on the Eclipse team said that on one occasion, Dames offered her a ride home from practice and asked her questions about sex. The player said that Dames “wouldn’t take me home until I answered the questions.”The report also said that it was not uncommon for Dames to spend time alone with girls from youth teams without another adult present, including in their childhood bedrooms.Lack of oversightThe report also detailed how allegations of abuse or misconduct were often not fully investigated. When they were, the accused coaches later had opportunities to coach elsewhere. The report found that several investigations across the league “failed to successfully root out misconduct.”After the 2015 N.W.S.L. season, one player reported Riley’s sexual misconduct to the Portland Thorns, where he was then coaching, and the league. The Thorns conducted an investigation that lasted one week, and Riley was promptly terminated from the team. But the Thorns did not inform their players, other teams or the public about the reason for Riley’s termination. Riley was later hired by another women’s league team.The report said that several players tried to raise concerns about Dames over the years, including in 2014, 2015 and 2018. A report by the United States Women’s National Team Players Association in 2018 prompted Lydia Wahlke, U.S. Soccer’s chief legal officer, to hire outside counsel to investigate Dames. By October 2018, the investigation had found that Dames created “a cycle of emotional abuse and manipulation” at the Chicago Red Stars. But Wahlke did not share the findings with the Red Stars or the N.W.S.L.One player said she had realized that reporting Dames’s conduct “was a lost cause.”Youth soccerThe investigation did not directly examine youth soccer in the United States, but the report found several instances of verbal and sexual abuse of players.“The culture of tolerating verbal abuse of players goes beyond the N.W.S.L.,” the report said. “Players also told us that their experiences of verbal abuse and blurred relationships with coaches in youth soccer impacted their ability to discern what was out of bounds in the N.W.S.L.”One example cited in the report details an anonymous complaint that Riley had created an “unsafe environment” in his F.C. Fury Development Academy girls’ program and that a coach in the program had “inappropriately touched a minor player.” The person making the complaint said that Riley had not reported the incident and expressed “fear of reprisal from Riley for speaking out,” adding that Riley is “known to be vindictive to anyone who crossed him.”RecommendationsAmong its recommendations, the report said that teams should be required to disclose coaches’ misconduct to their leagues to ensure that the coaches cannot move freely from one team to another, and that the N.W.S.L. should be required to meaningfully vet its coaches and investigate allegations of misconduct.The report also recommended that the N.W.S.L. conduct an annual training for players and coaches on issues of misconduct and harassment, and that teams designate an individual responsible for player safety.The report also advised U.S. Soccer to examine whether it should institute other measures in youth soccer to protect young players. More

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    Deadly Soccer Clash in Indonesia Puts Police Tactics, and Impunity, in Spotlight

    Experts say officers are almost never held accountable for their actions. And in a huge police budget, billions are spent on tear gas, batons and other devices deployed during protests.For years, tens of thousands of Indonesians have faced off against a police force that many say is corrupt, uses brute force to suppress crowds and is accountable to no one.In the capital, Jakarta, the police shot and killed 10 people while protesters were campaigning against President Joko Widodo’s re-election in 2019. The next year, officers beat hundreds of people across 15 provinces with batons as they protested a new law. And in the northern city of Ternate in April, officers fired tear gas at a crowd of peaceful student demonstrators, sickening three toddlers.The world caught a glimpse of those tactics on Saturday, when riot officers in the city of Malang beat soccer fans with sticks and shields and, without warning, sprayed tear gas at tens of thousands of spectators crowded in a stadium. The police force’s methods set off a stampede that culminated in the deaths of 125 people — one of the worst disasters in the history of the sport.Experts said the tragedy laid bare the systemic problems confronting the police, many of whom are poorly trained in crowd control and highly militarized. In nearly all instances, analysts say, they have never had to answer for missteps.“To me, this is absolutely a function of the failure of police reform in Indonesia,” said Jacqui Baker, a political economist at Murdoch University in Perth in Australia, who studies policing in Indonesia.For more than two decades, rights activists and the government’s ombudsman have conducted inquiries into the actions of the Indonesian police. These reports, according to Ms. Baker, have often made their way to the chief of police, but to little or no effect.Riot police beat soccer fans with sticks and shields, and fired tear gas at tens of thousands of spectators at Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang, Indonesia, on Saturday.H Prabowo/EPA, via Shutterstock“Why do we continue to be faced with impunity?” she said. “Because there is zero political interest in really bringing about a professional police force.”After the violence on Saturday, many Indonesians took to Twitter to call for the national police chief to be fired. And, as of Monday night, close to 16,000 people had signed a petition calling for the police to stop using tear gas. The government moved quickly to quell public anger, suspending the police chief in Malang and pledging to announce the names of the suspects responsible for the tragedy within days.The police in Indonesia were never this formidable or this violent. During the three-decade rule of the dictator Suharto, it was the military that was viewed as all powerful. But after his fall in 1998, as part of a series of reforms, the government assigned responsibility for internal security to the police, giving the force enormous power.In many instances, police officers have the final say on whether a case should be prosecuted. Accepting bribes is common, analysts say. And any accusation of police misconduct is left entirely to top officials to investigate. Most of the time, rights groups say, they do not.Wirya Adiwena, deputy director of Amnesty International Indonesia, said there “almost never has been” any trial over the excessive use of police force except in 2019, when two students were killed on Sulawesi Island during protests.Protesters in Jakarta demanded a government investigation into the killing of two university students in southeast Sulawesi in 2019.Adek Berry/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesOpinion polls have shown a sharp decline in public trust toward the police — dropping to 54.2 percent in August 2022 from 71.6 percent in April that year after reports emerged that a two-star police general had killed his subordinate and instructed other officers to cover it up.The lack of police accountability has coincided with a ballooning budget. This year, the national police budget stands at $7.2 trillion, more than double the figure in 2013. By share, its budget is the third-largest among all government ministries in the country, exceeding the amount given to the education and health ministries.Much of that money has been spent on tear gas, batons and gas masks. Andri Prasetiyo, a finance and policy researcher who has analyzed years of government procurement data, said that in the past decade, the national police have spent about $217.3 million to procure helmets, shields, tactical vehicles and other implements deployed during protests.The purchase of tear gas spiked in 2017 to $21.7 million, according to Mr. Andri, after Jakarta was rocked by a series of protests involving tens of thousands of Indonesians who demanded that the city’s first Chinese Christian governor in decades be jailed for blasphemy.Experts on policing say that 2019 was a turning point in the police force’s use of tear gas. In May of that year, officers clashed with demonstrators as protests over the presidential election devolved into violence, resulting in deaths, some of them involving teenagers.Rivanlee Anandar, the deputy coordinator of the rights watchdog the Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence, says that there has been no “follow-up and investigation” into the deaths. He has visited the families of five victims and says that an autopsy had been performed in only one case, and that family has not learned the results.“We don’t know who the perpetrators are until today,” he said.The national police force budget has swelled to $7.2 trillion. Much of which has been spent on tactical gear such as tear gas, batons and gas masks.Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesThe prevalent use of tear gas by the police has transcended geography. When faced with mass demonstrations, officers from Jakarta to Kalimantan have consistently reached for the chemical to subdue protesters. The budget for tear gas munitions, which had dropped after the 2017 allocation, soared again in 2020 to $14.8 million, a sixfold increase from the previous year, Mr. Andri said.That year, the police deployed tear gas in crowds protesting against coronavirus measures. Later in 2020, they used it again to disperse throngs demonstrating against a sweeping new law that slashed protections for workers and the environment. Amnesty International Indonesia said it had documented at least 411 victims of excessive police force in 15 provinces during those protests.“It’s become more of a pattern now,” said Sana Jaffrey, the director of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta.Ms. Jaffrey says that the police budget over the years has been allocated to quell many recent demonstrations, but that “the nuts and bolts and the daily grass-roots work of the police has been ignored.”In January this year, the national police spent almost $3.3 million to buy batons specifically for officers in the East Java Province, the location of Malang, according to Mr. Andri.In anticipation of violence at soccer matches, many police officers turn up decked out in helmets, vests and shields, and armed with batons. Some fan clubs have commanders who engage in physical training to prepare for fights. Several teams arrive at matches in armored personnel carriers.Still, experts said they were shocked at the police force’s chaotic response at the stadium on Saturday, given that soccer violence is common in the country — with frequent brawls between fans of rival clubs — and that the police should have a playbook for any unrest.Lighting candles during a vigil on Sunday for the victims outside the soccer stadium in Malang, Indonesia.Ulet Ifansasti/Getty ImagesIn 2018, riot police fired tear gas in the Kanjuruhan Stadium in Malang to quell violence during a match with the home team, Arema. A 16-year-old boy died days later. There were no reports of whether there was an investigation into his death or how the police had handled the riots.Now, the authorities plan to investigate what went wrong on Saturday, when thousands of supporters gathered in Malang to see Arema host Persebaya Surabaya. After Arema suffered a surprising defeat, 3-2, some fans ran onto the field. The police then unleashed a wave of violence and fired tear gas, witnesses said.The chief security minister said that officers suspected of wrongful violence at the stadium would face criminal charges.On Sunday, the police chief of East Java, Inspector General Nico Afinta, said that the police had taken actions that were in accordance with their procedures. He said that tear gas had been deployed “because there was anarchy,” and that fans “were about to attack the officers and had damaged the cars.”In a sign that the Malang Police Department had tried to anticipate the violence, it asked organizers to move the match to 3:30 p.m. “for security considerations,” according to a letter that was circulated online and whose contents were confirmed by the East Java Province police with The New York Times. An earlier time slot, the thinking went, would make the event more family-friendly. But the police request was rejected. The organizers could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday.Many rights activists say that to improve law enforcement tactics, they have consistently made these recommendations to the police: Do not immediately reach for the tear gas; do not swing batons at people on first instinct; understand how to control crowds; de-escalate conflict.“The standard operating procedure should not be that the police jumps from zero to 100,” said Mr. Wirya, of Amnesty International Indonesia.Dera Menra Sijabat More