Soccer

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Soccer

      From Equal Pay to Ending Abuse, Soccer’s Fight for Fairness Spreads

      by

      The success of the U.S. women’s soccer team on the field and at the negotiating table has been a model for players elsewhere. In other countries, those battles are heating up.LONDON — There is always something to shoulder, the world’s best women’s soccer players know. Second-class facilities. Failed leadership. The persistent fight for equal opportunities. The glacial battle for equal pay.Just last week, a comprehensive report revealing systemic abuse across American women’s soccer left players devastated, but not surprised.“It’s really sad to say, but in a way, I think we’re used to having to deal with one thing or another,” United States forward Megan Rapinoe said of the report’s findings before her team played England on Friday. “It seems to bring us closer.”It is that sense of collective struggle that has repeatedly galvanized the United States women’s team in its battles with U.S. Soccer. It’s also what has made them leaders to colleagues and rivals around the world, players and teams with their own struggles, their own priorities, their own goals on and off the field.England’s players, for example, said this week that they would use their next match to raise awareness of a campaign for girls to have equal access to soccer at school. In Spain, the team that will take the field against the United States on Tuesday will be without 15 key players who have been exiled for demanding that their federation engage with concerns about the team’s coach.And in Canada, the women’s team — the biggest regional rival to the U.S. and a leading contender to win next summer’s Women’s World Cup — has drawn a line in the sand with its federation, saying it will not accept any new contract that does not guarantee equal pay between men and women.“A lot of it has to do with respect and being seen and valued for what we’re providing to our federations,” the United States captain Becky Sauerbrunn said in a recent interview about her team’s equal pay campaign. “We’re doing the same work that the men are doing. We’re playing on the same pitch. We’re traveling and training and playing games, usually the same amount, if not more. Why would they get paid more than us?”In Washington last month, Sauerbrunn sat at a table alongside several teammates after a match and signed the equal pay deal. It was, for her, a moment worth savoring.“What’s so frustrating for us sometimes,” she said of that moment of triumph and celebration, “is that we feel like this should have been given so long ago.”It is an issue that a growing number of federations are continuing to work to address, either through proactive agreements or after pressure from their players. Since 2017, when Norway’s federation became the first to announce an equal pay agreement between its national teams, a host of nations have followed suit, including federations in New Zealand, Brazil, Australia, England, Ireland and — just this summer — Spain and the Netherlands.Still, nearly all of those deals shade the definition of equal pay by offering men’s and women’s players equal match bonuses but only equivalent percentages of the vastly different prize money on offer from FIFA at competitions like the World Cup. The prize pool for the men’s tournament in Qatar next month will be $440 million — multiples more than what will be available to women at their next championship.The new U.S. Soccer agreement is different: The American teams will be paid the same, dollar for dollar, for competing for their country because they have agreed to pool their World Cup prize money. Over the lifetime of the deal, that is expected to shift millions of dollars that would have gone to the men in previous years to the members of the women’s team.Players in other nations still have far to go. But they have been taking notes.In June, the Canadian women rebelled against their federation — just over a year before the next World Cup — over the cause of equal pay. “The women’s national team does not view equal FIFA percentages as between our respective teams as equal pay,” said its players in an open letter in which the team indicated its ambition to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. women’s team.The team, the Canadian players said, “will not accept an agreement that does not guarantee equal pay.”That spirit of equal reward, and equal opportunity, is spreading.“The younger generation now will believe that they all should be having the same opportunities, and they all should be having the same chances,” said Vivianne Miedema, the Arsenal and Netherlands star, who worked with her federation and alongside her Dutch teammates to achieve their equal pay deal.“It’s not just a money thing,” Miedema added. “It’s a movement that’s been created. I just don’t really think women and men should be treated in a different way.”In Spain, a dispute involving a group of 15 national team players is about more day-to-day concerns. They have refused to play for their country until their federation addresses the methods and management of their coach, Jorge Vilda, whom some members of the team want removed.The Spanish federation responded by not only refusing to engage with the complaints but also exiling the 15 players who went public with their demands. Instead, the federation will field an understrength squad in Tuesday’s high-profile friendly against the United States, one of Spain’s most important opportunities to test itself against a World Cup rival before the tournament next summer.“If 15 of the best players in the world wanted to share feedback I’d respect them enough as people and players to take their concerns seriously,” Sauerbrunn wrote on Twitter.The Spain team that will face the United States on Tuesday will have a different look after more than a dozen players were dropped after raising concerns about the coach, Jorge Vilda, at top.Juanjo Martin/EPA, via ShutterstockRapinoe echoed that sense of solidarity, saying, “It’s uncomfortable to know the just general level of disrespect for women’s teams and women’s players around the world.”That is why, for Miedema and other top players, the fight isn’t only about pay. Resources are just as important, from the fields teams play on to equal access to equipment and medical personnel to the quality of coaching.“One of the most important things that we’ve been continuously fighting for over the last couple of years is that we’ve got the same facilities, we’ve got the same opportunities, starting at a young age,” Miedema said. “Because that’s how the level of women’s soccer will increase.”But alongside progress in the women’s game — record attendances, unprecedented television ratings, record salaries and rising transfer fees — the scathing inequalities players continue to face were being laid bare. The abuse scandal, documented in excruciating detail in a report by the former Justice Department official Sally Q. Yates last week, was just the latest example.Miedema, in an interview before the Yates report was published, suggested oversight was just as important as pay and other working conditions. But the issue of the huge gap in prize money was too big, and too widespread, she said, to be left to individual federations to resolve.“I think that’s something that needs to be led by FIFA and UEFA,” she said, a reference to European soccer’s governing body.Lise Klaveness, the president of Norway’s soccer federation, has committed her federation to that kind of top-down equality. But she also has urged UEFA and FIFA to make a similar commitment.“Soccer is the biggest sport in the world and in Norway,” said Klaveness, a former national team player. “We’re everywhere, in every schoolyard, everywhere. So, it’s very important for us to look at ourselves as something that meets all girls and all boys, and that you should feel the same value.”Sauerbrunn’s advice to other teams, including the Spanish side she and her teammates will face on Tuesday? Keep fighting. Keep asking. Keep trying.“When you’re negotiating, sometimes you’re going to have to be creative, you’re going to have to persevere because you’re going to hear ‘no’ a lot,” she said. “We had to keep making ground slowly.“But you’re never going to get anywhere if you don’t ask. And I would definitely say that the collective voice is so much stronger than just a few individuals.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      England Beats U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, Ending a Win Streak

      by

      The U.S. and England can be expected to enter next year’s World Cup as favorite and challenger. Friday’s friendly was a chance to establish which team would occupy which role.LONDON — For now, at least, Vlatko Andonovski remains unbowed. Just a few minutes after watching his United States team defeated, 2-1, for the first time in more than a year, he was happily casting his mind forward to next summer’s World Cup final.The best measure of his confidence was not his insistence that he would not mind running into England there — it was that his working assumption was that his side’s presence is not far off certain.He was not, though, the only one whose mind was wandering. The mind of Sarina Wiegman, the England coach, was doing it, too.“You do not win a World Cup in October,” she said. “It is not July yet. But it is really good to have this moment now, in our preparation for it. It is good to have a test against the United States, because they have won so many things for years and years. It was very good to see where we are. We showed to ourselves that we can do it.”Strictly speaking, of course, there was nothing riding on this meeting of the longstanding world champion and the recently crowned European champion at Wembley Stadium. There was no glittering prize for victory, no lasting pain for defeat.It was, instead, intended as a showpiece and a showcase: a chance for England, fresh from winning its maiden international honor, to enjoy a celebratory homecoming and an opportunity for the United States to stretch its legs on European soil. Though neither set of players would have wished it, it became a chance, too, to display solidarity in the aftermath of the Yates Report, which detailed systemic abuse of players in women’s soccer in the United States.Meaning, though, is established by consensus. And, deep down, both sides knew that the idea that this was a friendly, an exhibition, was a lie. It is the United States and England, after all, who have “stretched clear” of the pack, as Megan Rapinoe put it, and who stand as the two undisputed powerhouses of women’s soccer. It is the United States and England who can be expected to go into next year’s World Cup as favorite and challenger. Wembley was the chance to establish which team would occupy which role.It is too simplistic, though, to say that England’s victory establishes its primacy. That it is the more settled, the more cogent of the two at this stage — still 10 months out from the finals — is a fair assessment; that it is the beneficiary of a swelling momentum, built during its golden summer and nourished by overcoming the United States, the sport’s historical hegemon, is not in doubt.For considerable stretches of the game, England looked every inch the coming force: crisper, slicker, more inventive in possession than its visitor, more capable of controlling and varying the speed of the game, more ruthless on the counterattack, more purposeful in its press. It deserved its early lead, secured through Lauren Hemp, and it deserved to wrestle it back, too. Georgia Stanway atoned for gifting Sophia Smith an equalizer by converting a penalty soon after.Andonovski’s counterargument, though, would be no less compelling. Nobody would pretend this has been an easy week for any of his players, regardless of their professionalism, their determination to focus on the game or the old and flawed cliché that the game itself, the sport around which an entire rotten industry has been built, can provide solace and sanctuary and momentary escape. They have all been forced to confront others’ trauma and relive their own.Trinity Rodman had an exquisitely crafted goal ruled out after a video-assistant-referee check.Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated PressEven had they been able to focus as they would have wished — as they deserved to — they could reasonably point out that their squad was not at full strength. Alex Morgan, Mallory Pugh and Sam Mewis were among those absent. Andonovski, too, is still finessing the incorporation of a new generation of talent, led by the likes of Smith and Trinity Rodman. This team is a work in progress, and its construction is not scheduled to be finished until Sydney next year.And yet, despite all of that, it only lost to the European champion — the very best the rest of the world has to offer, on home turf and backed by a highly partisan crowd — by the finest of margins.Rodman had an exquisitely crafted goal ruled out for the sort of cruel, infinitesimal offside that is enough to turn anyone against the very concept of technology. Rapinoe was denied the chance to convert a late penalty, to extend a win streak that had grown to 13 games, by a rather more obvious intervention by the video assistant referee.More significantly still, Smith was the outstanding player on the field — other than, perhaps, the fearless Keira Walsh — a constant source of terror to England’s back line. Andonovski might have no objections to seeing England in the World Cup final next year; the English, you suspect, would rather not run into Smith again any time soon.That both Andonovski and Wiegman felt comfortable enough to bring up the World Cup — to dispense with the bromide that this was just a friendly, just an exhibition, almost as soon as the final whistle had gone — can be traced, perhaps, to the fact that both would have seen enough in this game to confirm their beliefs.England knows now that it can beat the United States, that it can meet the sport’s gold standard; the United States, in turn, can feel that at full strength things might have been very different. Both can make it mean what they want it to mean.And that consensus can hold, now, for a few more months, right up until they meet again, on a stage still grander than this one, when there will be something at stake, when the pretense can be safely abandoned, and when there are prizes for the victors and pain for the defeated. Wiegman is right, of course: The World Cup is not concluded in October. But both she and Andonovski, as their minds wandered, saw Wembley as the moment that it started. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Soccer

      The Yates Report Isn’t the End. It’s Just the Start.

      by

      Women’s soccer players tried to raise the alarm about abuse for years. When they say there’s more, people should listen.Somehow, at the end, Megan Rapinoe could still sound enthusiastic. She had spent the previous 20 minutes answering question after question about the “devastating” findings of the Yates Report, trying to explain how it feels to know that the sport to which you have devoted your life has permitted a culture of “systemic abuse” to fester, finding a way to put into words how painful it can be to read, in stark black and white, that which you have always known.Rapinoe had met each and every one of the questions, as she always does, with the habitual, measured candor that has become her hallmark. Not once did she intimate that she had said all she had to say. Not once did she try to change the subject, to guide the conversation onto ground less harrowing, less bleak. She was asked, again and again, to describe and to parse and to relive her trauma, and the trauma of so many of her colleagues and friends, and she did so, until there were no more questions left.Her anger — her tone pitched both to convey and control it — was clear, but so too was her fatigue. Rapinoe and her teammates have had to “shoulder a lot” over the years, as she put it. The struggle to free the sport, their sport, of both abusers and the individuals and the structures that have both harbored and nourished them is not their first battle. This team has fought for equal pay and for social justice, too. “We have a lot of experience,” Rapinoe said.At that point, for just a moment, she sounded tired. But then, almost as an afterthought, someone pointed out where she was, what was about to happen: Rapinoe was sitting inside London’s Wembley Stadium, preparing for a game on Friday night that will match the United States, the reigning world champion, against England, now officially ensconced as Europe’s premier team.Every single seat at the stadium was sold, snapped up almost as soon as they went on sale: 90,000 or so fans would be coming to watch a game that, to many, has the air of a sneak preview of next year’s World Cup final. And, in an instant, Rapinoe’s enthusiasm was clear. “I am so excited for this game,” she said. “This is a really special moment for our sport.”The U.S. captain, Becky Sauerbrunn, and several of her teammates spoke this week of the need to find joy in their sport anywhere they could. Friday’s game against England at Wembley is a start.Paul Childs/Action Images Via ReutersThe Yates Report is, in effect, more than 300 pages of tragedy: personal tragedies compounded by the tragedy of chronic institutional failure, each one of them part of a mosaic that has left an open wound, an aching scar in the heart of women’s soccer. Given some of the revelations, it would be glib in the extreme to highlight one aspect that is more upsetting, more harrowing than any other. Much of it, as Rapinoe said, is “hard to read.”But there is a particular, keening sorrow in knowing that, so often, it was the same enthusiasm that so animated Rapinoe — even as a veteran, even after all she has achieved and, most significantly, all that she has endured — that was so often weaponized by those in power to silence those trying to safeguard the game and to protect those damaging it.The teams of the N.W.S.L., the league itself and even U.S. Soccer, the Yates report found, “gave little thought or attention to basic player protections.” Instead, investigators concluded, “the focus was on keeping eight teams on the field to ensure the league’s survival.”Those reporting abuse, in other words, were either ignored or discouraged by leveraging their passion for soccer against them, while those committing it were indulged — ushered into new jobs with hearty farewells — because, it seems, of an unwillingness to rock the boat in case everyone ended up submerged. The players believed in their mission to grow women’s soccer as a sport; they had a responsibility not just to themselves, but to the sport, too. And that, too often, was used against them.The Yates Report, it is to be hoped, will explode that enforced omertà. “I think this was kind of the nail in the coffin,” as Rapinoe’s United States teammate, Crystal Dunn, put it this week.What she referred to as “accountability,” but might better be described as “overdue bloodletting,” has already begun: Merritt Paulson, the owner of the Portland Thorns, has stepped away from the team’s decision-making process. Arnim Whisler, the owner of the Chicago Red Stars, has been removed from that club’s board. Neither has, as yet, been forced to sell his team, but the writing is on the wall.“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 have not participated in these investigations, should be gone,” said Becky Sauerbrunn, the U.S. captain, earlier this week. Rapinoe went a little further. She did not bother with euphemism when she declared that, from this point on, neither Paulson nor Whisler fit to be involved in women’s soccer at all. She has reached the stage where she is prepared to name names.N.W.S.L. players and fans are demanding accountability, even from their own teams.via ReutersBut that does not mean either the report itself, or the handful of senior figures scorched by their sudden exposure to sunlight, represents a conclusion. Publication is not enough. The fall of Paulson and Whisler, if and when it comes, is not enough.Here, too, there is a tragedy: The “horrific” details of the Yates report are not, and should not be mistaken for, the sum total of the problem. The investigators themselves note that they received several credible accusations of sexual harassment that they could not corroborate sufficiently for inclusion. And the players themselves know there is more to find.“This is not just in the N.W.S.L,” said Lindsey Horan, the United States midfielder, now playing for the French team Lyon. “This is women’s soccer, this is women in general. We have these problems all over the world. I sit here and I’m like: It’s not done. This is all over the world. Being a player in Europe right now, I know that.”Rapinoe has the same sense. “This report has come out in our country,” she said. “But the reality is it could be any country in the world.”There is more to be done, they know. They are angry and they are disappointed and they are tired, too. “Emotionally exhausted,” Rapinoe said. But — in a sport full of athletes finding their voices — that is the thing about this team, in particular. No matter how tired they are, no matter how bleak it is, they have never lost their enthusiasm for the fight.Let’s Blue Sky ThisTodd Boehly has, it seems, started something. It is little more than a month since the Chelsea owner — unprompted and ill-advisedly — suggested that the Premier League might like to consider staging its own version of an all-star game, and the idea has already mutated into something even bigger, even more unwieldy, and even more likely to be derided on talk radio.Various unnamed Premier League executives have, according to The Times of London, floated the possibility of staging a series of showpiece games across the world between teams comprising the best players from the top flights of England, Italy, Spain and Germany — sorry, France, you don’t make the cut, apparently — in order to expand soccer’s appeal to “emerging markets.”There are several red flags here. The fact the executives are unnamed, for example. As a rule, if someone thinks they have a good idea, a real winner, they cannot wait to put their name to it. If, on the other hand, they are engaged in what might be described as a craven money grab, they tend to decide that they are “not authorized to speak on the matter.”So, too, the justification for the project. Does soccer really need to expand into emerging markets? What possible territory remains virgin to the great sports industrial complex? There are farmers in wild corners of Mongolia who will spend hours online screaming that Cristiano Ronaldo only scores penalties; seeing Sandro Tonali and Declan Rice in Shanghai will not add to their ardor for the sport.But putting that entirely understandable queasiness aside — and parking, just for a moment, the valid complaint that elite players do too much soccer-playing as it is — we must consider the unlikely possibility that this is, in fact, quite a good idea. Particularly, say, if these fixtures replaced preseason tours, and if the money they generated was weighted so that the smaller teams in each league got rather more of it.That does not mean it is not a craven money grab, of course. It is very obviously a craven money grab. If something is being suggested by a major soccer team, it goes without saying that it is because they think they have spotted an untapped revenue stream. But that does not mean it is necessarily devoid of merit.The Context of RecordsErling Haaland makes scoring look easy. It’s not.Lindsey Parnaby/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesErling Haaland’s first goal on Tuesday night took him past Edin Dzeko and Mario Gomez. His second, not quite half an hour later, lifted him above Rivaldo and Luis Suárez. The Manchester City striker has now scored as many times in the Champions League as Ryan Giggs did. In 15.17 percent of the time.The speed with which Haaland — at age 22 — is rising up the list of the competition’s all-time goal scorers is blistering. He needs six more to overtake not just Wayne Rooney and Kaka and Samuel Eto’o, but Gerd Müller. There is no reason to believe, at his current rate of progress, that he will not have done that by the end of this season’s group phase.A decent run in the knockout stage should see him break into the top 20. Given that he has now scored 19 goals in only 12 games since joining City, that may not be the limit of his ambitions. He is a young man going places extremely fast.As breathtaking and as stirring as his achievements are, it is necessary to place them within just a small piece of context. Over the last decade or so, as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have broken almost every record available to them, each landmark has been greeted as proof of their wondrous talent. That, of course, is only right. The same applies to Haaland.But it is also the case that all of them are products, to some extent, of their eras. Messi and Ronaldo were playing, at the peak of their careers, for teams that had far greater financial resources than the vast majority of teams they faced until the latter stages of the Champions League. The competition was far more unbalanced, far less equal, than it had been even 10 or 15 years earlier.The same, once again, applies to Haaland, both at Manchester City and — to some extent — in his last stop at Borussia Dortmund. He is playing, for the most part, against teams that are hopelessly overmatched, in a way that the likes of Filippo Inzaghi, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Raúl Gonzalez, all above him in the list, were not.That does not diminish Haaland’s talent. Nor does it devalue his goals, or discredit his achievements. But it is important to remember, in an era in which records seem to fall with dread frequency, that they do so because the game is set up now to make them more attainable than ever for the precious few to have them in their grasp.CorrespondenceA curious question to open this week, from Lloyd Mallison. Curious not because it is bad — it is not; it’s a good question — but curious because it’s strange what catches each of our eyes. “Do you have any insight into the rehabilitation of Saúl at Atlético Madrid?” Lloyd asked. “After his pretty limp time at Chelsea, I didn’t expect to see him back starting again so soon.”I have no particular insight, sadly, other than to suggest that it is a welcome reminder of this column’s motto: There is no such thing as a bad (professional) soccer player. There are only players in the wrong systems, or working with the wrong coaches, or in the wrong context. Chelsea was not right for Saúl. That doesn’t mean Saúl cannot be right somewhere else.We had a couple of emails on the travails of Juventus, too, which act as a neat couplet. Joseph Blanco sent in some perceptive thoughts on the dangers of what we have come to call “philosophy,” pointing out that the game is “turning a generation of players into robots.” He is, in that sense, what we might call an Allegrista.Massimiliano Allegri, calmly pondering the merits of philosophy vs. culture.Massimo Pinca/ReutersHe disagrees, though, that Massimiliano Allegri’s anti-philosophy approach can be equated to Juventus’s scatter-gun approach to team-building. “I don’t think it’s fair to say the struggles of the team are the same as the organization’s shortcomings,” he wrote.That dovetails neatly with this observation from Tory Amorello: “I couldn’t help but think about how it would feel if you exchanged the word philosophy for culture. I think the way that managers talk about philosophy is somewhat limited to announcing a defined style of play. Take that concept away from the field, and it’s called culture.”That, perhaps, sums up the bind Juventus finds itself in far more succinctly than I managed: It is not a failing of philosophy, but of broader culture. I shall take that, repeat it on various broadcast media and do my level best, Tory, not to present it as entirely my own work. More

    • 63 Shares149 Views

      in Soccer

      How Arsenal Found Its Voice

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 150 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

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

      by

      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

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Soccer

      Takeaways From the Report on Abuse in Women’s Soccer

      by

      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