Defender Becky Sauerbrunn has been a member of the United States women’s national team through 208 games spread over 14 years. She has started for two World Cup champions and helped close out the gold medal victory at the 2012 Olympics. It’s a resume filled with magnificence, and yet through nearly that entire time, there has been the exasperation of dealing with the fight for equal pay and now, most painfully, the abuse scandal in the NWSL.
On Monday, U.S. Soccer released the results of a year-long investigation by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates into player abuse within women’s professional soccer. Among the teams cited in the report were the Portland Thorns, where Sauerbrunn has played since 2020, and by the end of her Tuesday session with the media, she all but called for the team to be sold by owner Merritt Paulson.
The Thorns had received allegations of sexual harassment against then-coach Paul Riley in 2015 and fired him after investigating. But the Thorns did not reveal this information to the public, saying only that his contract would not be renewed. Riley wound up coaching the Western New York Flash and North Carolina Courage until 2021, when a report in The Athletic cited allegations of sexual coercion and misconduct, and he was fired.
As the Zoom call with Sauerbrunn and fellow USWNT defender Alana Cook was occurring, Paulson issued a statement explaining he was stepping away from all decisions related to the Thorns — along with president of soccer Gavin Wilkinson and president of business Mike Golub — until a joint NWSL/NWSL Players Association investigation is complete.
When asked specifically if those three individuals no longer should be part of the Thorns and the league, Sauerbrunn told reporters, “It includes everyone that has continued to fail the players time and time again, who didn’t take concerns seriously, who didn’t pass on information correctly, who have not participated in investigations. All of them.”
The Timbers and Thorns announced on Oct. 5, one day after Sauerbrunn’s comments, that Wilkinson and Golub were relieved of their duties with both clubs.
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Paulson apologized last fall on behalf of the Thorns for declining to make clear the reasons for dismissing Riley a half-dozen years earlier and at the time pledged to cooperate with investigations by the federation and the league.
According to Yates’ report, however, the Thorns “refused to produce relevant documents for months, making specious arguments that the materials were protected by the attorney client and the attorney work product privileges, causing months of delay and impeding interviews of key witnesses.” The report also said the Thorns organization refused to make Golub available for an interview and that a former human resources director agreed to talk but withdrew consent after consultation with Thorns counsel.
The report by Yates said Wilkinson placed blame on a player for “putting Riley in a bad position” after the player accused Riley of sexual misconduct. It also included an account by Cindy Parlow Cone that when coaching the Thorns in 2013, she was asked by Golub, “What’s on your bucket list besides sleeping with me?” Parlow Cone now is president of the U.S. Soccer Federation.
“I think that whatever the joint investigation — they’re going to come out with their own recommendations and their own potential disciplines — I think a lot of trust has been broken …” Sauerbrunn said. “I don’t know what’s going to change. I don’t know what’s going to come out in this other report [joint NWSL/NWSL PA investigation] and make any sort of difference.
“And so, at the end of the day, if people continue to fail the players and they don’t comply to anything that gets asked of them or gets implemented because of these reports, then they need to be gone-gone.”
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Sauerbrunn was speaking Oct. 4 on a call that was previously scheduled to discuss the USWNT’s celebrated friendly on Friday, Oct. 7 at sold-out Wembley Stadium against European champions England. Instead, Sauerbrunn and Cook were compelled to spend most their time addressing the Yates investigation’s revelations. The majority of players on the U.S. roster play professionally in the NWSL.
“The players are not doing well,” Sauerbrunn said of the U.S. camp. “We are horrified and heartbroken and frustrated and exhausted and really, really angry. We are angry that it took a third-party investigation. We are angry that it took an article in The Athletic and The Washington Post and numerous others. We’re angry that it took over 200 people sharing their trauma to get to this point right now.
“For so long, this has always fallen on the players to demand change. And that is because for so long the people in authority, decision-making positions, have repeatedly failed to protect us. And they have failed to hold themselves and each other accountable. Who are you actually protecting? And what values are you upholding?”
Cook said being a woman and a minority has impacted her journey. “These hostile conditions are nothing new,” she told The Sporting News. “It’s things that we have been dealing with for the entirety of our careers. We have gotten to this point because we have learned how to deal with the difficulties surrounding what we do and the difficulties in our lives and being able to still perform.”
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The players were followed in the media session by coach Vlatko Andonovski, a former NWSL coach who said it was “obviously a very difficult night. It was a difficult day. It was a difficult day [on Monday]. Lots of different emotions. Personally, I’m saddened by the report and everything we saw … I have emotional sickness, am disgusted by the things we saw in there.”
Andonovski praised the bravery of the players who spoke out against the abuse. “Soccer is a game we all love and should be a safe space, no matter what level this game is at. Now that this report is out and these recommendations are given, it’s our job to do our parts to make sure no one has to deal with this ever, at any level, in our sport or any sport.”
He said it is not easy for the USWNT to cope with these revelations and so the staff are allowing the players to manage as they see fit. That includes choosing not to attend a meeting, or training, or even to play in the game against England, if that’s deemed necessary.
“Some players, some staff members, need someone that they need to talk to. Some people need time. Some people need space. Some people need to process all of it,” Andonovski said. “And some need distraction. That is what the England game, and preparing to play it, can provide.
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Sauerbrunn said these issues, which have lingered and flared through nearly her entire career, have impacted the “passion for the game” for players who were abused.
“For me, I’m done allowing that to happen. I love the game of soccer. I want to be passionate. I want to play.”
When asked by The Sporting News how she can get back to that passion, though, when the England game is just three days away, Sauerbrunn said part of what makes it possible is experience.
“Unfortunately, a lot of us have been navigating these things for a very long time. In a way, you find a way to deal with it and maybe not compartmentalize, but you use practice and you use training as that time to just think about the training and the practice and being with your teammates, and those small moments that do give you joy,” she said. “And just hoping to replicate that the next day, and the next.”
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