Dames resigns from Chicago: 🚨 Chicago Red Stars head coach Rory Dames resigns after 11 years with the club 🚨 https://t.co/v01VsjTvrs— The Equalizer (@EqualizerSoccer) November 22, 2021 Chicago fans don't even get a chance to take a breath after the final. And so, let the NWSL off-season chaos begin.
Probably wants to move on after 11 years. Also reaching the finals only to lose it again. Guess it was too much.
Yes, although he would have deserved to win at least one trophy with Chicago, in all these years. Not necessarily this season's one, but he would have deserved a title.
EQZ full article here: https://equalizersoccer.com/2021/11/22/rory-dames-out-head-coach-chicago-red-stars-nwsl/ Biggest thing in here for me is that Dames' exit was already known within the organization well before the final, so it's not the loss that catalyzed this - which is why I kinda believe that this is a natural desire of his to step down and not something that was "nudged" from the FO. Must really just be fatigue after over a decade as head coach of the Red Stars, and even longer as a WoSo head coach in general. Still, this feels like a "WAIT WTF???" moment to me... I've said before that he's one of the best in the league. Also, this leaves Clarkson as the *only* head coach OUT OF TEN who started this season that will also start in the same position next season. NWSL coaching buzzsaw was livid this year!
.....holy shit, ever wilder reality along this line of thought: Casey Stoney is now the 2nd longest tenured coach in the NWSL. She hasn’t coached a single NWSL game and her team won’t start playing until April.— Anthony DiCicco (@DiCiccoMethod) November 22, 2021 I kinda wish Dames waited until after the mid-December drafts to step down. Gonna be hard for the Red Stars to navigate those without a head coach! Though assistant coach Julianne Sitch has been with the team for ages and could probably do a good interim job.
The WTF part that's getting play on social media is the way it's been announced...press release at midnight and no quote from Whisler. But, I think the rumors around that are just because we're all a bit traumatized from the coaching drama of this past season. I saw someone talking about getting t-shirts made saying, "I survived the 2021 NWSL season," and I think I'd buy one of those.
Seems another shoe is dropping... Another NWSL blockbuster from @PostSports investigative reporter @mollyhc: Complaints about Red Stars coach Rory Dames were ignored, players say https://t.co/8Uo9wPBN4Y— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) November 22, 2021
And now we know why: Another NWSL blockbuster from @PostSports investigative reporter @mollyhc: Complaints about Red Stars coach Rory Dames were ignored, players say https://t.co/8Uo9wPBN4Y— Steven Goff (@SoccerInsider) November 22, 2021 Another NWSL coach has been accused of player abuse and an organization accused of ignoring years of complaints about the coach by the players.
....ugh, I guess shouldn't be surprised considering the year we've had. I've gotten just so tired of hearing the sh!t the players have been through, and I can't imagine how tired the players are of having to work under bad conditions.
Lauren Green @Lauren_Green08 13m USSF knew about Rory Dames in 2014, NWSL/Portland knew about Paul Riley in 2015, the Flash knew about Paul Riley in 2016, USSF knew about Dames again in 2018, Washington knew about Richie Burke before his hiring in late 2018. People knew.
Just read this. I am appalled. I knew Rory was a yeller and a screamer. You can hear him all over the field. But I never knew how far it all went. I was touting him for COY this year for getting the Red Stars to the Finals again. I am embarrassed and very sad. As a long time Season Ticket Holder, as a fan of this team. I feel so bad for the players who had to go though with this. Players I supported with my money and my lungs. I am now worried for my team and it's players. What are the repercussions? What happens to Arnim, the owner who I always felt was in it for the right reasons? What happens to the franchise? What happens to the players past and present? You guys who have been my friends here on BS know how invested in the Chicago Red Stars since 2008 when Peter Wilt first mention about forming this team and giving it the name "Red Stars", I have been. Season Ticket Holder every year. Emotionally drained after each game, after each season. Just a sad, sad day.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I wouldn't be worried. I think the league, the teams and the players are all going to come out of this year of upheavals stronger than they were before.
Some aspects of the WaPo story sound almost mundane for competitive, high-level soccer. Coaches yell a lot. Maybe they shouldn't, but this has been going on for a long time. Other parts of the story, however, point to inexcusable behavior on Dames' part. This snippet, in particular, makes me more angry than I can express in words: "But there is one story that Dames’s players return to when asked about the kind of coach he was to them. It was a day at training when he zeroed in on one player, as he often did. This time, he felt she had not been communicating clearly. When she failed to talk enough, he turned to the player, who was the mother of a young child, and screamed, according to multiple players who witnessed the incident. If you can’t even talk on the field, he said, what kind of mother are you? The player, stunned, started to cry. (The player could not be reached for comment.) It was not the fact that Dames yelled, players said, but how he did it: in a way that was personal and public and, by extension, for players, painful and humiliating." That absolutely crosses a line, and he should been dismissed the same day.
It would seem that a player’s best course of action when reporting abuse by coaches is to go directly to the press rather than reporting it to the club, league, or federation FOs… Going to the press seems to be the only way to get action…
I think the "coaches can be tough" aspect is a bit simplistic... There's a difference between being generally critical and yelling out of frustration and being hypercritical, derogatory/personal, and persistent. You can be blunt without being harmful; "tough love" still requires love and respect. A good coach, even if they're tough, should be respected instead of feared. Beyond that, I think the notion of "you're a professional, expect some abuse" is... not something we should find acceptable in general? Abuse is never okay, whether it's from coaches, from fans, from the media... wherever. Doesn't matter if it's the way things have been, because it's still abuse.
I agree with this. I guess I was just trying to say that even within this old-school mentality of “coaches are supposed to be tough,” the abuse he was leveling was clearly unacceptable. But you’re right, the old mentality of normalized abuse is itself disdainful and wrong. It doesn’t matter that it was once the norm.
D@mn it. I was hoping for the best, but that is not the year that we've had. Agreed. General yelling is one thing. Abuse is another. A good line could be what referees determine to use whether or not to give a yellow or red card for something a player is yelling (dissent vs abuse): Is it personal, provocative, public? If yes, it's abuse and a red card, not just a yellow. It seems coaches need to be held to the same standard, especially on training days when there are less eyes.
Rather, the player should report abuse up the chain of command and allow a reasonable time, under the circumstances, for action. If the chain of command does not take appropriate action, the player should go public. The one problem I have with Morgan in the Portland situation and Press in Chicago is that they knew but waited years, until the press got hold of it, to go public. I believe it is the responsibility to every single one of us to see that this kind of stuff stops and I cannot wash my hands of it by saying it was reported up to the next level. I wonder if Julie Ertz’s absence from the scene relates to any of this.
Apparently Arnim Whisler, who's normally very active on Twitter, locked his account a week or two ago. Most certainly knew what was coming.
....and file this under "vastly disappointing but entirely unsurprising": the funniest part is it’s been 2+ months and I’ve only been contacted once for an investigation (with safe sport), and nothing happened. I genuinely don’t have faith in these actors to be accountable or held accountable anymore.— Kai (@hiyakaiya) November 23, 2021
I think he locked it about two months ago when the Paul Riley stuff started coming out. It hasn't been open for a while now.
Old school reporters, as opposed to so-called "gotcha journalists", give both sides of an exposé or investigative report an opportunity to give their side of the story. I have no idea when the Post reporter reached out to the Red Stars and Dames for their take on these allegations, but it wouldn't have been Friday night, it would've been long enough ago for them to respond. So, yeah, they knew this story was bubbling up. And even if it wasn't the post but some "gotcha" journalist, after the events of this season, they had to know this was eventually coming. The league is still young enough that someone knows where all the dead bodies (fig.) are buried. I would not be surprised if we slowly hear more horror stories about some coaches that have come and gone over the last ten years whose behavior was over the line, but they got out and went away. We obviously still cleaning up what's been in place.
Sorry, I am not on Twitter and I don't follow US soccer enough to understand who this player is from just this Tweet and her "Kai" handle.