Yates Report Highlights Abuse in NWSL

I'm honestly now wondering if a 2024 Red Stars season depends on a successful sale of the club. It's already a low-budget organization, now hit with the biggest fine of all, and they're also lost their entire core of longtime players to free agency. Dead club walking?

 

I see that two ex-coaches, Binstiti of OL and Pauw Houston, have been disciplined for "weight shaming." What is "weight shaming?" Can you tell a player that she is overweight? Or not?
And if, in fact, she is?

 

The Yates report had more details. I am not sure on Pauw as I did not read up on her. But Binstiti was pretty gross about it. He would hide food from them, and make crass comments. He had a previous history of it that Horan had exposed at PSG, but Reign hired him anyway (only to fire him shortly thereafter for exactly what she had exposed).

This is Horan talking:

“One of my team-mates, after an away game she had chocolate and the coach heard it in the front [of the team bus] and came back and basically took the chocolate from her, and said, ‘You can’t have this around Lindsey,’ because I was sitting a seat ahead of her.”

Horan said that even after she got her weight down significantly, that was not enough for her coach.

“[Benstiti] then announced to the team: ‘Lindsey, your weight is not good enough, your body fat is still too high, You’re not going to play in a game until that’s done.’

“[He] said that to the team. I started shaking I was so mad.”

 

NWSL has released rulings on former Spirit coach Kris Ward as well as two more Thorns staff from new findings:

﹒Kris Ward, former Washington head coach, was found to have conducted "overly aggressive behavior and harassment through negative racial stereotyping towards a player in violation of league policy."

He was fired in August 2022.

— The Equalizer (@EqualizerSoccer) January 24, 2023

Obviously we already kinda knew about Ward, but - what the heck has been going on in Portland??? Seems rotten to the core there

 

NWSL investigation leads to discipline for Thorns and Spirit personnel.@NWSL
(@afb825)#NWSL #futbol #soccer
https://t.co/YweNedZZdP

— Beyond Women’s Sports (@BeyondWSports) January 27, 2023

 

Bumping this thread with a loooong account of V.Pauw's time in Houston and since:
https://theathletic.com/4645562/2023/07/03/vera-pauw-ireland-nwsl/
Comments from 8 former Dash players+staff about Pauw's actions and culture, with a few positive statements from the NTs she's managed (and two former Dash players) plus one or two rare negative comments from NTs. Multiple Dash players said thy hadn't been a part of the joint investigation.

 

The Athletic Article is behind a pay wall.
Based on the evidence that she left Aoife Mannion, Megan Campbell, and Leanne Kiernan, her best striker, off the World Cup roster due to injury and/or fitness status, Pauw is clearly a 'hard-line' coach. In the U.S. such important players would be on the squad, regardless of fitness (e.g. Ertz and Lavelle).
If Pauw was so biased against players with weight to height ratio greater than most professional players, why did she put Amber Barrett on the world cup squad?

 

According to ESPN's Jeff Carlisle, Former Houston Dash coach James Clarkson has filed a lawsuit for defamation over the allegations made against him during the NWSL investigation into coaching abuse which culminated in the Yates Report and a joint investigative effort by the league and the players union, NWSLPA. In 2022, this joint investigative unit concluded that Clarkson engaged in "ongoing emotional misconduct and insensitivity."

The league and the players association are named in the lawsuit as well as lawyers who compiled the report.

I remember at the time some fans wondering if the charges against Clarkson were too vague and too weakly corroborated compared to the conduct of the other coaches that the report focused on (such as Paul Riley, Christy Holley, Rory Dames).

BREAKING: Lawyers for former Houston Dash manager James Clarkson have filed a defamation suit against the #NWSL,#NWSLPA & others, claiming he was defamed when a joint investigation into player abuse stated he engaged in abuse & emotional misconduct. (1/x)https://t.co/ryGE6VEYur

— Jeff Carlisle (@JeffreyCarlisle) December 9, 2023

 

Relevo reporting that Barcelona manager Jonatan Giráldez has an "astronomical offer" to join a club in the NWSL. Can probably guess which team that is. https://t.co/j65lxmTKhG

— Claire Watkins (@ScoutRipley) December 14, 2023

There's reports that Barcelona's coach Jonathan Giráldez is leaving and received an "astronomical offer" to coach in the NWSL. Leaving aside the question how far a coach could replicate Barcelona's tactical style and success with the player pool available in the US (Amoros taking Gotham to the title last season may, or may not, provide some hope on that count), it could break down the barriers to European coaches I worried might be erected in the wake of the coaching scandal epitomized by the Yates Report and the departure of so many coaches, including Clarkson who just filed a lawsuit against the league

I think it's only natural to wonder whether coaches abroad would find it too risky to coach in the NWSL in the current post-Yates environment — unless they already had close ties to the US (as Emma Hayes, the new national team coach, had). An "astronomical offer" however might be enough to tempt someone from Europe and in so doing break the ice and make it safe to dip one's toes in American waters again, so to speak.

On the other hand it's not a done deal yet — and Jeff Kassouf (reporting for ESPN) said the Bay Area team considered some European coaches before settling on Albertin Montoya, a long-time fixture in American youth soccer. So perhaps there's still a 1-in3 chance that Giráldez doesn't come to the US and by the start of the season we might be fretting about getting fresh ideas from overseas. Or at least I will since no journalist seems the least bit concerned — just as warning bells didn't go off for them as VLATKO slowly, inexorably, led the US to disaster at the World Cup