Editor’s Note: This story is included in The Athletic’s Best of 2021. View the full list.
Another one.
It’s already happened four times during the 2021 NWSL season — a head coach being removed from his role due to allegations of misconduct. Two days after the championship game, as the league hoped to shift its attention to a busy offseason of trades and drafts and other normal activity, it was once again forced to confront its own systemic failures.
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This time, the failures were centered on one of the teams in Saturday’s final game, the Chicago Red Stars, and a long pattern of what players viewed as “verbal and emotional abuse” from head coach Rory Dames, as reported by the Washington Post’s Molly Hensley-Clancy on Monday.
There are now multiple pending investigations hanging over the league, including a joint effort led by the league and the NWSL Players Association (law firm Covington & Burling was retained to lead the independent investigation) and U.S. Soccer’s, run by former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. It may be months until those investigations conclude, and perhaps even longer before we know the full extent of what they uncover.
The past few days can be perhaps best described as a horrifying but all-too-familiar case of NWSL whiplash. On Saturday, a tense final ended with one of the league’s most exciting teams, with one of its most exciting young players, lifting the championship trophy. On Monday, Hensley-Clancey’s reporting provided yet another reality check in a season full of them.
Taken together, the state of the league following the 2021 NWSL season can be summed up by a phrase seen on banners across Providence Park and other NWSL stadiums this season.
“You knew.”
How many people in power watched this sort of behavior happen and did nothing? How many turned a blind eye to players trying to alert them to misconduct, whether it was through official channels (to the extent that any existed) or quiet cries for help?
It’s clear now that NWSL players have been trying the best they could. Christen Press first attempted to report Dames in 2014. Mana Shim tried to tell the Portland Thorns about Paul Riley in 2015. Both continued on as coaches through 2021. Culpability lies with people in power at every level, from teams to the league’s front office to U.S. Soccer.
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Speaking to media before the NWSL Championship on Friday, interim CEO Marla Messing said, “The most valuable thing that came out of the disclosures from earlier in the year was just an overall sensitivity to what is no longer and should have never been acceptable among our clubs.”
Why did it take the reckoning of 2021 to get us to this point?
This goes beyond failure. As Sinead Farrelly said earlier this year, she only learned the term “institutional betrayal” because of what happened with her own career after years of alleged sexual coercion from Riley, and her attempt to report it. The league has been staggering through this year, but as new allegations have been continually revealed, it’s only taken each step forward when pushed to do so under a public spotlight. The players — those who spoke up, like Shim, Farrelly, Press and Kaiya McCullough, the NWSL Players’ Association, Alex Morgan organizing for an anti-harassment policy — have been the ones to carry the burden of leading.
Since its inception in 2012, the NWSL has prized sustainability above all else — and for an understandable reason, considering the previous two attempts at women’s professional soccer in the United States quickly ended in failure. The organization, until recently managed by U.S. Soccer and led by its board of governors, adjusted on the financial side and kept costs down, creating an environment where the players’ employment itself felt precarious and entirely dependent on those in power above them. It didn’t need to look far to see how toxic that can get. It seems zero lessons were learned from WPS’ conflict with MagicJack, despite it being a major factor for the league’s demise. The true extent of what players went through during that 2011 season was only made public via an ESPN investigative report, like much of what’s happened this year in the NWSL. Thorough external reporting should not serve as a professional league’s HR department.
The true cost of sustainability has been paid by the players themselves: physically, mentally, emotionally. The NWSL isn’t unsustainable as a business, but it has created an environment that has consistently tolerated and enabled harm.
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On Friday, when Messing took to the podium at Lynn Family Stadium the day before the NWSL Championship — a site the league was forced to change to at the request of the players — her opening remarks highlighted the league’s handful of wins in 2021: sponsorships, a renewed partnership with Nike, gains in ticket sales and social media engagement.
The championship, she said, would “be the culmination of a year that has showcased incredibly exciting and competitive women’s soccer on the field, alongside institutional failures off the field. Rest assured, we have taken the latter issues very seriously, and along with the NWSLPA are making progress toward addressing them on a daily basis.”
How is anyone supposed to “rest assured” when these stories keep being published? When it’s not even clear if the league grasps its pivotal role in these events, and in creating the culture of silence that allowed them to occur?
Asked about transparency, Messing pointed to her burgeoning relationship with the NWSLPA and its executive director, Meghann Burke, along with their collaboration on the joint investigation. But transparency has to go much further than just the players after this season.
“We want to build trust among all our constituencies,” she said. “The only way to build trust is to give them the information, good and bad.”
People in power across women’s soccer are far too precious about getting credit for the good, but clearly aren’t precious enough when it comes to preventing the bad — or worse, obscuring their own role in the institutional betrayal. Former commissioner Lisa Baird’s statement expressing “shock and disgust” over The Athletic’s reporting in September was quickly undone by Morgan sharing a screenshot of Baird’s own email to Farrelly. Messing glossing over the pending investigations and promised reforms reinforces that status quo: highlight the good stuff, pretend the bad stuff isn’t even happening.
The Chicago Red Stars provided yet another perfect example of this dynamic.
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“The Chicago Red Stars are outraged to hear about another instance of player abuse and are devastated for the players involved,” a statement from the team read, tweeted on Sept. 30 — the day The Athletic’s report on Farrelly’s and Mana Shim’s experience in the league was published. “The players of the NWSL deserve a secure and professional environment. We remain dedicated to fostering a culture of safety, inclusivity, and transparency. The club will continue to ensure our players feel empowered to use their voices without fear of retribution, and will seek to lead greater change for the league and its incredible players.”
On Sunday, the team released a statement at 11:54 p.m. CT accepting the resignation of Dames. In a quote credited to nobody – not a spokesperson, not any of the team’s owners, no actual person – the Red Stars said, “Under Rory’s leadership we have been a remarkably consistent and excellent club on the field. We continually evaluate our team and front office environment, and given the dynamic change underway in the league, it is time to begin the next chapter of the Red Stars with a search for new leadership of the team.”
Citing sources, Hensley-Clancy reported on Monday that Red Stars majority owner Arnim Whisler was aware of the U.S. Soccer investigation into Dames in 2018, and had been told of at least some of the players’ allegations at the time, but did nothing.
“There was much to celebrate in 2021,” Messing said on Friday. “As we look toward 2022, it is our hope to build on the success of this year, to continue to correct our failures, and to establish a multi-year runway for collaboration, investment and growth among our owners, partners and players as we establish the NWSL as the greatest women’s league in the world.
On Monday, these celebrations feel like a betrayal of their own. Progress in this league has been a long struggle, and there are many good people within each of these organizations working to do what’s right and best for the players. That effort has been undone, time and time again, by the drive for profit, the willingness to cut corners, to forgo basic protections — all spearheaded by the executives who want us to believe that they can lead the league out of the mess they have created.
For years the NWSL has claimed the mantle of the best women’s soccer league in the world. It’s time for all those who have wielded power to take off that self-appointed crown for a while and take a long look in the mirror. Because you knew, and you let it happen. Again and again and again and again.
(Photo: Amanda Loman / ISI Photos)
