Days after announcing that head coach Kris Ward had been fired, the Washington Spirit provided some—but not complete—clarity over that decision.
The Spirit initially announced the move via a one-sentence tweet on Monday, and on Thursday, team president Mark Krikorian addressed reporters, providing at least to some degree a rationale for removing a coach that helped them win their first-ever NWSL title last year.
According to Krikorian, assistant coach Angela Salem will be the team’s head coach for Saturday’s game against the Houston Dash, and that the club has “identified a potential interim coach, pending a background check.” Krikorian added that the club wants to possibly add an assistant to the coaching staff as well, as former assistant Lee Nguyen came out of retirement earlier in August, leaving Salem and goalkeeper coach Paul Crichton as the only coaches left on the team’s payroll.
Krikorian, who had many years of success at Florida State before joining the Spirit as club president earlier this year, said he is “absolutely not” going to return to coaching, ruling himself out as an interim or permanent option. “It wasn’t that long ago, being on the sidelines, but that was my previous life.”
Citing the club’s disappointing 1W-9D-6L record—Washington’s lone regular season win came in their season opener—and an “incident” at training last week, Krikorian said the club were spurred to act from multiple angles.
“The expectations are to be as competitive as can be, and try and win every game… Up to this point, we haven’t done a great job with that,” Krikorian told reporters in a press conference. “Last Friday, we had a little bit of an incident here at the training ground.”
Krikorian said he wasn’t present at the training session, but that the club notified the NWSL and the NWSL Players Association in the aftermath. That’s in contrast to the last time the Spirit had to fire a coach, which saw the club initially say that Richie Burke was being given a front office position due to a health issue only for extensive allegations of abusive conduct to emerge in the weeks that followed.
Krikorian said that after the Spirit reported the issue, they held multiple meetings with players before concluding that “a change was necessary.” The Athletic reported that the incident in question was a verbal confrontation during a training session, but when asked whether that was a recurring sort of issue or if it had simply been a one-off, Krikorian declined to answer.
Krikorian cited the club’s struggle to get the results they had expected more than once in his remarks, and said that “a combination of factors” caused the club to make the change rather than simply the unspecified training ground incident.
Further details weren’t forthcoming at this point, with Krikorian saying that if there are next steps or an investigation, it will fall to the league and the Players Association.
“It’s complex,” said Krikorian when asked about the club’s nearly three-day radio silence on the matter. “Making sure that everyone is included, and making sure that everyone’s rights are protected, and that we’re following the proper course of action, and things unfortunately don’t happen quickly enough for (media), or all of us, or for our fans, to be able to be as transparent as we’d all like to (be).”
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