Becky Sauerbrunn did not mince words when speaking to the media one day after the release of the Yates report.
“The players are not doing well,” the Portland Thorns and U.S. national team stalwart said on Tuesday. “We are horrified and heartbroken and frustrated and exhausted and really, really angry.”
The report by former U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates detailed “systemic” verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct within the NWSL, as well as numerous authority figures who did not do enough to root out abusive coaches.
Among those figures were the owner and several executives within Sauerbrunn’s own team, the Portland Thorns. The Yates report details, among other ugly revelations, that only months after the Thorns fired their coach Paul Riley following an investigation into alleged sexual harassment, they recommended him for a new job.
The uproar over those revelations led Thorns owner Merritt Paulson, Timbers President of Soccer/GM Gavin Wilkinson (who doesn’t have a role with the Thorns anymore) and Thorns President of Business Mike Golub to temporarily step away from the Thorns on Tuesday.
That likely won’t satisfy many and it appears Sauerbrunn is among that group.
“It’s my opinion that every owner and executive and U.S. Soccer official who has repeatedly failed the players and failed to protect the players, who have hidden behind legalities and have not participated fully in these investigations should be gone,” Sauerbrunn said.
Sauerbrunn on Thorns ownership
Sauerbrunn was later asked to clarify whether she included Thorns ownership and executives in her demand for accountability.
“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,” she said.
“If people continue to fail the players, and they don’t comply with anything that gets asked of them or gets implemented because of these reports, then they need to be gone gone.”
Thorns ownership has been under fire for some time, with Sauerbrunn’s USWNT teammate Alex Morgan calling the team out last month after a report saying Paulson tried to prevent Riley from getting the USWNT head coaching job in 2019 in order to conceal the reason behind his departure from the Thorns.
Sauerbrunn concluded with her most pointed criticism of her own club’s leadership, calling their actions “abhorrent.”
“All I know is that the team that I play with and the staff, the technical staff and the medical staff — those people are good people,” the defender said.
“But the things that have happened above them in the front office as owners are abhorrent and it cannot continue. The fact that people were abused because things weren’t done well and right is inexcusable.”
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