Megan Rapinoe has said that former OL Reign head Farid Benstiti fat-shamed players before he was asked to resign last season.
Benstiti resigned as head coach in July without mention of any incident, but months later, OL Reign CEO Bill Predmore admitted that he had been asked to resign after an incident at training.
According to the Washington Post, Benstiti made “inappropriate comments to players regarding their fitness and nutrition.”
In an appearance on NPR this week, Rapinoe said the former Reign head coach had indeed made comments to players about their weight and diet.
“Our coach got fired last year, from the Reign,” she said. “He made some — it was basically like a fat-shaming comment. He was talking about — he’s going to, like, take people’s food away. And I’m like, oh my god, grow up. You just got yourself fired; you’re so stupid.
“But, like, just little stuff like that, where if you’re making $25,000 and you have no autonomy over your rights, you have — you’re not a free agent. You’re barely scraping by. You just came out of college. Like, you’re not going to say anything. You’re just not. It’s too difficult to put someone in that position.”
Horan’s similar experience with Benstiti
Benstiti has a documented history of similar behavior, which was notably shared by Rapinoe’s USWNT teammate Lindsey Horan last year.
Horan played under Benstiti at PSG and said the body-shaming she experienced at the French club made her nearly quit the sport entirely.
“In France, that was the number one time that I felt like I wanted to quit soccer. I was not enjoying myself and there was just so much wrong being done, that I lost the love for the game,” Horan said on the Butterfly Road podcast, which is hosted by North Carolina Courage defender Cari Roccaro.
“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.”
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