Tag: #ProtectThePlayers

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Not Soccer Soccer Thorns

Takeaways: Thorns 0, Kansas City 0

Photo by Matthew Wolfe

The Thorns suffered an utterly disappointing scoreless tie against bottom-of-the-table Kansas City on Sunday afternoon. While the game could have been momentous for several reasons, including Meghan Klingenberg reaching 10,000 career NWSL minutes, and marking the first time that the Thorns played against AD Franch (who made several great saves), this game is one that is going to be quickly forgotten. 

In the 85th minute, it looked like the Thorns would eke out a win when Morgan Weaver was awarded a penalty and Christine Sinclair stepped up to the spot to take it. It unceremoniously went off the lower left post, even after AD dived to the left, keeping the score at 0–0. 

In the early second half, Kristen Hamilton scored a goal that was called back due to a foul on Becky Sauerbrunn, and it seemed that maybe this would be the spark of intensity that the Thorns so desperately needed. But again, nothing came of it. The Thorns remained flat and lifeless, looking as though they had little desire to play this game.

Despite being close to soccer-specific Children’s Mercy Park, Kansas City’s home games take place on a baseball field with an extremely narrow and poorly sod soccer field crammed into it (the team has announced it will move to Children’s Mercy Park next year, but the fact they ever played on this field sends a message). The Thorns, who normally thrive off a high press and the ability to get wide, were unable to create space between themselves, causing passes and crosses and shots to all go out of bounds to no one. Mark Parsons noted after the game that “the team wasn’t able to play the type of soccer that they wanted to play.”

That field—and a litany of other factors—made the game hard to watch. It wasn’t just that the team wasn’t playing as well or as organically as they normally do, but that everything going on in the background made it impossible to focus.

In the four days since the Thorns’ last game and the partial dismissal of Gavin Wilkinson (from only the Thorns side of his job), there has been no time to process the sheer amount of trauma that has occurred. Just the day before, broadcasters at the Pride-Gotham game zoomed in on Orlando backup keeper Brittany Wilson and repeatedly misidentified her as Mana Shim. With the endless onslaught of harmful mistakes and disinterest from the league, it’s hard to compartmentalize what is going on. I can’t imagine what it’s like for the players, for whom soccer isn’t a fun distraction, but a job.

Watching the game on Paramount Plus on my laptop felt like a fever dream. I couldn’t conceptualize how 1,600 miles away these people were being asked to play soccer as if there wasn’t a reckoning happening within the league. The quality of the broadcast, which sounded ripped from FIFA 2010, complete with LMFAO playing at each corner kick, felt like a slap in the face. Not only can the league not listen to players, but they seem completely unwilling to invest in them, either. 

The camera’s low vantage point and tight angle made it so that no more than half the players could be seen at any given moment. Players moved in and out of frame in dreamlike apparitions. The Thorns’ white jerseys looked as though they were outlined in black crayon, making them look cartoonish and animated. At one point, Larroquette did a bicycle kick at midfield just to advance the ball seven yards. I instantly did a double take to check that I wasn’t mashing buttons on a Playstation controller.  

All in all, it felt like a rerun of a game from the inaugural 2013 season, one whose final score I already knew. It was hard to get invested and feel as though anything was at stake, when in reality, there’s a lot on the line. The Thorns only have four more games this season, and have choked on their lead, leaving only one point between them and Reign in the race for the shield. 

But that brings me back to my original point. It was impossible to focus on the game because there is so much more at stake than a soccer game or title right now. Everyone on that pitch carried an incredible weight on their shoulders for 90 minutes. Once they step off the field, the weight remains squarely on them, getting straight onto phone calls and trying to fight for the league. There really is no escape for these players as they are constantly told they aren’t worthy, whether they’re being made to play on a horrible pitch or being asked in a postgame presser to recount their involvement in the initial 2015 investigations within the club. 

As the season winds to a close and the games pick up in intensity and importance for the postseason bracket, I find myself disconnecting with the game more and more. The Thorns could lose every game from here on out, but I would still support them just as much as if they won all of those games 5–0. The players’ mental and physical health is the most important, and if they choose to protest at Wednesday’s game, I will fully support and understand. If I as a fan can’t focus on the game, how can the players?

Categories
Soccer Thorns

Statement from the Rose City Review on Paul Riley

Credit: Matthew Wolfe

On Thursday, The Athletic reported that former Thorns head coach Paul Riley sexually abused and coerced multiple players during his tenures with multiple professional women’s soccer teams—including his time in Portland. Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim brought these reports to the attention of front offices, commissioners, and other league officials, but by no means are they the only survivors of Riley’s abuse.

Although Riley has been fired, NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird and general counsel Lisa Levine have resigned, and SafeSport—a questionable place to turn—is now investigating the allegations against Riley, we, at the Rose City Review, find lack of transparency and action until this point to be unacceptable.

It’s not enough for coaches and managers to apologize for hiring known abusers, as OL Reign owner Bill Predmore apologized for hiring former head coach Farid Benstiti in a press conference on Friday. “Getting it wrong” is not an excuse when there are known, credible accusations against a man. The systems of complacency within the NWSL run deep. We’ve seen them play out time and time again this year, with the terminations of Riley, Benstiti, and Richie Burke. And we’ve seen that same lack of transparency around the firing of Christy Holly, Alyse LaHue, and Tom Torres.

And it’s not enough for Riley to resign when the people who covered up his abuse remain in power. According to The Athletic’s report, Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and general manager Gavin Wilkinson released Riley from the club after investigating Shim’s allegations against him, but neither the club nor the league publicly acknowledged those accusations or that there had been an investigation. Despite knowing that Riley was a sexual abuser, Paulson, Wilkinson, and the NWSL let the league hire Riley for another job, placing him in yet another position of power.

We believe the Thorns’s statement on the report does not adequately address the harm the club has caused—nor does it outline a plan to keep players safe in the future. Merritt Paulson’s open letter, while outlining positive steps forward for the club, does little to acknowledge the complicit behavior of the Thorns’ front office. The “North Star” that he references as what is best for the players and techinical will need to involve the removal of Gavin Wilkinson to create a more safe and open environment. 

We support Mana Shim, Sinead Farelly, Kaiya McCollough, and everyone else who has come forward about abuse—publicly or privately.

We stand with the NWSL Players Association and their three demands. We commend the NWSLPA for the work they’re doing to push better league conditions and create avenues through which players can report abuse, but that work should have never fallen on them. 

The steps outlined in Paulson’s letter are positive, and we will be following up to ensure that he follows through on them. But we believe that the club’s current plan is not enough. We feel it is unacceptable that Gavin Wilkinson remains the club GM, given his role in covering up Riley’s abuse. We are calling for his removal from the Thorns and Timbers organization.

You can donate to the NWSLPA via PayPal.

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Not Soccer Soccer Thorns Timbers

Club’s Handling of Riley Predominates as Timbers Win

Photo by Matthew Wolfe.

It was, by many of the usual metrics, a lovely Sunday afternoon at Providence Park. The sun was shining, the air was crisp, and the Portland Timbers won their seventh game in eight attempts, continuing an improbable run up the Western Conference table that has them positioned to contend as the weather finally begins to turn and the MLS season enters its final stage.

But the result, a 1–0 Timbers victory on the strength of a late headed goal from the Polish marksman Jarosław Niezgoda, felt like little more than a sideshow.

This Timbers victory should have been the second game of the weekend played at Providence Park. The Portland Thorns were supposed to take the field first, on Saturday, for a derby match against their northern rival, OL Reign.

That match did not happen. In its place, after all games across the NWSL were suspended following the horrifying revelations reported by The Athletic last week regarding the conduct of former Thorns manager Paul Riley, Thorns supporters rallied outside the stadium in support of the players Riley abused and those who remain within an American soccer league that has at every turn disregarded their safety.

They also called for the firing of Timbers and Thorns general manager Gavin Wilkinson, who has emerged again as a lightning rod for anger.

Timbers fans last called en masse for Wilkinson’s firing in the autumn of 2012, when the club was suffering through a miserable season on the field. They were wrong then. The Timbers won the Western Conference the next season and an MLS Cup two years later, and Wilkinson’s prowess as a soccer executive has proven beyond any significant doubt many times since.

They’re not wrong now. This time, the frustration is not that Wilkinson can’t pick soccer players. It is that he, along with Timbers and Thorns owner Merritt Paulson and the club’s president of business Mike Golub, failed to ensure that Riley’s career ended after they were made aware of the allegations of his predatory, coercive, absolutely despicable behavior towards their players.

The club investigated Riley following the 2015 season and, with his contract expiring, let him walk. We don’t know exactly what that investigation turned up, and we don’t know exactly how seriously the club endeavored to communicate to the NWSL and Riley’s future employers that he was an active danger to their players too.

What it looks like, lacking that information, and knowing the connections between the Wilkinson and one of the men responsible for hiring Riley to his next job, is that the Thorns, like the Catholic Church, simply moved an ill-behaved coach on to his next parish, consequences be damned.

Sinead Farrelly. Mana Shim. How many others there are—both among those who spoke anonymously to The Athletic and those who weren’t reached or chose not to be interviewed—we don’t yet and will probably never know.

Timbers players Saturday released a statement expressing their support for NWSL players, while Giovani Savarese and other members of the Timbers coaching staff wore teal ribbons in a show of solidarity.

Savarese and his team entered Sunday in a difficult position. Around them in the stadium, and particularly in a vociferous North End, the supporters called—colorfully, loudly, and repeatedly—for their boss to be fired.

The Timbers Army, singing and chanting to the beat of a drum branded with the logo of the Rose City Riveters, made their position known from pregame to the final whistle. Banners hung or hoisted in the North End included “Believe, Support, and Protect NWSL Players,” “Protect the Players, Cut the Rot Out,” and, most memorably, a simple, “You Knew,” along with plenty of two-sticks aimed specifically at Wilkinson.

All the team on the field could do was focus on the task at hand, no matter how trivial it felt taking place in the middle of one of the biggest storms in franchise history.

Knowing a win would cement their status as in the West’s top four with Real Salt Lake’s loss on Saturday, the Timbers faced a Miami side in desperate need of points to keep their distant playoff hopes alive.

Starting without Sebastian Blanco, whose return to fitness was so critical in their revival this fall, and with Diego Valeri suspended for yellow card accumulation, the Timbers lacked a measure of attacking inventiveness in the first half. But Miami was rarely more than ponderous going forward themselves, with the Timbers comfortably defending deep and looking to break with pace.

When Blanco was introduced with a quarter of an hour to go in the second half and no score, the Timbers quickly began to rack up chances. It was thanks only to some excellent emergency defending from Miami’s three center backs, led by Leandro Gonzalez Pirez that the game remained level for as long as it did, and thanks to some very soft defending in the middle of that box that Niezgoda was allowed to freely position himself in the path of a Blanco corner seven minutes from time and nod in the opener.

Miami thought they had equalized just moments later when substitute Julian Carranza headed a cross past Clark, but the goal was ruled out for a push on Dario Zuparic. Miami manager Phil Neville said after the game that his team was “robbed,” and perhaps in a narrow sense, he was right. The whistle on Carranza was soft, one of a number of marginal calls that so often decide close, pedestrian late-season games.

But in a broader sense, his team did not take advantage of the opportunity presented to them in Blanco’s reduced fitness and Valeri’s suspension. They lost the expected goals battle by nearly two and only forced Steve Clark into a pair of notable saves, one on an uninspired Gonzalo Higuain, the other on Brek Shea.

Miami had one more great chance after Carranza’s equalizer was ruled out, deep into stoppage time, but Gonzalez Pirez, outstanding on the other end of the field, sent his open look well wide. That was it. The Timbers are now seven points clear of fifth, on a glide path to hosting a playoff game.

Afterwards, Savarese and Clark were asked about the NWSL. For many of the supporters, the afternoon ended with that subject—and the club’s response to it—foremost in mind. The Timbers Army and the Rose City Riveters are extraordinary in the American sporting landscape for the outspokenness and seriousness with which they take their sociopolitical commitments.

They also, in recent history, have been extraordinary for their effectiveness. The supporters, with the help of others across the MLS, namely in Seattle, stared down the league and won its fight to fly the Iron Front in 2019. The coming fight to hold the organization accountable for its role in perpetuating Riley’s career will, in many ways, be a much bigger challenge.

Paulson’s most enduring trait in a decade-plus as a major league owner, right alongside his passion and inability to stay off Twitter, has been his loyalty to and faith in Wilkinson—a loyalty that has been richly rewarded in on-the-field success.

This scandal is not not going away any time soon. U.S. Soccer and FIFA have opened investigations. The NWSL remains in turmoil, with the Thorns scheduled to play the Houston Dash at home on Wednesday night. Their current manager, Mark Parsons, who is vacating the role in a matter of weeks, has not faced the media since the story broke.

The level of protest at this, a Timbers game, not a Thorns game, made that plain It is as yet unclear what is coming next for Riley and everyone who passed the buck and did the bare minimum instead of stopping him cold. But it is obvious, if there was ever a doubt, that Portland fans are going to keep close score.