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U.S. Soccer is carefully reviewing the report released today by the NWSL and NWSLPA following their joint investigation into allegations of misconduct and abuse in women’s soccer.
We are grateful to the NWSL and NWSLPA for their important efforts to understand the factors that led to abuse in women’s professional soccer and to identify meaningful steps to ensure player safety moving forward. U.S. Soccer has closely communicated and cooperated with the NWSL and NWSLPA throughout their investigation. We share a common goal of ensuring a safe, healthy environment for players, and look forward to continuing to work with them to enact systemic change across our game.
As the national governing body for our sport, U.S. Soccer’s highest priority is participant safety at all levels of the game. In October, we released the complete findings and recommendations of an independent investigation conducted by former Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates into allegations of past abusive behavior and sexual misconduct in women’s professional soccer. U.S. Soccer provided Sally Yates and her team at King & Spalding with full autonomy, access and the resources necessary to follow the facts and evidence wherever they led. Sally Yates and her team were also available to NWSL/NWSLPA investigators to provide information and assistance.
After receiving a thorough report from King & Spalding upon the Yates investigation’s conclusion, the U.S. Soccer Board of Directors released the report in full; it can be found here. At that time, U.S. Soccer also committed to acting to thoroughly address the report’s recommendations and has since made significant progress toward implementation of each of Yates’s recommendations, and toward advancing additional safeguarding initiatives across all levels of soccer. This includes close coordination and communication with the NWSL and NWSLPA.
The Yates Implementation Committee of the U.S. Soccer Board of Directors is on track to publicly share a robust action plan for the implementation of all of Yates’s recommendations by Jan. 31, 2023, and the newly formed, player-led Participant Safety Taskforce is working to gather diverse expertise and perspectives to implement new safeguarding measures across the soccer landscape. More information on the progress made to date – including timelines for the implementation of each of the Yates recommendations – is available on U.S. Soccer’s Participant Safety Hub.
As we review the NWSL/NWSLPA report, we look forward to gaining an even deeper understanding of the cultural and systemic dynamics that led to abuse in women’s professional soccer. We anticipate that information and recommendations contained in the report will inform our actions going forward and supplement the work underway by U.S. Soccer’s Yates Implementation Committee and Participant Safety Taskforce.
U.S. Soccer remains deeply committed to ensuring that everyone in soccer – at all levels – has a safe and respectful place to learn, grow and compete.
