USWNT players 'horrified, heartbroken' after Yates Report, want owners who enabled abuse 'gone'

A shaken Becky Sauerbrunn, the U.S. women's national team's typically stoic captain, said she and her teammates are "horrified, and heartbroken, and frustrated, and exhausted, and really really angry" one day after a U.S. Soccer-commissioned report detailed widespread and systemic abuse in women's soccer.

The report, the result of a yearlong investigation led by former federal prosecutor Sally Yates, detailed new allegations of verbal, emotional and sexual misconduct at the highest levels of the sport, and found that coaches, executives, the National Women's Soccer League and U.S. Soccer itself "failed" countless players.

"We are angry that it took a third-party investigation," Sauerbrunn said via Zoom from London, where the USWNT is preparing to play England on Friday at a sold-out Wembley Stadium. "We are angry that it took an article in The Athletic and The Washington Post and numerous others. We're angry that it took over 200 people sharing their trauma to get to this point right now. And we're angry that it took Mana [Shim] and Sinead [Farrelly] and Erin [Simon] and Kaiya [McCullough] and Alex [Morgan] and Christen [Press] and Sam [Johnson] to repeatedly ask people in authority to take their abuse and their concerns seriously.

"And I think for so long, this has always fallen on the player to demand change," an emotional Sauerbrunn continued in an opening statement. "And that is because the people in authority and decision-making positions have repeatedly failed to protect us, and they have failed to hold themselves and each other accountable. What, and who, are you actually protecting? And what values are you upholding?

"You have failed in your stewardship. And 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 plays for the Portland Thorns, whose owner, Marritt Paulson, and then-general manager, Gavin Wilkinson, played key roles in hiding 2015 allegations of sexual harassment against then-head coach Paul Riley, allowing Riley to continue coaching in the league for six more years. Shortly before Sauerbrunn spoke, Paulson announced that he would remove himself, Wilkinson and president of business operations Mike Golub from all Thorns-related decision making until a separate investigation commissioned by the NWSL and its players association is complete. But he did not say that he would sell the team.

Sauerbrunn did not call for Paulson's ouster by name, but reiterated when asked specifically about Paulson and Portland executives that her statement applied to "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."