Two top executives at Portland’s pro soccer franchises were fired Wednesday, two days after the release of a scathing report about systemic verbal, mental and sexual abuse in the National Women’s Soccer League and failures at every level to address player complaints.
The Portland Timbers and Thorns, which compete in Major League Soccer and the NWSL, respectively, announced that Gavin Wilkinson, president of soccer, and Mike Golub, president of business, had been relieved of their duties with both clubs, effective Wednesday.
The decision was made by the Thorns’ general counsel, Heather Davis, who is now also acting as interim president for the Thorns and Timbers after the teams’ owner, Merritt Paulson, announced Tuesday that he would step aside from Thorns-related decision-making until the release of a separate investigation run jointly by the NWSL and NWSL Players Association. It was not clear when that investigation will be completed.
Wilkinson and Golub did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This week’s report, based on an investigation led by former acting US Attorney General Sally Yates, identified Paulson, Wilkinson and Golub among the executives who did not take players’ allegations about male coaches seriously enough, and enabled those coaches to move freely to others teams.
Portland’s firings came amid outrage from members of the Thorns and US women’s national team and the team’s fans, as well as statements from team sponsors voicing concern about the findings of a more than 300-page report commissioned by the US Soccer Federation and made public Monday .
The firings are especially notable at the Thorns, one of the NWSL’s original franchises at the league’s 2013 launch and among its most successful: Portland’s pre-pandemic average attendance of 20,000 was higher than many NBA, NHL and MLS teams.
The 107IST, an organization representing fan supporters’ groups for the Timbers and Thorns, had called on Golub and Wilkinson to be fired and for Paulson to sell both teams.
Becky Sauerbrunn, a member of the US women’s national team and a star on the Thorns, said Tuesday that she believed Paulson, Wilkinson and Golub “should be gone.”
In a statement Tuesday, Paulson apologized for “our role in a gross systemic failure to protect player safety and the missteps we made in 2015.”
Yates’ report zeroed in on coach Paul Riley, whom the Thorns fired after a player reported persistent and unwanted advances in 2015, and a subsequent investigation. At the time, Wilkinson publicly thanked Riley for his services and the team said only that it wasn’t retaining him as coach. Within months, Riley was at another professional team, and also coached a youth team.
Yates said the Thorns player reported Riley’s advances in detail to Paulson and Wilkinson, and that Golub was included on a memo detailing the outcome of the investigation. Yates found no indication that the Thorns told Riley’s next team, the Western New York Flash, that they had terminated him for cause.
Paulson went on to congratulate the Flash president on the hire, writing in an email: “congrats on the Riley hire. I have a lot of affection for him.” Wilkinson, the report said, only told the Flash vice president that he felt Riley “was put in a bad position by the player” and that he “would hire him in a heartbeat.”
When the Flash franchise was sold in 2017 and rebranded as the North Carolina Courage, the new owner asked Paulson about Riley. The new owner, Steve Malik, told Yates that Paulson focused on team roster issues to explain why the Thorns had not retained Riley, said that he had displayed “poor judgment” on one occasion and omitted most of the allegations against him.
Golub was also identified in the report as someone who knew of the player’s allegation. In addition, in one passage of the report, Cindy Parlow Cone reported that in 2013, while serving as coach of the Thorns, Golub asked her, “What’s on your bucket list besides sleeping with me?”
Mike Golub answers questions from the media during a tour of Providence Park in 2019.
Photo:
Jaime Valdez/Reuters
Cone is now president of US Soccer. She called for the investigation into the NWSL a year ago, after reports in the Athletic about Riley’s alleged behavior.
Yates’s report also said that, despite Paulson’s public pledge of transparency and cooperation, the “Thorns interfered with our access to relevant witnesses and raised specious legal arguments in an attempt to impede our use of relevant documents.”
And the report alleged inappropriate behavior by Paulson himself. Players recalled him making inappropriate comments, including trying to talk with a player about former US women’s team star Hope Solo’s nude pictures. The report noted that the “Thorns strongly deny the allegations against Merritt Paulson.”
It concluded with a recommendation that the NWSL “determine whether disciplinary action is appropriate for any of these owners or team executives,” based on its findings and those of the NWSL.
Write to Louise Radnofsky at [email protected] and Rachel Bachman at [email protected]
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