U.S. Soccer details plans to implement 12 safety recommendations from Yates report

Sep 29, 2021; Sandy, Utah, USA; A general view of the Adidas soccer balls used prior to a match between Real Salt Lake and the Los Angeles Galaxy at Rio Tinto Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Rob Gray-USA TODAY Sports
By Meg Linehan
Jan 30, 2023

Four months after Sally Q. Yates released her independent investigation concerning allegations of abuse and misconduct across the NWSL, U.S. Soccer announced its plans to implement Yates’s recommendations. These include new and expanded safeguarding measures, from vetting of coaches to policy reform and more. U.S. Soccer has also promised annual public reports on safeguarding. Here’s what you need to know:

  • U.S. Soccer is introducing the “Safe Soccer” framework, which will take a more proactive approach to vetting individuals wishing to participate: Instead of trying to identify and remove bad actors once they’re in the system, U.S. Soccer will instead green-light people via what it calls a “thorough, continuous vetting system.”
  • The implementation committee, along with the established task force on pro league standards, has proposed amendments to those standards that would require sanctioned leagues and their respective teams to employ player safety officers, compile annual safeguarding reports, conduct annual training and player feedback surveys and more.
  • And notably, one of those proposed changes to the pro league standards would “prohibit the use of non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements used to shield information about abuse allegations,” according to U.S. Soccer’s news release.

Backstory

On Oct. 3, 2022, Yates released her independent investigation report, which included 12 specific recommendations for U.S. Soccer “aimed at preventing abuse in the future, holding wrongdoers accountable, enhancing transparency, and fostering a professional environment where players are treated with respect.”

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Yates acknowledged the organizational hierarchy between U.S. Soccer and the NWSL in her recommendations; while U.S. Soccer was the manager of the league for many years, as of now it largely has oversight thanks to its ability to sanction leagues.

U.S. Soccer established a committee consisting of members of its own board of directors to implement these recommendations that same month, chaired by former USWNT player Danielle Slaton, and also included vice-chair and U.S. Club Soccer CEO Mike Cullina, Lori Lindsey (former USWNT player), Richard Groff (president of U.S. Adult Soccer), Pete Zopfi (U.S. Youth Soccer board of directors chair) and Lisa Carnoy (an independent director on the USSF board of directors).

Slaton told The Athletic last October: “The task of our committee is to be laser focused on implementing these 12 tasks, helping to build out this task force, helping to provide guidance around building this office of participant safety. This is not just a ‘check the box, one and done’ thing. This is real, sustainable change, and it’s going to deal not only with education, but compliance as well.”

That committee was given a deadline of Jan. 31 to determine and share a plan for implementation. In addition, U.S. Soccer created a second task force dedicated to participant safety across the federation, and hired former NWSL player Mana Shim as chair.

“Sally Yates’ report made it clear that, for far too long, leaders across the soccer ecosystem — including at U.S. Soccer — have not taken responsibility for protecting players,” Shim said in a statement issued upon her hiring. “But I believe in the capacity for change. As leader of the task force, I am committed to ensuring not only that Yates’ recommendations are implemented, but that we push beyond them. We need to find the root causes of our sport’s systemic failures and take action at every level — from the youth game to the professional game.”

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USSF introduces the “Safe Soccer” framework

The federation’s release said the new program will “include safety training (and) annual verification of background and contact information,” as well as U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee-level background checks. U.S. Soccer will still be able to revoke participant licenses.

Slaton and Cullina spoke to the scope of the project ahead, with Slaton likening the overhaul to “both the carrot and the stick approach,” whereas previously they primarily relied on corrective measures after the fact. “We want to make sure that we’re getting bad actors out of the game,” she said. “We also want to make sure that we’re incentivizing, motivating, rewarding people who are doing the right thing. In a perfect world, that would get all the way down to every single adult in our game.”

While Yates was limited in scope to the NWSL for her investigation, her ninth recommendation directly addresses youth soccer as the investigation found that “players told us that verbal and emotional abuse in youth soccer made it more difficult to determine what was out of bounds in the NWSL.”

“A lot of it is centered on the youth space,” Cullina said. “Without that, it really doesn’t have the impact that’s necessary.”

“The challenge that we have is how this gets done and how it gets operationalized, probably over — quite frankly — a few years here,” Slaton told reporters on Monday. “It’s not just going to be a flip-the-switch kind of thing.”

Changing pro league standards would affect every league

The proposed updates to the standards would impact every professional league the federation sanctions, including NWSL, MLS and USL, as well as the North American Soccer League and the National Independent Soccer Association. According to the federation’s release, the proposed updates were developed with collaboration from the pro leagues.

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The updates will need to be approved by the full board of directors, with that vote planned for March’s annual general meeting.

The list of proposed updates, per U.S. Soccer, is as follows:

  • “Requiring that each professional league and team has a player safety officer responsible for ensuring compliance with player safety standards;
  • “Requiring professional leagues to provide annual safeguarding reports to U.S. Soccer;
  • “Ensuring all professional leagues employ dedicated human relations professionals;
  • “Requiring professional leagues to train coaches and staff on topics such as verbal and emotional abuse, sexual misconduct, harassment and retaliation;
  • “Requiring professional leagues to conduct annual player feedback surveys;
  • “Prohibiting the use of non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements used to shield information about abuse allegations; and
  • “Requiring all professional leagues to report any allegations of misconduct or issues of abuse to the Federation in a timely manner.”

No more NDAs?

While those proposed updates to the pro league standards are still not fully across the line as they still need to be voted on, there’s also going to be some room in how they are actually met by the professional leagues and teams.

“From a national governing body perspective, from a pro league standards perspective, our job is to set the high-level policy,” Slaton said. “Then, these pro leagues are responsible for integrating these standards and making sure they abide by them. We’re still going to continue to move forward with that framework.”

The implementation of standards — the “weeds” of it, as Slaton called it — will fall to each individual league, with U.S. Soccer in an oversight role.

For example, the clause on non-disclosure and non-disparagement agreements directly ties to allegations of abuse. Leagues and teams could potentially decide to go further, and prohibit any agreement of this nature, for instance, when parting ways with a general manager.

The proposed standard falls in line with growing momentum around the country to limit NDAs and non-disparagement agreements in the wake of the #MeToo movement. In December, President Joe Biden signed the Speak Out Act into law. The language of the bill applies to both existing and future agreements, and renders them unenforceable if a dispute is tied to sexual assault and/or sexual harassment — even if they were signed pre-dispute. Many states have also passed their own legislation concerning NDAs, including home markets to NWSL teams like Washington and California.

Asked if any legislation had influenced U.S. Soccer’s approach, Slaton replied, “It’s all being considered. It’s not happening in a vacuum. It’s happening in conjunction, knowing the greater landscape that we’re in, but also with regards to what each league is managing in their own respective league.”

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Even more investment required moving forward

For all the work ahead, there’s a matching level of required investment in terms of time, money and resources.

“There’s a cause and effect to increase standards, the cost and the barriers to entry rise with everything that we do, with every 30-minute, every 45-minute, every hour-and-a-half seminar that you have to sit on. Every cost associated with screening. All of those are real factors that we are working through,” Cullina said.

He said that while there isn’t resistance across the U.S. Soccer landscape, there’s a greater awareness of just how large the overall project is. They’ll need additional education, new technology and more.

“It’s not going to stop the work,” Cullina said. “Nobody’s raising their hand, saying ‘Stop, this is nonsense.’ They’re just saying ‘Let me show you the impact on the budget. Let me show you the impact on time and investment and all of these things that are very real.’”

(Photo: Rob Gray / USA Today)

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Meg Linehan

Meg Linehan is a senior writer for The Athletic who covers the U.S. women's national team, the National Women's Soccer League and more. She also hosts the weekly podcast "Full Time with Meg Linehan." Follow Meg on Twitter @itsmeglinehan