For years, they did not speak about what they endured, at least not publicly. They were afraid of losing their spots on the field, losing their jobs, maybe losing the entire league — one that they were told, again and again, was the best women’s soccer league in the world.
But this year, the players of the National Women’s Soccer League started to speak up in a summer of reckoning that led Thursday to high-profile players and other prominent figures calling for dramatic change.
The players’ union demanded an end to “systemic abuse plaguing the NWSL” in the wake of reporting from The Athletic that an NWSL coach, the North Carolina Courage’s Paul Riley, had sexually coerced multiple players, as well as reporting by The Washington Post about verbal and emotional abuse by the former coach of the Washington Spirit.