Hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to the Total Soccer show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell.

Joining me today is Steph Yang from The Athletic.

Steph, it's good to have you back on the show.

It's been a while and it's been quite a week.

How have you been doing?

It's a loaded question.

Yeah, yeah.

Relying in those emotional support networks, you know, talking to friends, trying to find happy moments where you can. It's, it's really all you can do. You just try to keep a balance and, and keep moving forward. So, you know, a week. Yes, indeed. Well, Steph is here to discuss the developing story regarding the NWSL, Paul Riley, and her latest piece, How the Structure of Sports protects abusers from Power. It's been a week since, or roughly a week since Meg's article first came out, or the article in the athletic. We saw the protest last night from the players. I do want to get into kind of everything that's been happening. But first, was that a big moment for you?

Do you feel like that could represent a turning point in the way the players are sort of organizing

and responding to all the stories? I'm not sure it's a turning point because we've seen this level

of organization from them, you know, honestly throughout this whole thing. But, you know, it was

certainly maybe one of the most emotionally impactful moments. I think the, like, the players after the game, they kind of let it be known. They would not be taking any soccer questions if any of them did speak. They wanted specifically to talk about this. They were like, don't, don't shy away from it. Don't, you know, or telling their media people maybe, like, don't disallow questions. This is the only thing that we want to talk on. And even though they did agree to talk on it because they agreed it was important, a lot of them were really emotional about it, kind of on the verge of tears a couple of times. It felt like Megan Klingenberg had an Ani Dorsey in particular. Those were some of the ones that I sat in on. It was three games. It was like five zooms, I think. North Carolina didn't have one. Maybe understandably, the players are the closest to it. They're very sensitive. But, you know, Megan Klingenberg and Amani Dorsey in particular, it was just really hard to sit with that.

You know, and they they threw it together pretty quickly, honestly, but I think that's indicative of the level of planning that they're highly motivated, you know, to get it done.

And I think that being the most emotional one and the player statements after the games, you know, where they talked pretty deeply about their

feelings and just their desire to move forward and be transparent with the league. You can read

all the demands that they wrote on the

NBA players association, Twitter, and their website. But I'm not going to say turning point,

but I think it's certainly added a huge boost of momentum to where they want to go moving

forward. Let me ask this then. It does seem like from your article, from your reporting, from Meg's reporting, that there has been a kind of persistent culture of silence and maybe an intimidation behind that. Do you feel like some of the responses, some of the kind of openness and the responses is in reaction to that, that maybe that has, that bubble has been pierced a little bit? Yeah, I think so. Certainly there was the culture of fear.

Monashim definitely kind of put her finger directly on it when she said at the Portland

Thorns, you know, when she came out, she says that Gavin Wilkinson called her into an office and

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