The NWSL kicked off its 13th season this weekend. Kansas City crushed the Portland Thorns. Washington started its quest to return to the title game with a victory. And the Orlando Pride raised their championship banners, followed by a decisive 6-0 win over the Chicago Stars. After the match, Pride midfielder Haley McCutcheon talked about the club’s plans for defending its title: "We don’t like to talk about outside noise, but there’s been a lot of talk about 'Who's gonna win the shield? Who's gonna win the championship?' and we’ve not really been in the conversation, which is hilarious to us."
The season openers also followed an offseason that saw the league bouncing from one report of abuse to another. The latest is this: The San Francisco Chronicle reported earlier this month that two formal complaints have been filed against Bay FC head coach Albertin Montoya, who's been with the club for about a year and a half. Players called his coaching methods "toxic" and said team management knew about their concerns. One complaint was cleared by a third-party investigation initiated by the team. The second complaint was made through the league’s anonymous tip line but, per the Chronicle, its status remains unknown. From that same report:
"We begged and pleaded for help and change, and it never came," one of the former players told the Chronicle.
… Two of the people interviewed by the Chronicle said Montoya would "target and bully" players in meetings in front of players and staff if they questioned decisions. One former Bay FC player who spoke to the Chronicle on condition of anonymity said Montoya punished players for speaking up about mental health concerns and would ignore or give players "the cold shoulder" when he was upset with them.
"Players would come out of the starting lineup and he refused to tell them why," said one former employee. "Of course their mental health would spiral but he wouldn’t address anything and punished anyone who asked questions."
The timeline of events from Bay FC and the league—and who knew what when—remains muddled. According to the Chronicle, the team at first denied there were any complaints, then backtracked. The team followed up by saying it had commissioned an independent third-party investigation over the summer that cleared the team of wrongdoing. But they never said if the results of that third-party investigation were sent to the NWSL. League sources told the newspaper that they knew of the investigation but "they never heard the results of it."
This was not the first time this year that Bay FC has come under scrutiny. About two weeks before the Chronicle report dropped, the club said Graeme Abel would join the team as a scout. In 2024, Abel was the subject of a lengthy report in The Oregonian that spoke to 14 former University of Oregon players who said Abel would often cross the line as a head coach, including "throwing objects, harsh language, and threats to kick them off the team or revoke their scholarship." Abel resigned from Bay FC less than a week after his appointment.
Bay FC said the club would not remove Montoya during the investigation. And, other than that, it’s been mostly no comment from those in authority. Montoya said during his media availability that he would not talk about the complaint. Bay FC did not return a request for comment, and the NWSL has said it would not comment either.
NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman did have a pre-scheduled media availability, though, for the same day the Chronicle story came out. She used it to talk broadly about creating a safe and healthy work environment for everyone and added, "We're very confident that the system we have in place will ensure that we surface the issues that need to be addressed." When I asked about the growing list of clubs with allegations against them, Berman said, "The fact that there's a question being raised or a review underway doesn't mean that the environment is not safe and healthy, and it doesn't mean that our protocols and procedures are not working. In fact, the opposite, the fact that people can come forward and raise a question or a concern and have us be the body through an independent review that assesses the situation and determines what corrective action is needed is actually the system working."
I also was immediately muted and unable to ask a followup question. Berman stuck to similar talking points during her halftime interview at the Challenge Cup.
The Chronicle report also made Bay FC the third team within the past six months to have current or former players or employees come forward to say they were subjected to emotional abuse, harassment, or discrimination while part of an NWSL club.
In October of last year, five former San Diego Wave employees sued the club and the NWSL for more than a dozen civil claims, including racial discrimination, sexual harassment, and retaliation. (Even before that lawsuit was filed, then-club president Jill Ellis had sued one of those former employees, Brittany Alvarado, for defamation; Alvarado has responded by asking for Ellis's lawsuit to be dismissed, saying everything she said was covered by her right to free speech.) A few months later, a sixth former Wave employee joined the lawsuit, saying while she worked at the club she was harassed by a supervisor who sent her dick pics. Ellis is not named a defendant in the suit, but her name came up multiple times in the complaint as she was the team president.
Months later, former San Diego head coach Casey Stoney opened up about her sudden firing last season, which happened during Ellis’s tenure. Stoney told the BBC that while she was back in the United Kingdom for a funeral, she got a call from her agent saying she had been fired. The sudden loss of her job meant Casey's visa was immediately terminated and she couldn’t return to the United States, she said, "pretty much rendering me and my partner homeless, with three children."
Ellis has since left the Wave to join FIFA as chief football officer.
Two third-party investigations cleared the Wave, but the lawsuit said those investigations were deeply flawed. When asked at a media availability about San Diego, Berman said, "The investigations that we've done in the past, universally, to the extent there was any misconduct identified, it was actioned."
About the same time that a sixth former Wave employee joined the lawsuit, former Utah Royals goalkeeper Carly Nelson posted a statement on social media saying she endured emotional and psychological abuse at the club. "The retaliation and discrimination I faced for prioritizing my mental health made it clear the club cared more about control than accountability," she said.
Nelson started the 2024 season in goal for the Royals but never appeared in a match again after the season opener. Soon afterward, she was listed as an "excused absence" in the weekly injury report and, by the end of May, Nelson announced she was taking leave for her mental health. The Royals and the NWSL never replied in January to requests for comment.
And last month, the league announced that it would pay $5 million to players who were abused, a settlement resulting from a joint investigation done by three attorneys general.
Even the announcement of a new expansion team in Boston—surely the type of good news everyone can get behind—went awry. The new club started out with the name “BOS Nation FC” and introduced themselves in a disastrous, since-deleted campaign video titled “Too Many Balls.” The campaign was bashed for its references to men’s sports, its repetitive ball jokes, and being transphobic. Last week, the team finally confirmed that it would get a new team name. And yet there is still more to worry about. The new club is supposed to play in a renovated White Stadium but residents and a conservancy group have sued to stop it, according to WBUR, saying that the public-private partnership "runs afoul of state law because it lacked sufficient legislative review for transfer of public land to private use."
The stadium has become an election issue in Boston’s mayoral race, with challenger Josh Kraft (yes, that Kraft) calling on Mayor Michelle Wu to suspend stadium demolition until after the lawsuit is resolved. (The Kraft Group is currently negotiating a mitigation agreement with Boston for their own soccer-specific stadium for their MLS team, in nearby Everett.)
Yet there is good news. After a rocky period that began last season, the Houston Dash have found themselves a general manager, a retooled roster, and looked good though they still lost to the Washington Spirit 2-1 to open the season. The match included last season’s rookie of the year, Croix Bethune, who came off the season-ending injury list for the Washington Spirit ahead of the match. More than 72,000 people attended games in the opening weekend.
As always, the best part of the league is its players—they are the reason people show up to watch the games in person and on TV in the first place—with the help of countless others on the coaching and business side. But when they will be able to be in the news for that and that alone, and not having to grapple with reports of abuse or misconduct, remains to be seen.
