U.S. Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro Resigns

And three members of U.S. Soccer’s board of directors publicly condemned the organization’s comments. Don Garber, the commissioner of Major League Soccer and a longtime board member, said in a statement that he had personally expressed to Cordeiro “how unacceptable and offensive I found the statements in that filing to be.”

Cindy Cone, U.S. Soccer’s vice president and a former women’s national team player, will replace Cordeiro as the president.

Molly Levinson, a spokeswoman for the players in their lawsuit, pointed to problems at U.S. Soccer beyond Cordeiro. “While it is gratifying that there has been such a deafening outcry against U.S.S.F.’s blatant misogyny, the sexist culture and policies overseen by Carlos Cordeiro have been approved for years by the board of directors of U.S.S.F.,” she said in a statement. “This institution must change and support and pay women players equally.”

Cordeiro became president two years ago, after a contested and acrimonious election at a time when U.S. Soccer was at one of the lowest points in its history. Months earlier, the men’s national team had suffered an embarrassing loss to Trinidad and Tobago, failing to qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1986. Several candidates announced campaigns to challenge Sunil Gulati, the U.S. Soccer president since 2006, with many promising radical changes to the federation.

Cordeiro — at the time the U.S. Soccer vice president and Gulati’s right-hand man — surprisingly threw his hat into the ring, and Gulati later decided not to run for re-election. Cordeiro was elected on the third ballot, after a speech that promised change.

“Today the status quo is unacceptable,” he said at the time. “U.S. Soccer needs to change. Transformational change. The vote comes down to one simple question: Who can actually deliver that change?”

While there have been successes — Cordeiro led a winning campaign to bring the 2026 World Cup to North America, and the women won last year’s World Cup — the organization has seemingly lurched from crisis to crisis during his tenure.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/sports/soccer/uswnt-carlos-cordeiro-us-soccer.html