VERA PAUW HAS echoed her strong rebuttal of all allegations made against her in the recent NWSL/NWSLPA report, and says she is looking into legal action.
The Republic of Ireland women’s national team manager appeared at a press conference at FAI headquarters this afternoon, speaking in detail and at length from her standpoint.
The report, released on Wednesday, alleges Pauw made comments regarding players’ weight and attempted to influence their eating habits during her time as manager of Houston Dash in 2018, allegations which she denied in a written statement to investigators. Houston apologised to their current and former players affected by the alleged misconduct.
The FAI publicly backed Pauw in a statement on Thursday evening, and after releasing her own written statement on Friday afternoon, she took questions at a press conference in Abbotstown.
“I’m not too well, of course,” she began.
“If you have experienced power abuse over the last 30 years, and you’re accused yourself of something that’s completely the opposite of the way I’ve been treating players all my life, you first ask yourself where it’s coming from: how is this possible that it happens to me? And then you start to become very, very angry.”
Asked later by The42 if she believes there is no wrongdoing from her point of view, Pauw said: “I cannot recall anything.
“I have asked my assistant, Shilene Booysen, ‘Please tell me is there any moment that I’ve said something that could have been misinterpreted?’ And she said, ‘Absolutely, at no moment.’
“She was always with me when I was talking to players, she was always there at any moment; in meetings, on the pitch, with players; and she said, ‘Never, ever. I can only recall you encouraging players to eat more.’”
This has been such an incredible year with so many personal highs & lows!
— Vera Pauw (@verapauw) December 16, 2022
Thank you to those who believe in the truth and support me. pic.twitter.com/px5xF5mH6K
Pauw also rejected the report’s finding that she had appeared for an interview with investigators “but did not cooperate”.
“A special anger is in me is that they say that I did not cooperate,” she said, giving her timeline of events from the letter she received on 28 September, a video call she logged on to the following day, and her attempts to follow up, including a 13-page letter she submitted in writing which detailed her experience of her time at Houston.
“First of all, I did not know what I was accused of so I decided to tell how I experienced the NWSL, from the Draft to every single thing because there are so many things wrong with the NWSL.”
She quoted directly from her letter “about this part that they eventually accused me of”.
I never made a remark on the appearance of a player, I never compare or keep track of the weight of players. I leave that to medical team. I don’t want to know the fat percentage even when the medical team wants to know. I tell players not to diet if they ask me. I know too much of the harm it can cost, because I’ve experienced the mistakes of that being a player myself.
She explained: “So what I’m accused of is saying players are too big, that’s absolute nonsense. I don’t care about the body composition of players. I don’t care about fat percentage. I care about whether they can execute their tasks.
“I can say there was one player at intake, the first meeting I had, she said ‘I want to lose weight’. She came from college. I said, ‘Do not diet’ because that will not help you. ‘You just need to get fit, you’re absolutely okay the way you are like everybody because we are not all the same. We have different bodies and it’s about how you execute your tasks’.
“So halfway through the season, it went really well, her tests on recoveries from explosive actions and I said ‘You’re going really well, your snappiness is getting better’ and it shows we’re on the right track.
“Now I read that I’ve said to this player that she has lost weight. I don’t even know if she had lost weight, I don’t care if she’s lost weight or gained weight, I only care about the execution of tasks, like the same here in Ireland.
“Then they said, ‘We couldn’t do our weightlifting programme’. That is right, I advised them not to do weightlifting. I don’t know whether they followed that but I advised them not to do weightlifting. I said, ‘We load you to the max, 100% actions, so if you on top of that do weightlifting, we could have done more. Do you get that?
“I advised them not to do weightlifting. It’s very technical, but on the big muscle groups you get strength, whereas in football, you need to move from the core. That brings groin injuries, hamstring injuries and, especially, ACL ruptures. I’ve always worked like that and I’ve proven with my methods that ACL ruptures are out of the scene. That is why I advised against weightlifting and they use it now as, what did they say, I had excessive control over their lives.
“Then they said about food. If anything the only thing I have been asking is, ‘Get enough intake, get enough intake before the game, get enough intake after the game, get your protein shakes after the training’. I’ve never spoken about eating less, only about eating more because most of the players did not eat enough. The medical staff was not at this moment in the room so we had discussed and I had agreed I would encourage them to eat more, not less. I just care that they have enough energy in their body to execute their tasks. To do that, the medical staff had brought in fantastic food.”
It is unclear from the report how many complainants there are, and Pauw can “only, more or less, imagine” who they may be due to “gossip” at the end of the season.
She directly addressed the section of the report where she is alleged to have used the term ‘bulky’.
“You know what’s the background of that? I was asking players at the very start…, ‘If you weight-lift a lot, you lose your snappiness. How would you call that?’ One of the players said, ‘We would call that “bulky”.’
“Every time that that came up, I said – and I’d quote the player – ‘As this player said, you call it bulky’.
“There was a moment in Seattle, this one player looked up and said, ‘Over the whole pitch, look at them, how bulky they are.’ I only said — name — and that’s your words, not my words.
“The fact that they are putting those things in shows that there is a second agenda behind it. And I don’t know why, I don’t know where it’s coming from, but if there was anything that I could think of that I did wrong in this matter — of course everybody makes mistakes, I also make mistakes — then I would have openly apologised.
But I have no idea where this is coming from. I’m so conscious, therefore I’m so angry, it is actually part of me that I never, ever do that. I never punish, I never swear, I never shout to players. The only thing that I’ve done is stopping abuse and making sure that players were healthy and were safe in our environment.
Pauw, who has been Ireland manager since September 2019 and has steered the women’s national team to their first-ever major tournament in next summer’s World Cup, met with FAI CEO Jonathan Hill in the wake of last night’s AGM and has also spoken to Irish players amidst end-of-year meetings.
“I had a meeting with [captain] Katie McCabe yesterday and I asked her, ‘Please be open and tell me is there any moment where in those three years that you feel I have behaved in way that you could interpret it this way?’
“Her reaction was – you’d need to ask her – but she said, ‘Oh no. No. If anything, you encourage us to eat’.
“Marc Canham [FAI Director of Football] said to me in a meeting this morning where I said I wanted to face the press – he said, ‘I’ve been there in Marbella and I’ve seen you encourage the players to eat more as they need more than what they have eating. I’ve seen you discuss it with the doctor to address it.’
It is so hard and difficult when people put it on you. It is the opposite of how I approach it. The opposite.
“What I am really proud of is the FAI did not jump to conclusions without talking to me and investigating a bit further whereas normal practice is if it’s out there and you’re accused, then you’re guilty.”
FAI President Gerry McAnaney attended the press conferences in a show of support, while Pauw has also received strong backing from Janine van Wyk, the South African international she has coached in the past, who labelled the allegations as “ridiculous” in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.
”We are looking into if legal actions are necessary,” Pauw concluded.
“But who would you bring forward? The players? The investigators? NWSL? I don’t know.
“Because the things that are written can be seen as an opinion, but [whether] it ruins your life, or at least your profession, is something that maybe a judge would not really take care of.
“But if so, if there is an opening, and if the way that the investigators have treated is out of the lines of legality, then I will take action.
“I have to take action, I have to protect myself if I can protect myself.”
