COVID-19 coronavirus shuts down pretty much everything, Carlos Cordeiro resigns from US Soccer, and more: Freedom Kicks for 3/13/2020

The last two days have been some of the strangest I can remember. We have a lot to talk about, so let’s get right to it:

MLS season suspended for 30 days due to COVID-19 | Black and Red United
This is pretty bad news for us, for a long list of reasons. Number one, on behalf of our whole staff, I hope all of you and yours are doing alright. That’s the most important thing right now.

We’re going to do our best to keep things going as far as the site goes. It’s going to take some creativity, or just a willingness to be a little weird, but that’s who we are over here. Hopefully you’ll stick with us during what’s going to be the strangest spell in B&RU history.

As of now, D.C. United has told B&RU that there won’t be training until Monday, and Events DC has closed the RFK campus (which includes the training fields) among other things:

And with that in mind, let’s get into the list of soccer that isn’t going to happen any time soon:

The NWSL? Preseason games are cancelled. For the Washington Spirit, that means games on 3/28, 4/4, and 4/11 are no longer going to happen. Nothing official yet about the season opener on 4/18 at Audi Field, but if you want my take, I’d classify it as “in doubt.” I don’t know what that’ll mean for the club, given that United still has 15 home games to play whenever we get back to playing, but I guess “I don’t know” is going to become a refrain for a while.

Generation Adidas Cup (a huge youth tournament run by MLS)? Cancelled.

The CONCACAF Champions League, which had games scheduled for last night? Postponed, no word on when it’ll re-start.

USL Championship? Suspending play for at least 30 days. That means Loudoun’s trips to face ATLUTD 2 and Miami FC are going to happen sometime later in the year.

USL League One? Postponing the start of the season by two weeks.

U.S. Open Cup? All of the USL’s leagues say they don’t intend to participate to allow time to make up their league games. Also, apparently US Soccer has not yet told teams scheduled for the first round what’s going to happen.

USSF cancels March and April women’s and men’s friendlies | Stars and Stripes FC
The USWNT was going to play Australia and Brazil in April, and the USMNT was going over to Europe to play the Netherlands and Wales in a couple of weeks. Now? Not so much.

France Football Federation? They’ve shut down what they control, but Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 are separate, and will have meetings tomorrow morning to sort themselves.

As for leagues that are deciding to go for it regardless, so far we’ve got a couple big ones: Liga MX is playing after disinfecting stadiums, while the Premier League was going to just go ahead like everything was normal....but then Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta tested positive like 5 minutes later, because everything is happening at that rate right now. So they’re having an emergency meeting to re-evaluate that transparently terrible plan. And, if my timeline is correct, since then Callum Hudson-Odoi from Chelsea has tested positive.

Down in Australia, the A-League and W-League (including Aubrey Bledsoe and Sam Staab both playing semifinals this weekend) are going to carry on with “mitigation protocols.”

Expanding further out, the NCAA has cancelled all winter/spring sports championships, which includes the hugely popular men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. A day after the NBA decided to suspend play, the National Hockey League did the same. Major League Baseball is going to delay the start of their season by at least two weeks. The XFL is going to stop playing for the time being, which...who knows what that means for Audi Field’s grass replacement, which in turn has a major impact on both United and the Spirit. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Sports might be canceled for a while, so now what? | Dirty South Soccer
What I do know is that this does a pretty accurate job capturing the vibe right now.

Alright, enough coronavirus/sports talk. There are other stories! Or at least one other story, which is that the intense couple days of pressure on US Soccer from fans, and then board members and former national team players, and then major sponsors, saw president Carlos Cordeiro step down last night:

Carlos Cordeiro resigns as U.S. Soccer president over sexism in equal pay lawsuit | SB Nation
US Soccer vice president Cindy Parlow Cone is now president, and as Kim McCauley points out, the fed’s legal approach wasn’t something that only Cordeiro knew about. It’s big news, but there’s every chance that the federation largely carries on.

Carlos Cordeiro resigns as president of US Soccer | Stars and Stripes FC
More here, including notes on some of Cordeiro’s other stumbles leading up to this.

US Soccer president quits after gender discrimination suit | Associated Press
Apparently Cordeiro’s decision was reached so quickly that the communications staff at US Soccer wasn’t even alerted.

Big questions remain for USSF as Carlos Cordeiro resigns, Cindy Cone takes over | The Athletic
The new president has a year or so before the next Annual General Meeting, which due to Cordeiro’s resignation will include an election.

Linehan: How does U.S. Soccer come back from this? | The Athletic
One last reminder that US Soccer’s stance here is not new. We’re talking about issues that have been there since the 90s.

Sorry for the information overload. It’s a lot right now. Hopefully you’re able to find things to do to keep your mind occupied during this time of social distancing, and more importantly, hopefully you’re all healthy.