The #MeToo movement swept through Hollywood and fundamentally shifted the paradigm of accountability for powerful individuals accused of sexual misconduct. It ignited a global reckoning that sought repercussions for actions long shielded by status, money, and influence.

The movement dampened the careers of comedians, actors, film and television producers, and executives accused of inappropriate sexual behavior and led to the criminal convictions for some high-profile figures such as Harvey Weinstein, R. Kelly, Danny Masterson, and Bill Cosby—though Cosby’s conviction was later overturned. 

It has also extended beyond Hollywood and seen a similar reckoning in the music industry, academia, medicine, finance, and even religious and political institutions. In the arena of sports, one of the most shocking and biggest sexual abuse scandals centered around Larry Nassar, who served as the team doctor for the United States women’s national gymnastics from 1996 to 2014. During his tenure, he exploited his position to sexually abuse hundreds of young athletes, many of whom became Olympians.

Men’s football has had its brushes with #MeToo, but it has yet to resonate in a meaningful way. 

The most prominent case involved Kathryn Mayorga, who came forward in 2018 and filed a lawsuit alleging that Cristiano Ronaldo had brutally raped her in a Las Vegas hotel nine years earlier. However, in 2019, the Clark County district attorney announced they would not pursue criminal charges. Three years later, her lawsuit was dismissed due to what the court deemed “bad-faith conduct” by Mayorga’s lawyer.

Yet even before this legal resolution, the allegations had no impact on Ronaldo’s reputation and career. He remained a fixture in ad campaigns for an array of sponsors, made a summer move from Juventus to Manchester United in 2021, and was openly celebrated upon his return. By the end of that same year, his partner, Georgina Rodríguez, announced her own Netflix show, I Am Georgina, showcasing their glamorous life.

Fast forward to the present day, and Cristiano Ronaldo’s profile continues to soar, even as his career is in decline. By the end of August 2024, he launched his YouTube channel, UR Cristiano, which broke records by becoming the fastest to reach 1 million subscribers in under an hour. It now boasts 67 million subscribers. In addition, Ronaldo has cemented his status as the most popular athlete on social media, becoming the first celebrity to surpass 1 billion total followers across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

For him, it has been business as usual.

This pattern applies even in cases involving convictions.

In 2017, Kingsley Coman was found guilty on two separate occasions of domestic violence against his ex-girlfriend Sephora Goignan. He was fined a paltry amount by the courts and served no time. Coman continued to represent Bayern Munich and the France men’s national team without any penalties, public condemnation, or acknowledgment of the incidents from either his club or national federation.

It was business as usual.

Football is not short in supply of stories of predatory and unlawful sexual behavior. Just in the past year, several sexual assault cases involving football players have come to light. At the start of the 2024, Dani Alves was convicted of raping a woman in a Spanish nightclub in December 2022 and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. Despite his conviction, Alves continues to be active on social media, sharing clips of himself playing the guitar. He has been granted conditional release on $1 million bail and is currently awaiting an appeal.

Within the last month alone, three major cases have surfaced. Former France international Wissam Ben Yedder was convicted of sexual assault, receiving a two-year suspended sentence and fines. He also faces separate legal proceedings for charges of rape and attempted rape.

Media reports revealed that an active Premier League player is under investigation for allegedly raping three women and sexually assaulting a fourth between 2021 and 2023. Social media speculation has linked the case to Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey, and an Arsenal fan club has penned an open letter calling for action, which has garnered over 7,900 signatures.

Meanwhile, Swedish media reported that Real Madrid star Kylian Mbappé was implicated in a rape inquiry. Authorities confirmed an investigation is currently underway without disclosing names, but Mbappé dismissed the claims as “fake news.”

And it’s not just in Europe. 

In South Africa, Danny Jordaan, the president of the South African Football Association (SAFA), was arrested in November and will stand trial for fraud and theft. The charges allege that he misused SAFA resources for personal gain, including hiring a private security firm for his protection and engaging a public relations company without approval from the SAFA board. Part of the PR effort reportedly involved managing the fallout from serious allegations against him, the most damaging being a rape accusation from Jennifer Ferguson. In 2017, Ferguson, a political analyst and former ANC MP, publicly accused Jordaan of raping her in 1996, citing the #MeToo movement as her motivation for coming forward.

The windmill of allegations in men’s football is not new.  However, the high-profile cases involving Sean “Diddy” Combs and Gisele Pelicot, along with the growing discourse surrounding women’s rights and consent reflect a dramatic shift; yet football remains alarmingly static—insidiously impermeable to the evolving demands for accountability.

Many political issues have infiltrated the world of football—racism, geopolitics, corruption, labor and human rights, and more. These topics ignite widespread debate and are tackled in various ways, yielding differing levels of progress. Even when they provoke controversy and contention, they are taken seriously.

However, the one area where there is a seemingly near universal alignment between governments, federations, associations, clubs, managers, coaches, and even players is in the unwavering allegiance to protect footballers accused of violence against women. This collective silence and complicity stands as a damning indictment of the sport.

It’s even more damning when the NFL manages to make men’s football look worse by comparison. The NFL is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a benchmark for morality. Yet it has been more responsive to calls for reforms. 

At the highest levels, the NFL has acknowledged the issues surrounding its players’ misconduct. The league has been more astute in communication and transparency, implemented game suspensions for violent behavior by its players and amended their conduct policy, particularly in the aftermath of the several lawsuits against Deshaun Watson.

A notable component of the personal conduct policy is the Commissioner’s Exempt List, which allows Commissioner Roger Goodell to place a player on paid leave if they are formally charged with a felony or a violent crime involving physical force or threats of harm. While on the list, players are prohibited from playing, practicing, or attending games.

Be clear, the policy has faced deserved criticism for its inconsistent application, but it remains a tangible mechanism that is actively improved upon. They are not starting from the gutter. The same cannot be said for men’s football. 

According to a BBC investigation, seven out of the 20 Premier League clubs have had players or staff investigated by police since 2020.

In the same report, a woman who alleged sexual assault by an active footballer shared that out of desperation, she reached out to both the Premier League and the Football Association for help. However, both entities took no action, stating the matter did not breach their regulations, which apply only to allegations within a football environment or involving children or vulnerable adults.

Their response falls in line with their abysmal record in handling such cases effectively. The 2021 Sheldon Report, which investigated sexual misconduct on young children in English football spanning from the 1970s to the late 2000s, revealed how the absence of proper policies enabled rampant abuse to persist unchecked for decades. Despite this horrific history, it appears that no lessons have been learned, and instead, there is a disturbing déjà vu of negligence.

The players themselves also play a pivotal role in the maintenance of this toxic environment. It’s almost as if there is an unspoken pact of patriarchy that binds them, where some of these players are outright apologists, perpetuating rape culture, while others participate in a collective silence or offer discreet support.

The response to Benjamin Mendy’s rape case demonstrates this perfectly. Mendy was accused of raping six women, including a 17-year-old at the time of alleged incident, but was found not guilty of six counts of rape and one count of sexual assault. Following the verdict, players like Vinícius Jr. and Memphis Depay resorted to invoking the “gold-digging whores” rhetoric to undermine the seriousness of the allegations. 

By Mendy’s own account, former teammates Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling provided him with financial support during his trial. In stark contrast, Héctor Bellerín stood out as one of the few voices to challenge the narrative, pointing out the distinction between a not-guilty verdict and actual innocence.

In England and Wales, one in four women will experience sexual assault after the age of 16, according to Rape Crisis England and Wales. Recent data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reveal that the reported sexual assault rate has almost doubled within the last decade. The figures also revealed that fewer than one in six victims report sexual assault to the police.

Dame Vera Baird, British barrister, politician, and former Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales delivered a scathing critique of the country’s justice system. In her 2021/22 report, she wrote: “In my first annual report in 2020, I made headlines by saying that we were witnessing the effective decriminalisation of rape. During my subsequent years in post as Victims’ Commissioner, little has swayed me from that perspective… For victims, reporting rape is effectively a lottery, and the odds are rarely in your favour.”

These troubling findings highlight that law enforcement in Britain not only struggles to prosecute such cases but also reflects a grand institutional failure that renders it unreliable.

The #MeToo movement demonstrated that accountability often begins outside the legal system.

It did not take arrests for there to be a reckoning; instead it was the bravery of survivors coming forward, media scrutiny, social justice organizations, and public outcry that ultimately drove action. Cosby’s downfall started with a Hannibal Buress stand-up joke. Weinstein’s end was ignited by a tweet. R. Kelly’s unraveling started with a documentary series, and Diddy is facing the music because of a Cassie Ventura civil lawsuit. The criminal justice system often reacts too late and comes at the end when the party’s over.

What needs to happen in men’s football is clear: The misogyny that continues to thrive has to be confronted head on. The organizations at the heart of football—many of which regularly get in bed with oil-rich human rights violators and dubious oligarchs—cannot be trusted to do the right thing on their own. They’ve repeatedly failed when given the opportunity to rise to the occasion. 

To combat this, it’s crucial to develop a sense of community within the football ecosystem. This means forging strong connections between media, fan clubs, and advocacy groups—creating an alliance that can share information, launch campaigns, and discourse around these issues. These communities will be key in applying sustained pressure on clubs, associations, and federations throughout the year, and not just when another incident comes up. Right now, these groups operate in silos, and the approach is mostly reactionary, not proactive. That must change. 

Once these communities are established and fortified, it’s crucial that their focus extends beyond punishment. There is a common misinterpretation of what lies at the heart of the #MeToo movement. When Tarana Burke founded it, her primary intention—still fundamental today—was to provide safety and resources for survivors of sexual and physical violence.

In the case of football, there needs to be a graduation in perspective where the focus isn’t primarily on the perpetrators. In the headline-driven attention economy, survivors are often treated as secondary characters in their own stories. It is imperative to develop a language and  posture that is more survivor-conscious. 

As Burke brilliantly puts it, “When we bind ourselves to the outcomes of these cases, we are constantly up and down with our disappointment, our highs and lows.” Measuring progress solely on punitive means can lead people to feel powerless against societal failures and therefore less inclined to be consistent in taking action. 

Football institutions must be pushed to take decisive actions earlier. Clubs often recruit boys into their academies as young as six and track their physical, mental, and performance development into adulthood. It’s time they use this critical period to incorporate rigorous sexual education, focusing on consent and positive masculinity.

This isn’t just beneficial from an ethical standpoint; it is also practical. It offers clubs a plausible way to safeguard their investment in players by reducing the likelihood of future scandals that could damage the reputation of both the players and the clubs.

The urgency to act has never been greater. With the culture wars raging in the United States, the global resurgence of right-wing politics, and the rising popularity of misogynistic manosphere figures, #MeToo is facing a significant backlash. This climate presents a critical moment for football to finally get its act together.