Portland Timbers and Thorns president of soccer Gavin Wilkinson and president of business Mike Golub have been fired, the club announced Wednesday.

On Tuesday, after the release of the report from the U.S. Soccer-commissioned investigation into the NWSL by former attorney general Sally Q. Yates, Timbers and Thorns owner and CEO Merritt Paulson announced that he, Wilkinson and Golub had removed themselves from all Thorns-related decisions.

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Sources around MLS also told The Athletic this week that Wilkinson had signed a new contract with the organization earlier this year. The sources were granted anonymity in order to preserve their relationship with the Thorns/Timbers organization.

The Athletic reached out to the Thorns/Timbers organization for comment earlier Wednesday before news of Wilkinson and Golub’s termination was announced. A Timbers spokesperson told The Athletic all members of the sporting staff who had expiring contracts at the end of 2022 were given extensions, including Wilkinson.

Wilkinson’s contract extension had an effective date of Jan. 1, 2023, “after the club assumed the NWSL/NWSLPA and USSF investigations would be complete and findings from those investigations would be released.” The spokesperson said that in negotiating the new deal the club was “cognizant that new information may be discovered in the course of these investigations, and ensured that it could address those concerns prior to the extension taking effect,” and that the contract included morals clauses with language to “address conduct that was prejudicial to the league and/or the club, and allowing the club to immediately terminate the extension for cause in such instance.”

The spokesperson did not make clear exactly when Wilkinson and the organization agreed to the new contract except that it was agreed in 2022. The spokesperson also did not say how long the contract was scheduled to last.

The new contract for Wilkinson came in the midst of multiple investigations under which Wilkinson’s actions with both the Timbers and the NWSL’s Portland Thorns were being examined. In addition to the Yates investigation and the ongoing NWSL/NWSLPA investigation into the same matters, Wilkinson was also implicated in the Timbers’ failure to report domestic violence accusations against midfielder Andy Polo in 2021.

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The Yates report found that Wilkinson recommended former Thorns coach Paul Riley to the Western New York Flash just months after the head coach was fired by Portland for cause after an internal investigation found evidence of his misconduct with players. One secondhand account in the Yates report stated that Wilkinson told a Western New York executive that Riley was “put in a bad position” by a player who accused him of misconduct and said that he would hire the head coach “in a heartbeat.” Western New York went on to hire Riley early in 2016.

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The Timbers last year failed to report an accusation of domestic violence against Polo to MLS. Proskauer Rose LLP, a law firm which has worked with MLS on numerous business deals in the past, ruled that while the Timbers failed to report the allegation, they did so out of incompetence, not out of a desire to cover it up. The team learned of the allegation just after the incident occurred in May 2021. The Timbers exercised their option on Polo’s contract in December 2021. They released him after the allegations became public this past February. After the league investigation, MLS fined the club $25,000 for the failure to report the incident.

Golub, meanwhile, was found by the investigation to have made an inappropriate sexual remark to current U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone when she was coaching the Thorns in 2013. Former employees also alleged in a report in The Oregonian earlier this summer that Golub created “an atmosphere of disrespect and intimidation towards women and working mothers employed at the club over a span of 11 years.”

With Golub now removed from the club, general counsel Heather Davis has been named interim president of Peregrine Sports, the holding company that operates both the Thorns and the Timbers. Thorns GM Karina LeBlanc will continue in her role and run soccer operations for the women’s team. Timbers technical director Ned Grabavoy will continue in his position and assume Wilkinson’s responsibilities on the men’s side.

Wilkinson had been with the Timbers since joining the team as a player in 2001. He was head coach and general manager for the club’s final years in the lower divisions from 2007-10 and has served as the club’s only GM in MLS since it entered the league in 2011. He was GM of the Thorns from the club’s inception in 2013 until he was suspended from the job in the wake of The Athletic’s reporting into allegations of sexual coercion and misbehavior by former Thorns coach Paul Riley and last year. The Thorns hired LeBlanc as GM in November 2021, then reinstated Wilkinson as president of soccer in January 2022.

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Golub joined the Timbers in 2009 and ran business operations for the Thorns from their inception. He was named MLS executive of the year in 2011 and 2013. Prior to joining the Timbers, he worked for the Portland Trail Blazers and Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA and the New York Rangers in the NHL.

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MLS has yet to release a full statement regarding the Yates report, though the league responded to an inquiry from The Oregonian on Tuesday night about whether it was weighing any disciplinary action against Paulson, Wilkinson or Golub by saying that it “is assessing the situation.” Commissioner Don Garber spoke very highly of Paulson and his father, Hank, the former U.S. secretary of the treasury, when asked about the then-unfolding Polo situation in February.

“I have great faith in the Paulson family,” Garber said, even as three separate investigations were playing out. “Hank Paulson could be the most-involved MLS board member, and I have enormous faith and confidence in Merritt Paulson, who’s built from scratch one of the great sports teams, in any sport, in our country if not throughout North America. I know that he’s very passionate about his teams, both the Portland Timbers and Portland Thorns, and is going to cooperate in anything that is being reviewed.”

(Photo of Gavin Wilkinson: Diego Diaz / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)