Several soccer writers employed by The Athletic were shown the door on Thursday. Among them were Caitlin Murray, who covered the Thorns and the Timbers in Portland, Andrew King, who covered the Columbus Crew, and Matthew De George, who covered soccer in Philadelphia.
Murray and King both confirmed their fate on Twitter. De George’s news was broken by former Athletic Philadelphia colleague David Zeitlin.
The Athletic will be turning to regional coverage of the MLS. One writer will cover several teams in the same geographic area.
This change in strategy for covering soccer comes at an odd time for The Athletic. The site just announced the hiring of Megan Linehan to cover women’s soccer, saying that her work will last well beyond this summer’s World Cup.
Awful Announcing reached out to The Athletic for a comment on the layoffs and future plans for soccer coverage. A spokesperson said “We have heard the concerns that subscribers have about changes to our coverage. We have a big announcement on the way, one that the whole company is very excited about. We’ll be sharing that update very soon.”
No timetable for that announcement was given.
