{"id":529489,"date":"2026-07-07T12:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/529489\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T12:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T12:09:08","slug":"football-willie-kirk-joins-wsl-2-side-durham-two-years-after-leicester-city-sacking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/529489\/","title":{"rendered":"Football: Willie Kirk joins WSL 2 side Durham two years after Leicester City sacking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Willie Kirk has been appointed head coach of Women’s Super League 2 side Durham, two years after he was sacked by Leicester City Women’s team<\/a> for having a relationship with a player.<\/p>\n

The 48-year-old was dismissed in March 2024 following an internal investigation that found he was in a physical relationship with a player, breaching the club’s code of conduct.<\/p>\n

Player-coach relationships are not illegal – as long as no minors are involved – with Kirk returning for the first time to English football.<\/p>\n

Durham’s statement made no mention of his dismissal from Leicester City.<\/p>\n

Codes of conduct among players and managers are a condition of clubs getting a WSL licence, and every club must have a safeguarding officer in place.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport has reached out to Durham for comment about the appointment and to the Football Association (FA) and Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA).<\/p>\n

Personal relationships between players and coaches in women’s football have been criticised for potentially creating a power imbalance in a squad and putting young women at risk.<\/p>\n

England manager Sarina Wiegman has described them as “very inappropriate” and “not healthy”.<\/p>\n

A year on from being sacked, Kirk called for a second chance,<\/a> revealing he was yet to receive an interview after applying for every WSL and English women’s second-division vacancy apart from Arsenal and Manchester City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Willie Kirk has been appointed head coach of Women’s Super League 2 side Durham, two years after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-529489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}