Evan Whitfield Partners With Common Goal to Launch Anti-Racist Project

Schiller DuCanto & Fleck is pleased to announce that Partner Evan Whitfield has teamed up with the international charity Common Goal, a player-led social movement in global soccer. Evan led the Common Goal coalition in the USA, bringing together professional soccer clubs from three major leagues in North America, the U.S. National Team Supporters Group American Outlaws, and other professional athletes to launch the Anti-Racist Project. This new program is designed to generate action and end racism in soccer across all levels from the players and fans up to the coaches and team owners. 

An Olympian and former professional for the Chicago Fire FC, Evan was heavily quoted in The New York Times, Forbes and several other high profile media outlets sharing his views on the need for “a call to action” for leagues and fans to make a collective societal change to end racism in soccer. 

Quoted in Forbes, Evan points out: "There are no Black majority owners of MLS Clubs, there are zero Black coaches in the NWSL. This needs to change, and the responsibility to make that change lies with everyone – not just people of color. We have a solution that can transform the system from top down and bottom up.” 

He goes on to say, "I’m proud that my former club, Chicago Fire, is one of the pioneers of this project and I’m looking forward to more players, clubs and other soccer leaders joining us."   

Evan shares a personal story in which he tells how fortunate he feels that his first soccer coach was an immigrant from Johannesburg, South Africa. “Here I was in Arizona, surrounded by people who didn’t look like me, and I had a coach who was exactly like me. That was such an empowering thing for a five-year-old soccer player," he says. Evan wants other young players to experience a similar situation without worrying about the added pressure to over perform in order to feel like they are getting the same opportunities as their white teammates.