New York City football club has confirmed that the club is investigating allegations of sexual harassment levelled at their former player, David Villa.
Villa played for NYCFC between 2014 and 2018, with him being the club’s first signing. During his career he played at Valencia, Atletico Madrid and Barcelona while earning 98 caps and scoring 59 goals for the Spanish national team.
Villa scored 80 goals in 126 appearances during his time in MLS, earning recognition in 2016 as the league’s Most Valuable Player.
The sexual allegations surfaced on Twitter after the Washington Post made a damning report revealing a series of sexual harassment claims that happened at the front office of Washington’s NFL team.
After seeing the report, a former NYCFC intern tweeted that she had been a victim of sexual harrasment during her time at the club, saying that former Barcelona star David Villa repeatedly harassed her while she worked at the club.
According to her she “rarely went a day” without Villa “grabbing” her or “verbally harassing” her.
According to the intern, her superiors at NYCFC thought her allegations were “great comedic material” while adding that she was repeatedly “groped”, “mocked” and “shoved”.
NYCFC has now reacted to the allegations, saying that the club is investigating the matter
“New York City Football Club has learned of the allegations made by a former intern by seeing them on social media,” a club spokesperson said in a statement to Goal.com
“We take this matter extremely seriously and do not tolerate harassment of any kind in any areas of our organization. We immediately launched an investigation into the matter.”
Villa speaking to ESPN, denied the allegations: “I strongly object to the accusations made about me on Twitter. These accusations are entirely false and I deny them.”
