LOS ANGELES — When club owner and magnate Michele Kang sat in the “Futbol W” studio in L.A. to speak with ESPN, there was an obvious question lingering — and one without an obvious answer.
Earlier that day, Kang announced her latest large investment in the U.S. Soccer Federation at an event a few blocks away. Seemingly everyone in town for the game between the U.S. women’s national team and Brazil was asking the same question: Why? Why had Kang, who owns three professional women’s soccer teams, offered to hand over to U.S. Soccer a business she poured $25 million into building — after she already committed to donating $30 million to the federation over the next five years?
The question comes with some awe, but it is accompanied by the confusion that surrounds a first-of-its-kind splash. Kang, who has been building what appears to be the women’s soccer version of City Football Group, has expanded her empire dramatically in a short time. So why donate elsewhere?
“At the end of the day, our vision and our goal is to get all the female teams to adopt these new standards and the way we train our female athletes,” Kang told ESPN. “I thought that would be much better accomplished by an organization like U.S. Soccer as opposed to something private.”
Kang is trying to transform the…
