Football boss Willie Kirk, sacked for sleeping with player, insists ‘I’m not a criminal’ as he breaks his silence

WILLIE KIRK says he “didn’t commit any crime” after being sacked by Leicester City for sleeping with a player.

The Foxes sacked the Scot as boss of their Women’s Super League side six weeks ago after he was initially suspended for the relationship.

Now Kirk, 45, has opened up about the controversy to try and set the record straight.

He told the Daily Mail: “There are a number of things I need to get off my chest.

“First of all, my wife and I have been separated for over a year.

“I think people are just now saying, ‘he’s a bad coach, he’s a bad husband, he’s a bad man.’

Kirk arrived at Leicester in July 2022 as director of football, while he replaced Lydia Bedford as manager in November, before taking over permanently.

They were on a six-game pointless run when he took over, but he helped them beat the drop and guided them to tenth place – but in the months that followed, romance began.

He said: “One of the players contacted me outside of work to express his feelings for me.

“I said ‘that’s ridiculous’ and hung up. That was.

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“I kept shutting him down and said ‘that’s never going to happen, there’s a code of conduct.’

However, things changed when the player suffered an injury last year.

Kirk said: “I think that’s what vindicated us.

“She got injured at the end of the calendar year and was rehabbing away from the training ground.

“Just before Christmas, I agreed to meet on a personal level. She was hurt, so she wasn’t going to stop me from doing my job because she couldn’t be picked.

“Obviously I was trying to justify myself, which never did any good. After Christmas we started seeing each other once a week, so she would come here, or the week after I went to hers.”

Kirk and his partner were then discovered by an employee of another club during a trip to Milan in February.

He said: “When we came back I said, ‘I think this has gone too far, we’ve got to get our heads around this until the end of the season and either I’m leaving the club or you’re leaving the club. ‘

“We agreed that we were taking too much of a risk.”

The discovery of the relationship led to the club’s traction in Kirk.

He said: “I was drawn into a meeting saying a complaint had been made about me and the club’s lawyer would be in touch and external lawyers would arrange an investigation.

“Ten days came and went. We are preparing for the FA Cup match against Liverpool.

“Fifteen minutes before the last practice on Friday, I was pulled into the office by the women’s director and the in-house counsel was there and I knew what it was.

“They said we need you to be honest with us: ‘Are you in a relationship with a player? We know all about it, we know you were in Italy, we know it started right before Christmas’”.

Kirk admitted the relationship, and after a three-week investigation, Leicester sacked him for gross misconduct.

The player still remains at the club, while Kirk unsuccessfully appealed the decision.

He says: “From what I admitted, I was treated and felt like a criminal.

“I feel the club could have coped better. I felt there was a lack of consistency with previous investigations.

“It’s my fault, it’s my fault, I should never have gone through anything. There’s a code of conduct, I’ve been involved in implementing it, I’ve certainly been involved in living by it every day and trying to drive our standards, so it’s absolutely ridiculous that I’m the one that’s broken.

“I think the way it was handled created a lot of uncertainty and rumors and counter-rumors.

“I don’t think that helped the players or the staff and I think we’re seeing that in the results now. They got past the Liverpool game but have drawn two of their last seven games.

“As difficult as it may have been, I felt it behooved me to have an audience with the staff and the players to explain myself and apologize face to face and give me my side of the story.

“It might not have kept me there, but we’ll never know.”

Kirk added: “It was frustrating. Wrongly, I think a lot of that frustration turned into hatred. I hated myself. I hated the club. I had times when I resented the relationship, although the relationship continues.

“This wasn’t a manager exercising his power and saying ‘jump into bed with me and I’ll play you in the starting XI’.

“I just carried this hatred, which is wrong, but it comes from this frustration of not being able to talk about it.

“I am not a criminal, I have not committed a crime. We put an environment at risk, and that’s a pretty big deal.

“The club has made mistakes in the past, we came in, we fixed a points difference that had never been changed before, we kept our WSL status.

“Now I made a mistake and they want nothing to do with me. I felt let down by the club in that regard.”

Kirk began his managerial career in Scotland at Hibernian.

After a brief stint with Scottish non-league Preston Athletic men’s side, he then went into management in the WSL.

He enjoyed three years in charge of Bristol City but left to sign for Manchester United as Casey Stoney’s assistant.

However, he did not stay long with the Red Devils as just six months later, he left to become Everton boss in December 2018.

He was sacked after recording just two wins from the first five games of the 2021/22 season.