NEW YORK - Sources with Major League Soccer (MLS) indicate that the league hired journalists from The Athletic to investigate leaks from the employees within Major League Soccer to The Athletic detailing their COVID-19 plans.

“Executives with MLS are very paranoid that people from inside the league are leaking information to journalists outside the league,” stated one source with the league. “From what I understand they hired journalists to track down the people leaking the information to themselves.”

According to an internal memo (chat log) from The Athletic, the collection of journalists employed there were tasked by management to find the person leaking information to themselves.

“I take care of my sources, so I cannot reveal who implied that,” stated one anonymous Journalist. “However, I can assure everyone that I take my responsibilities seriously so I will be investigating myself to see if I can crack my own sources.”

For their part, MLS denied that they contacted The Athletic, but internal sources state that they’ve been working on squashing the flow of information out of the league office.

“They’ve been working on bounties, rewards, punishments, just about anything to stop people from talking,” stated one anonymous MLS employee. “They’ve had video conference meetings about this and emails. At this point, I’m thinking of turning someone in just so I can get the bounty on them. Instead, I’m just going to send this information over to The Athletic to see if shining a light on the situation can make the working environment more stable.”

The Nutmeg News will have more on this as MLS decides to try to hire Grant Wahl to investigate The Athletic to investigate the league to investigate the employees leaking to The Athletic.