Former MVP Dwayne De Rosario helped launch "Don't Cross The Line." (MLS)
Last night's match against the Portland Timbers will be one that the San Jose Earthquakes want to get out of their heads pretty quickly, especially in light of the fact that the two teams play again in San Jose next weekend. However, the night turned especially ugly for one of the Quakes' forwards, and for once, I'm not talking about Steven Lenhart.
San Jose's Alan Gordon lit up what was a rather dull affair between the two sides for all the wrong reasons during the second half Sunday night. The night started with the headline of San Jose's "Bash Brothers" (Lenhart/Gordon) starting together for the first time since late last year. (Bash Brothers is about as dumb as the Goonies. This isn't Oakland A's Baseball in the late 80s.) By the end of the evening Lenhart had been subbed out, failing to impact the match at all. Gordon found himself sent off for a second yellow card, but not before he had done something that will probably cause him a good deal more angst in the weeks to come.
After a bit of a scrum with Timber's captain Will Johnson early on in the second half, the NBC Sports Network cameras caught Gordon calling Johnson a "f*gg*t" clear as day. Oops. Flash back to last year's playoff series between Real Salt Lake and the Seattle Sounders, and you'll remember that Seattle defender Marc Burch hurled the very same slur at the very same Will Johnson. He was suspended for three games. How did Johnson respond to Gordon's potty mouth tonight? He simply held up three fingers to the San Jose forward. Gordon's reaction? Check the pic, which was grabbed and posted by Ives Galarcep (@SoccerByIves)
Yup, you're in trouble buddy.
Now, to Gordon's credit, he issued this apology late last night via San Jose Website:
“I sincerely apologize for what I said in our game tonight. Although I said it in the heat of the moment, that language has no place in our game. That is not my character, but there is still no excuse for saying what I said. I made a mistake and I accept full responsibility for my actions.”
Ok, this where I'm going to take a bit of a different turn than a lot of whats floating around on the web about this. First off, I'm going to give Mr. Gordon the benefit of the doubt and assume that, despite the idiocy of his comments tonight, he's not a raging homophobic pig. However, I'm not totally going to buy into his "heat of the moment" argument either. I get pretty irate sometimes, and when I do, I get loud, and I swear, a lot. However, I can honestly say that even in the heat of the moment I've never blasted somebody with those words, the same as I wouldn't go with "f*ck*ng N*gg*r."
What's the difference? Am I better person than Mr. Gordon? Of course not. I don't know the guy, but I suspect he's a pretty decent human being. The difference is a cultural one between the two. I've had the filter permanently installed in my thinking that says "That's not ok to say, no matter how pissed off you get at somebody or a situation." Now, in the testosterone drenched culture of professional sports, even in the United States, things are different. The NFL made a number of nasty headlines over the last year because of rampant anti-gay thinking. Think about it, if you're a male professional athlete that prides yourself on your power and masculinity, what's the biggest insult that you could hurl at another athlete, this one in question, of course.
This is where the cultural shift needs to happen, in my opinion. This is also where Major League Soccer's Don't Cross the Line campaign comes into play. The campaign was launched for 2013 targeting these kinds of incidents both on the pitch and in the stands (think the YSA chant). Now, I don't think that this kind of thing is rampant in MLS. There have been three high profile incidents in the last year or so. Certainly that's three too many, but I don't think it's an indictment of a high level of homophobia in the league. What I do think is that we need to work harder to make this cultural shift happen.
This has to take place at all levels of the league and club organizations. Just slapping a player with a hefty fine and hitting him with a three game ban every time this happens isn't enough. The clubs need to police it and stamp it out, both on the pitch and in the stands. It needs to happen in practice as well as in games when the TV cameras are on. Clubs need to take action against Supporter's Groups that engage in this kind of stuff. It's not encouraging to tune in and hear YSA or even the actual Spanish version of it at MLS matches. It's an embarrassment to the league to turn on a game and hear certain fans of certain clubs singing about how the opposing team is gonna "take it up the ass." It's a disgrace to MLS and to the sport, just like all the racist crap in Europe is. There is NO difference.
Generally I think MLS does a pretty good job promoting a safe and fairly clean atmosphere in which to take in a football match. After all, we don't have hooligans ripping up seats like the Millwall folks did at Wembley this weekend. We don't have fans going at each others throats or attacking players like they do in South America. We don't have the piss jugs being thrown at players like they do in Mexico, but that doesn't mean that there aren't issues that need to be addressed. The "Don't Cross the Line" campaign is a great first step, and I have every confidence that the league will dish out an appropriate punishment to Mr. Gordon, but it needs to get deeper, to permeate all levels of the league, clubs, and supporters. Most of my readers are MLS watchers/fans of one stripe or another, and I ask you to join the league in this campaign. Hopefully by initiating these cultural shifts, incidents like these will become a thing of the past in MLS.
Until then, many of us might enjoy the delicious irony of someone getting into one of the Earthquake's players heads, for once.
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