Keith Strudler: Soccer Signs

When I was in high school, a group of four of us decided to start a fan club for one our School’s basketball players, a guy named Bill, who to be clear was a friend of ours. Bill was what you’d call a bench warmer, meaning the vast majority of his playing time came in practice, not the actual games. So trying to get Bill a little more game time, we called ourselves the “Play Bill Fan Club.” At every game, we each had a sign that had one giant letter on each side. Flipped one way, it said “PLAY.” The other, it read, “BILL.” We’d lead cheers and tried to be as serious as we could about something that was kind of a joke.

I don’t think we did much to get Bill more court time. But the rest of the fans seemed to like it, and those signs gave us a sense of purpose. As did the signs carried by a group of soccer fans of the Portland Timbers of the MLS. That’s past tense, because these particular signs are no longer allowed in this or any other MLS stadium. It wasn’t vulgarity, or cursing, or anything demeaning about the other team. These signs had symbols of the “Iron Front,” an organization routed in anti-fascist ideology founded in Germany in opposition to the Nazis. The vast majority of Americans had likely never heard of this group until recently when far-right fascist groups gathered in Portland for a rally, and were confronted by far-left anti-fascist groups using the symbol of – wait for it -- the Iron Front. Which has placed this symbol that was a regular sight at Pacific Northwest soccer games at the heart of the domestic terror conversation in the US, something most professional sports leagues want no part of.

Proactively, the MLS had created a new fan code of conduct this season, which, among other things, bans any sign with political, threatening, abusive, insulting, or offensive language. And to be fair, the Iron Front is political – although likely would have been largely ignored if not for the rise in American extremism. All American professional sports leagues have rules about things you can and can’t say on a sign. But the MLS is the only major professional league in the US to specifically ban political signs.

Not surprisingly, this hasn’t been received well by everyone, especially in places like Portland, where people take both their soccer and their far-left politics quite seriously. The MLS Players Association also took offense to the ban, for a couple of reasons. For one, players also want the right to political expression – like Philadelphia’s Alejandro Bedoya had in calling for stronger gun laws after scoring a goal in a game earlier this month. And players also recognize the risk of losing fans by making the experience less enjoyable. Just ask NFL fans about that.

Now to their credit, Portland’s front office did assure fans they too stand against fascism – and really, a whole bunch of distasteful –isms. And fans are more than welcome to cheer about how much they hate fascism, or wear patches or whatever. They just can’t hold up giant signs with a logo that has perhaps been coopted by a violent subculture.

A couple of key points here, neither of which are going to make enforcing this policy any easier for the League. First, soccer as a sport has longstanding ties to political movements, particularly in places like Europe where the sport is historically interwoven with the political culture of any region and its people. That’s a bit different than most popular American team sports, where the underlying ideology is competitive capitalism. So to the extent that American MLS soccer aspires to rival more established European leagues, expressly forbidding the sport’s tie to political ideologies may provide challenges in cultivating a fervent fan base – whether that’s fair or not.

Second, it’s nearly impossible to truly divest sport from politics, even if we want to. Everything from race and gender equity to labor vs management battles are all negotiated on the field of play. And especially given the increasingly divided nature of the American populace, trying to keep politics off the field and out of the stands may be like trying get people to ride their bikes to work. And if you don’t believe me, just as the NFL, who still can’t fully maneuver something as innocuous as the Anthem. So while I do understand MLS’s policy aspiration, I also think we haven’t seen the last of political signs in the stands.

Of course, if fans are looking for signs a little less controversial, I may be able to help. It’s been a while, but the Play Bill Fan Club can always use some extra letters.

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