Alejandro Bedoya Spoke Out on Gun Violence. Now He Is M.L.S.’s Player of the Week.
The Philadelphia Union midfielder grabbed a field microphone after scoring Sunday night and urged Congress to act to prevent more mass shootings.
On Monday morning, Major League Soccer officials met in New York to determine if they should punish a player who had grabbed a field microphone during a national television broadcast on Sunday night and used it to urge Congress to act to end gun violence.
By lunch, M.L.S. had decided that no punishment was merited.
And by late afternoon, the player, Philadelphia Union midfielder Alejandro Bedoya, had been named the league’s player of the week.
The honor capped a whirlwind 24-hour discussion of politics, gun control and the place of both in sports that had begun with nine shouted words from Bedoya during a game on Sunday night in Washington.
A former member of the United States national team, Bedoya had scored the opening goal in the Union’s 5-1 win over D.C. United and then peeled off toward the sideline, where he celebrated with his teammates. But as the gathering broke up, Bedoya headed toward a television microphone placed on the grass, leaned down to grab it and shouted: “Congress, do something now. End gun violence. Let’s go.”
The statement was not out of character for Bedoya, who had expressed — in more explicit terms — a similar call to action on social media in the hours before the match. But it created a potentially uncomfortable situation for M.L.S., which has striven, often to the annoyance of its own fans, to keep political symbols and banners out of its stadiums.
An M.L.S. official, speaking after a league meeting on the incident Monday morning, confirmed that Bedoya would not face a fine or a suspension. Hours later, M.L.S. issued a brief statement that acknowledged the right of players to express their opinions. The statement made no mention of Bedoya specifically, or his decision — apparently spontaneously — to broadcast his opinion to a nationwide audience through a live microphone.
“The Major League Soccer family joins everyone in grieving for the loss of lives in Texas and Ohio, and we understand that our players and staff have strong and passionate views on this issue,” the statement said.
By then, fans and others had rallied behind Bedoya’s sentiment, mounting an ultimately successful campaign to get him voted as the league’s player of the week.
Sunday’s game was broadcast on Fox Sports 1, and Bedoya’s message into the microphone, several of which are positioned around the field at every game to pick up the sounds of the action, could clearly be heard by viewers. It could not be heard in the stadium.
His sentiment was vague, which was understandable given its brevity. But Bedoya’s social media account already had made clear what kind of action he was seeking. Bedoya, the Union’s captain, had posted on Twitter earlier in the day about the weekend mass shootings that killed 29 people in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, saying, “We can start with stricter background checks, red flag laws, making a registry for gun purchases, closing gun show loopholes, and taxing ammunition.”
Though his on-field message was brief, it nonetheless caused a stir. While some athletes have been outspoken on political issues, and have taken actions as varied as kneeling during the anthem and wearing shirts with printed messages during pregame warm-ups, that activity has seldom taken place on the field of play during a game.
In extended postgame remarks, Bedoya reaffirmed his on-field comments. “It’s absurd, man,” he said. “I’m not going to sit idly and watch this stuff happen and not say something. Before I’m an athlete, a soccer player, I’m a human being first.”
His team and his coach, Jim Curtin, expressed their full support.
“I’m on Alejandro’s team on the Philadelphia Union and I’m on Alejandro’s team in support of his comments on gun control,” Curtin said after the game. Curtin called the number of mass shootings in the United States “outrageous.”
Bedoya, 32, is of Colombian heritage but was born in New Jersey and played college soccer in the United States. After spells in Sweden, Scotland and France, he joined the Union in 2016. He was a regular with the United States national team earlier in the decade and represented it at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Last year, after a shooting at a school in Parkland, Fla., near where Bedoya grew up, he expressed solidarity with victims of that attack.
In the hours after Sunday’s game, M.L.S. fans rallied in support of his most recent comments, creating several crowdfunding campaigns to raise money to pay any potential fine he received.
M.L.S. has sometimes struggled to deal with political statements by its fans, juggling supporting a right to free speech with taking action against hateful comments and beliefs.
After news emerged that right-wing extremists had been regularly attending New York City F.C. games, M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber said the league would not bar them pre-emptively because “our job is not to judge and profile any fan.” His position was that the league would only attempt to police political behavior and fan misconduct inside stadiums. But after the comments drew widespread criticism Garber clarified his remarks, saying, “Major League Soccer condemns hateful groups, hateful actions and speech.”
That incident and others did little to cool a simmering feud between the league and the fan groups it has cultivated as the core of its matchday experience. Before this season, the Independent Supporters Council, a coalition of fan groups, and supporters organizations devoted to individual teams took exception to changes to the league’s code of conduct. The revised code barred using “political, threatening, abusive, insulting, offensive language and/or gestures.”
The supporters objected to the word “political,” and the council said in a statement, “We, as an organization, feel strongly on ensuring that displays of human rights are not mistaken for political statements.”
Still, fans in Seattle were barred in July from displaying a flag of the Iron Front, a group that fought the Nazis before World War II. The team said the flag included prohibited political imagery. A team official later apologized for a letter sent to fans that equated antifacist symbols like the one that appeared on the flag with imagery used by violent far-right groups.
On Monday, M.L.S. fans had their say in a different way. In response to a tweet from the league asking fans to choose a player of the week, a decision made collectively in a vote of reporters who cover the league and fan balloting on Twitter, the replies were nearly unanimous. Though Bedoya wasn’t one of the listed candidates, by far the most common response was a hashtag: “#VoteBedoya.”
Hours later, he had won.
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