Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber clarified remarks he made this weekend about far-right-wing supporters at New York City FC games, reiterating the league’s position on inclusion and diversity and strongly condemning hate groups in an exclusive interview on Thursday with The Athletic.
In a conversation with a group of reporters on Sunday, Garber was asked about a recent Huffington Post story on the extremist presence at NYCFC games—a development previously reported by The Athletic in November. The Huffington Post story outlined the activities of several fans, including Irvin “Irv” Antillon, who has a documented history with multiple hate groups groups and reportedly was present at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.
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Garber’s response—that the story was about behavior taking place outside of MLS stadiums, and that “our job is not to judge and profile any fan,”—drew criticism for being weak on an issue involving hate groups and hate speech.
Speaking on Thursday, Garber emphasized that MLS is committed to diversity and inclusion, and that the league stands against hate groups. Turning those broad sentiments into enforceable policy, however, is a complicated proposition.
“I want to be very clear, if I would do anything differently when I made those comments, it would be to reiterate a view that anyone that knows our league and follows our league and knows me, knows that Major League Soccer condemns hateful groups, hateful actions and speech,” Garber said. “We’ve never tolerated it, and we never will. That is a commitment by our owners, it’s a commitment by our players, it’s certainly a commitment by me as commissioner personally.
“These groups are abhorrent to all of us, and they are against everything we stand for as a league and everything I stand for personally. We have a very clear code of conduct for our matches, and in that code of conduct it is very clear that any hateful language, symbols or violence, or any intimidation, is going to result in sanctions.”
Multiple times over the course of a nearly 30-minute interview, Garber pointed to the league’s record on diversity and inclusion and efforts such as the “Soccer for All” campaign, saying, “these are our values and they are etched in our code of conduct… and etched in how we define ourselves.” He also said that the fans in question represent “less than a handful” of the 10 million fans who attended MLS games last season—“a tiny fringe that in no way represents our fan base and certainly doesn’t represent our league.”
Policing those fans, especially when unseemly behavior takes place outside of MLS stadiums, is a complicated issue. Garber said the league works closely with clubs, its own supporter management staff and stadium security to create a safe environment at games, but that their reach extends only so far.
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The league is clearly still wrestling with the limits of its purview over fans when it comes to actions taken outside of MLS events. On the one hand, Garber said, behavior “specific to within our stadium or our stadium grounds” is open for punishment—for instance if a fan were to wear a shirt bearing an opprobrious message or hold “a hateful or intimidating sign,” or behave in an intimidating way at an MLS game.
However, in its fan code of conduct, the league does reserve the right to punish fans for certain activities on social media. The fan code of conduct states that “threatening and/or abusive behavior directed towards other fans, players, officials or staff members will be subject to sanctions even if done outside the time period of a MLS-SUM event (including on social media).”
In other words, MLS has determined that it can take action in response to social media posts specifically when they threaten or abuse people associated with MLS, including fans, but not necessarily when those posts include what could be considered ugly or offensive sentiments about other subjects.
“What is being talked about here is how do you manage people who are clearly deplorable—deplorable to me, deplorable to anyone that is part of the Major League Soccer family—if they have not misbehaved and violated the code,” Garber said. “It gets very difficult to address that person’s life.”
Garber said the league is looking into whether the NYCFC fans in question violated MLS’s fan code of conduct. A league spokesman confirmed a Guardian report that Antillon was permanently banned by NYCFC last year due to an incident at an away game that breached the fan code of conduct. NYCFC also banned six people in 2015, who they believe were linked to hate groups, for violence ahead of one of the first games against the New York Red Bulls, actions that took place in and around the grounds of an MLS match.
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The league announced an updated fan code of conduct on March 1st of this year that included the use of “political” language, including on signs, as a breach of the code. That language was flagged by the Independent Supporters Council, which has sought clarity on what the league considers political language.
In the interview, when Garber was asked to clarify the league’s stance on political language in the new code of conduct, he indicated that the league was still working through how to enforce it.
“My understanding is Timbers Army and many other clubs came to us and asked for permission to hang ‘Refugees Welcome’ signs in the stadium, and while many people in the country would view that as a political statement, we approved those banners,” Garber said. “The vast majority of our fans are there to attend a soccer game and support their club and there are small groups of fans who are interested in expressing their views while they’re attending the game. And the league needs to come up with a policy in order to manage that, so that we are not getting ourselves into a position where we have to determine what is political and what is not. Because certainly what could be viewed as political in one part of country is very different than what could be viewed as political in another part of the country.”
The newly-added text on political language in the fan code of conduct acknowledges that fans sometimes use sports stadiums as venues for making political speech, but there are clearly still questions over the interpretation of the policy.
“We have supported, very much so, the idea of having signs and having tifos and other ways where fans can express their support, but we have been very focused on ensuring that those signs are not political in nature,” Garber said. “And we deal with that on a case-by-case basis. I understand this will be an evolutionary process and one which we’ll continue to have to work internally, but also with our fan groups, to ensure we are all working together to have the right environments for all of our fans.”
The presence of members of hate groups at NYCFC games also led to criticism of team administrators for their slow response to an issue some fans had been flagging since 2015. City Football Group also operates the Premier League’s Manchester City and is owned by Sheik Mansour, an Emirati royal—the half-brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates—who also serves as one of the country’s deputy prime ministers. The UAE has been roundly criticized by human rights organizations for some of its practices, and Amnesty International has criticized the Premier League for allowing Manchester City to “sportswash” the country’s intolerant image.
Asked if the outside activities of the NYCFC ownership group—and those of non-MLS enterprises owned by the league’s other ownership groups—should impact participation in MLS, Garber said that NYCFC was not “influenced by anything other than ensuring that they’re managing this situation in accordance with the MLS fan code of conduct.”
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Asked in a follow-up how the league balanced the non-MLS practices of those ownership groups against the league’s own efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, Garber emphasized that the league and its owners stood together on those issues, but did not directly address the issues with City Football Group and Abu Dhabi.
“Let me reiterate it again: We are proud of the fact that we have the most diverse, inclusive fan base in America and that we have been a leader in providing an inclusive environment for our fans, our players and staff,” Garber said. “And that’s a shared commitment by all of our owners. That is an unquestionable shared commitment by all of our owners. They all are committed to the Soccer for All campaign, they all are committed to protecting the values that we have as a league and ensuring that we are properly managing and policing abhorrent conduct. You should not have any doubt that this is something fully embraced by all of our owners, by everyone in the league office, from me on down. It is everything we stand for.”
(Photo by Ira L. Black/Corbis via Getty Images)