“So what if they called us monkeys?” said one attendee at a Monday night meeting with players from the New York Red Bulls’ male youth academy teams last month. “Fuck it. We keep balling.” A team meeting with teenage soccer players isn’t normally something to make news but this particular event, held in 200-plus capacity event space at Red Bull Arena with every player from the club’s top under-12 to under-17 teams, was a little different.
Also in the room were former Major League Soccer stars Bradley Wright-Phillips, Earl Edwards Jr, Jalil Anibaba, Ray Gaddis, and Calen Carr as well as former USMNT legends Eddie Pope and Jozy Altidore. Notably, all the former players were Black. Former footballers love to talk, especially about the old days, but the main topic that night in late May was not about winning MLS titles nor being the first American to score in La Liga.
Instead, the talk was about racism and how the kids might deal with it in the aftermath of multiple incidents involving New York Red Bulls youth academy teams. In April, the club withdrew its teams from the Generation Adidas Cup, a prestigious youth tournament held in Florida that included teams from 29 MLS youth academies as well as international participation from the likes of Manchester United, Arsenal and Flamengo.
Red Bulls withdrew its teams after its youth players were racially abused in matches against Hajduk Split and Monterrey. “Why do colored players like myself continue to be called monkeys by international teams?” one player posted on his social media account at the time. “Today the same thing happened to my teammate. Please do something.”
Pope, the former USMNT defender, described the May event as “putting a flag in the ground.”
“It shows that this is not going to be tolerated,” Pope told the Guardian, “[Racism] doesn’t just happen and go away until next time. This event says that when it happens we’re going to address it, we’re going to talk about it, we’re going to involve some men of color who have been involved in the game for a while, and we’re going to talk about how we can support each other in it.
“If you don’t do that then it just repeats itself. That’s what happens in Europe and it happens over and over again. You have world-class players crying in press conferences, grown men, because they have been so hurt by racism.”
The meeting will not eradicate racism but attendees described the event as a success with powerful messages to youth players and their families from experienced Black players.
“The message I wanted to convey is to be proud of your upbringing,” Altidore, whose rollercoaster playing career took him from MLS to Spain, England, Turkey, and Holland and back to MLS, told the Guardian. “[Your upbringing] is what makes you special and gives you the tools later in life to be confident and secure a world that can get complicated and hard to understand at times. Be proud of your heritage and your accents and where you come from.”
“These incidents [for the youth teams in April] unfortunately weren’t surprising,” Altidore adds. “Our country is still in a very tense state. For better or worse, people have lost a grip on compassion and empathy.”
Hosted at Red Bull Arena and attended by New York Red Bull’s front office and academy staff, the club declined to comment on the event with a spokesperson saying the organization does not discuss internal matters publicly. It is understood the event was the brainchild of the New York Red Bulls’ head of academy scouting Tiger Fitzpatrick, who has since been given formal internal recognition by the club for how he managed the aftermath of the April incidents – and Black Players for Change executive director Allen Hopkins.
“I wanted to make sure the players were supported, that they were heard, that they were valued and that a whole bunch of people who look like them have done it at the highest level,” said Hopkins. “Part of the message was about taking back your power. I wanted to make sure the community responded. It was an incredibly moving evening.”
Pope, now sporting director for MLSNext club Carolina Core, said he wasn’t surprised when he learned about the April incidents but was “disappointed” youth teams were perpetuating what has been seen in professional leagues.
“A real root of racism is that you have some nations or countries that are homogenous and they just don’t get the exposure to other types of individuals,” Pope says. “There is a saying that discrimination rarely exceeds experience, so if something like that happens to you, you don’t do it to other people. But if racism never happens to you and you really don’t understand other groups of people, then it is pretty easy to do.
“Some fans say they [make racist comments] just to get under a player’s skin but they don’t have an understanding of how painful that can be to someone else. The powers that be have had an issue on how to punish racism [appropriately] and I don’t know if that is having an effect. It doesn’t seem to be. It’s always, like, back to the drawing board.”
In 2017, Hajduk Split, from Croatia, had its stadium closed to fans for one game and was fined by Uefa after allegations of racist chanting during games. Pope ties a failure by authorities to adequately address issues at the highest level with the allegations in Florida at the youth level.
“Is it a surprise that the youth team does it?” Pope said. “Especially when the youth team sees what the punishment is?”
Pope said that while he did not recall many racist issues as a professional player in the United States, his experience as a youth player on and off the pitch was different.
“More so as a younger player and growing up in the South and being called lots of different things,” Pope recalled, “For me, life outside of soccer was kind of like that too. In some cases, for these kids, it is not as prevalent as it was for me at my age outside of the game. It was easy for me to use [racism] as fuel for my fire and to play harder and score some goals. It was just a different time. Now we know, and we have learned, that you are not supposed to ask kids to be playing through that stuff. Racism immediately needs to be addressed. Back then, when I was younger, nobody did anything about it. It was just something that you had to deal with.”
Pope said he was impressed by how the Red Bulls academy players supported each other and recognized the collective experience regardless of what race teammates were.
“One of the unconscious biases we have is that the kids of color are the only ones who are dealing with something, right?” Pope said. “We also know that sometimes, with white kids, whenever they show up, it’s like, well everything is OK for them all the time. And that is not the case. It is not always OK and they need support as well. This is about kids coming together and it looks like these teams all take care of each other as a whole and it is not just incumbent on one group of people to support the other. I think that [Red Bulls] group has that and it is really important.
“Typically, for the most, you don’t see blatant expressions of racism within a team because all the players know each other. You spend so much time with each other that you get to know a person and you understand the cultural differences. You understand why they do the things they do, eat the foods they do, say the things they do, why the parents dress the way they do. Whatever it is, you learn it. Once you learn it, everybody understands it.”
Hopkins believes the May event was an important milestone for the Black soccer community. What happens next is also important, he says, but a win on the night should be acknowledged and celebrated.
“The night was like a 4-0 win on the road.” Hopkins says. “For the first 15 minutes after that type of result you think you can do anything. You have got to take these moments and these lessons and apply them. I’m excited to see the follow up to this meeting but it’s ok to say that this was a success because the last word is our word. When it happens again the players will be ready for it.”
It’s notable that Hopkins said when racist incidents happen again on a soccer pitch not if.
“Some of these kids are going to go through real stuff and it’s going to happen again, “ Hopkins confirms. “But don’t let someone else’s racism prevent you from voting, from getting a job, from buying a home, or from playing soccer.”
