Latest news with #St.LouisCitySC
The South African
3 days ago
- Sport
- The South African
Breaking: Kaizer Chiefs release TWO players
Kaizer Chiefs have announced the departure of two players. The two players set to leave are Njabulo Blom and Sabelo Radebe. The club announced the departures on Friday however, more players are expected to leave Amakhosi in the coming weeks. 'After completing his loan spell with Kaizer Chiefs, Njabulo Blom will return to his parent club, St. Louis City SC, in the United States of America. Blom rejoined the Amakhosi at the beginning of September 2024 under an agreement to spend a season at his boyhood Club in the Betway Premiership,' the club said in a statement. 'After donning the famous Gold & Black jersey for the second time in his career, the Dobsonville-born player departs Amakhosi with a Nedbank Cup gold medal, and we wish him all the best in Major League Soccer (MLS).' Blom rejoined Kaizer Chiefs this season on loan but only played 19 league matches, which most he featured from the bench. Another player released is Sabelo Radebe after featuring less than 20 times for Amakhosi in five years. 'Radebe, now 25, joined Amakhosi as a teenager and progressed through the junior ranks in the Kaizer Chiefs Youth Development Academy before moving up to the reserve team in the 2017/18 season,' the club said. He signed after earning a spot in the senior team in the 2020/21 season, following an impressive performance in the DStv Diski Challenge. 'Last season, he had a one year loan spell at KwaZulu-Natal based, Richards Bay FC. We wish 'Bibo' all the best in his future endeavours,' Kaizer Chiefs said in a statement. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Bluesky for the latest news.
New York Times
05-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
San Diego FC's CEO can turn to a past playbook to fix a new fan problem
San Diego FC CEO and co-owner Tom Penn remembers where he was when the homophobic chants started on Saturday night. He was standing right next to MLS commissioner Don Garber, who had flown in to witness the club's inaugural home match. The chant, which has been present in Mexican soccer for decades, started out quietly enough, with a smattering of fans belting out the Spanish word 'p**o,' often considered to be a homophobic slur, during opposing goal kicks. Over the course of the match, played against St. Louis City SC, it grew in intensity. By the second half, it became something Penn and Garber could no longer ignore. Advertisement MLS has its own roadmap for dealing with the chant, borrowed from FIFA, global soccer's governing body, and it was enacted late in the match. Fans were warned via the video board and an in-stadium audio announcement to stop doing the chant on three occasions. The last of those warnings added an additional threat that the match could be abandoned. Standing next to Garber, Penn now says he was 'disappointed but not super surprised' at the presence of the chant. 'We certainly knew it was a possibility given the history and where we're located,' Penn told The Athletic on Tuesday. 'But we didn't know (whether it would actually happen or not).' There's no confusion anymore. The incidents marred the home debut for San Diego, which played to a 0-0 draw in front of a sellout crowd at Snapdragon Stadium, on the heels of upsetting the defending champion LA Galaxy in their season opener. In many ways, the club cannot be blamed for the presence of the chant, and its head coach and sporting director were both quick in expressing their disgust at the fans who'd taken part in it. The chants heard toward the end of the match emanated from more than just a small handful of supporters, with large segments of the stadium joining in. After years of pushing Mexican teams to eradicate the chant, it is now MLS's turn to take another swing at one of Concacaf's most vexing issues. 'It is a very complicated issue,' Penn said. 'It's very emotional and it's very divisive. But it's not a difficult position for us to take. Our position is clear: we want to be a club that's inclusive for all, one that is a source of entertainment and joy and fun. And this is the opposite of that in that it creates such a wedge and it's so divisive … (The chant) isn't us. It's not part of what we're going to do. So I think really the first step is us stating that. Now the audience that comes knows that. We didn't pre-state that before our first match, but now we're going to be very clear about that message.' GO DEEPER San Diego FC fans' actions put MLS expansion club to immediate test Penn and others at SDFC are actively working on a plan of action to combat future use of the chant, which he says the club will roll out soon. This won't be his first rodeo when it comes to dealing with this particular problem. Penn was the president at LAFC in 2018, that club's debut season, and the parallels continue. LAFC was confronted with the chant in its first match, too. And Penn, along with others at the club, were swift to act. Advertisement 'We had to circle the wagons around here and try to look at best practices,' Penn told The Athletic in 2019, 'and we started to discover that there aren't any. Nobody had a playbook on this. We determined internally as a club that we were going to be very clear and say this is not us. This is not our club. This is not what we stand for. Therefore this behavior will not be tolerated. What was more impressive was that the 3252 [LAFC's supporters] leadership felt exactly the same.' Prior to LAFC's subsequent match, Penn, alongside club captain Laurent Ciman and a contingent of supporters, appeared on the field. They pleaded with fans to discontinue using the chant. It worked. Though it returned briefly later in the season, LAFC hasn't had to deal with the issue since. Other MLS clubs have had mixed results when it comes to combatting the issue. The chant used to be a mainstay at Houston Dynamo games until the club and its supporters mounted an effort to eradicate it. Though it's used less frequently, the chant does at times persist in Houston, as it does in a handful of other MLS stadiums. LAFC's crosstown rivals, the Galaxy, had their own brief battle with it. The league itself has led efforts to combat the use of offensive language. It successfully eradicated another goal-kick chant that had become customary — one where supporters belted out 'You suck, a**hole!' — some years back. Globally, successful efforts to end the use of the word used Saturday night typically center around engaging with supporters directly, as Penn and others did at LAFC. In San Diego, Penn says the club's front office has a strong relationship with its fan groups. The club's head coach, Mikey Varas, was quick to mention on Saturday that none of the chants had originated with the club's officially sanctioned supporters groups, which is something Penn eagerly reiterated. 'We were 100 percent engaged with our supporters' leaders both before, during and after the match,' Penn said. 'We talked to them in advance of this match, we know 100 percent that it did not come from the supporters. They are exactly aligned with us on this issue and they would like to not have this be part of our experience. It's not part of our club, it's not part of us.' Advertisement So much of the issue with policing the use of the chant at games is how unpredictable its use is and how difficult it can be to identify individual fans who participate in it. Mexico's football federation, alongside U.S. Soccer, has poured resources and manpower into combatting the issue, with mixed results. The Mexican federation has gone as far as instituting a 'Fan ID' system in recent years, one that is capable of using facial recognition to catch fans in the act. That sort of technology isn't actively used in MLS stadiums, though some of the league's clubs have dabbled in facial recognition in some form or another. Speaking on Tuesday, Penn was clear enough in suggesting that the club would absolutely remove any fan who can be clearly identified as having participated in the chant. 'We're not gonna reinvent the wheel here, we may very well learn from (LAFC's) success,' Penn said. 'We're considering the specific steps we can take and then the specific communication — the first part is just the communication of what the expectation is. But I would say we will absolutely be enforcing it and we will eject those that are clearly (using discriminatory language). We'll see how all those action steps that we take in our next match work, and then we'll modify from there.' Penn and many others are hoping that San Diego can mirror LAFC's success. Hopefully it's as easy as having an impassioned conversation with the club's fanbase. For now, though, a problem so frequently viewed as one that encompasses only Mexican teams once again belongs to an American one. 'Our first match was so magnificent in so many ways,' Penn said. 'And we're establishing ourselves as a new product in this market. It was 99 good things, but this is the one thing everybody likes to talk about in the moment.' (Top image: Illustration by Dan Goldfarb/The Athletic; Photo byfor LA84 Foundation)
New York Times
02-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
San Diego FC coach, sporting director denounce homophobic chants at inaugural home match
San Diego FC's first-ever home match was marred Saturday night by the repeated use of homophobic language by fans, leading the club's head coach and sporting director to speak out after the match to call the chants 'unacceptable' and 'outside of our value system.' The one-word, homophobic chants, which have been common in Mexican soccer for years, largely occurred late in San Diego's 0-0 draw against St. Louis City SC. On three occasions, a segment of the 34,506 fans in attendance at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego were warned over video boards to discontinue their use of the chant. Advertisement 'Discrimination has no place in our sport and in our stadiums and will not be tolerated,' the onscreen message read. 'The fan chant that was used is offensive and we ask that fans do not continue to use this chant.' The third and final warning to fans suggested the match might be abandoned if the chants continued. Snapdragon Stadium sits 20 miles from the U.S. border with Mexico. San Diego FC coach Mikey Varas, who is bilingual, addressed the use of the chant in his postgame remarks, first in Spanish and then in English. 'The chant that was heard tonight is unacceptable,' Varas told reporters at the stadium. 'It's outside of our value system. It doesn't represent the players, myself or the club, and it certainly doesn't represent San Diego or Baja California. It's not a reflection of who we are. We're a community full of love, of support, and we believe in the power of diversity.' Varas also suggested that the chant wasn't performed by the club's largest supporters group, La Frontera. 'This came from more the general population in the seats, and it wasn't everybody,' Varas said. 'I understand that, but it was enough people, and I just want to make very clear that it has no place here. If they're going to continue to come to the game and make that chant, it's better that they don't come here.' 'It's totally against who we are as a club and as people,' added San Diego sporting director and general manager Tyler Heaps. 'One of our core values is to be a good person, and I think that's what we'll continue to stand behind. It's totally unacceptable, and obviously, us as a club, we'll make sure it does not continue into the future.' Fans typically perform the chant during goal kicks by the opposing team, shouting the one-word slur as the keeper strikes the ball. The chant has long been used in Mexican football and the Mexican football federation has faced repeated scrutiny for the chant. In 2019, FIFA, global football's governing body, introduced its own protocol aimed at eradicating the chant. Advertisement That protocol is fairly clear. The first time the chant is heard, the match is stopped and a warning is issued to fans in the stadium. The second occurrence of the chant results in play being stopped and both teams returning to their respective locker rooms. In the most severe of cases, the match can be abandoned. The Mexican Football Federation has been fined multiple times for fans' use of the chant, and Mexican fans who've engaged in it have forced repeated stoppages in play during matches between the U.S. men's national team and the Mexican national team. In 2023, a Concacaf Nations League match between the two countries ended several minutes early after Mexican supporters refused to stop using the chant. The chant is not commonplace in Major League Soccer, but the league has had sporadic struggles with it. The league's two Los Angeles-based clubs — LA Galaxy and LAFC — have both spoken out against the chant, with the latter of those two teams mounting an organized effort to eradicate the chant from its matches. GO DEEPER Mexico federation's ongoing struggles to combat homophobic chant
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
MLS Preview: St. Louis City SC
St. Louis City SC's debut season in 2023 was the culmination of many, many years of 'close but no cigar,' 'better luck next time,' and 'you were THIS close' messages from the MLS brass. In 2007 the city was floated as a possible relocation place for Real Salt Lake in that owner's negotiations/threats to build a new stadium. An unsuccessful bid ensued in 2009, the MLS favoring other cities over St. Louis despite approved construction plans for a huge soccer complex. In 2014 there was ANOTHER bid tied to a dual-use stadium for the future club and the NFL Rams franchise. The Rams moved to Los Angeles in 2015, and everyone went back to the drawing board. Finally, after two years of negotiation, the club was officially granted a franchise in late 2019, with their inaugural season scheduled for 2022. Well, along came COVID, which slowed but did not halt the stadium construction. It did, however, push their season starter to 2023. And it was worth the wait. St. Louis City SC didn't just hit the ground running, they barely touched ground before taking flight. Under sporting director Lutz Pfannenstiel and coach Bradley Carnell they played a furious, pressing style of dynamic, risk-reward soccer. It was brilliant and exciting. They broke four MLS records for an expansion team, and tied one other (see the Other Facts section for details) in 2023, cruising into the postseason having won the Western Conference. Unfortunately, they were crushed in the first round of the playoffs. City SC are the only female-majority owned team in the MLS. Carolyn Kindle, president of Enterprise Holders, and Jo Ann Taylor, also an Enterprise Holders executive (both are heirs to the Enterprise Rent-a-Car fortune) have the controlling stake. Jim Kavanaugh, CEO of World Wide Technology, is a minority partner. With two seasons under their belt, there's a short list to pick from. Indiana Vassilev (United States) – Midfielder Current record holder for most appearances (75). Roman Bürki (Switzerland) [DP] – Goalkeeper 2023 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year winner. Current team captain. João Klauss (Brazil) – Forward [DP] The club's first Designated Player. Scored the winning goal in their debut match against Austin FC. Top goal scorer for the club (15). Play home games at Energizer Park, capacity 22,423. They have vibrant and rowdy supporters, including: St. Louligans (the oldest supporter group, founded in 2010) St. Louis CITY Punks No Nap City Ultras (composed of parents and mostly young children) STL Santos (for Spanish speakers) Fleur de Noise (a drum corps providing percussion support to chants) Below are the records the team set in 2023 First expansion team to win all five opening games (inclusive of winning four opening games). Most wins by an expansion team (17). First expansion team to win their division in their debut season. Tied – Most goal scorers for an expansion team in their debut season (16) Though not recognized as a formal derby, given their regional proximity there's a rivalry between Sporting Kansas City. After the record-breaking 2023 campaign, 2024 was going to be an uphill battle. They once again started with five undefeated games; the rub was that four of them were draws. After that, the hill turned out to be a cliff, and the squad just couldn't scale it. Coach Carnell was fired on July 1. The team's record was a limp 8W – 13D – 13L for 37 points Finished in.12th place in the Western Conference; 24th overall A mighty, mighty collapse, to say the least St. Louis had a very busy mid-season transfer window during which they cleaned house, so this offseason has been relatively quiet. They have a new coach, Swede Olof Mellberg from IF Brommapojkarna, but only two new faces hit the roster, highlighted below: Timo Baumgartl (Germany) – Defender The 28-year old center back is the product of the Stuttgart academy, but hasn't seen much starting time since 2019 when he transferred to PSV. Conrad Wallem (Norway) – Midfielder He's on loan from Slavia Prague with an option to buy, so that means he should be eager to impress. He's apparently comfortable on the wing in an attack or defensive alignment. Host the Colorado Rapids on Feb. 22nd Sporting Kansas City Seattle Sounders San Jose Earthquakes Real Salt Lake Portland Timbers Minnesota United FC LAFC LA Galaxy Houston Dynamo FC Dallas Colorado Rapids Austin FC
