Inter Miami wins, says D.C. United player used racial slur
It may be a sign of the times, the fact that MLS is more than a year away from the start of its current fiscal year that it is facing an embarrassing crisis by the time the new season starts.
The biggest issue facing MLS is who will be paying the ever-growing bills of the ever-growing clubs. That is a subject for another time.
All this is making it look a lot more like the World Cup of soccer in its first half. D.C. United midfielder Michael Stephens became the latest MLS player to offend the most powerful voice in World Soccer.
Stephens was suspended for the first two games of the season for a racist comment he allegedly made about a referee in a game at Kansas City on Saturday. He told the MLS Players Association that he had made the remark to a referee at the end of the first half of a match in Kansas City a week earlier.
The MLS official said that he apologized to all the players in the Kansas City game, including Stephens. D.C. United also said they would not comment on their player’s comment because its investigation was still ongoing.
Stephens has a history with United, as the club has used him on the field and off.
In October 2008, Stephens wrote an open letter to the Washington Post to say he was not racist, despite his having used the N-word before. Stephens cited the incident as reason he made the comment.
He then apologized to the Post. The letter can be seen below.
“I want to apologize again to you, the newspaper and to my teammates,” Stephens wrote. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m innocent now. To tell you the truth, I thought I was being very sensitive in what I said. After all, I never used the word nigger to anyone in my life, nor did I want to