videos of the same song being sung<\/a> are doing the rounds and received press attention.<\/p>\nBocanegra knew the club’s past and present and carried on playing while the songs were being sung. Donovan was mistaken to get into a scrap on Hispanic identity with him on twitter, but one guy in that scrap was foolish. The other was hoping Donovan didn’t know about his past employer or was too polite to point it out.<\/p>\n
Carlos Bocanegra is not alone though in being wrong to slam Donovan for making money out of El Tri.<\/p>\n
MLS funds itself partly from the money Soccer United Marketing (SUM) makes out of its contract to put on Mexico international friendlies in the USA. SUM is the marketing win of MLS. That money in turn pays player wages. So if you played for an MLS club, you have indirectly benefited from the proceeds of those games.<\/p>\n
While MLS through its marketing wing SUM continues to monetise itself through the Mexican national side, no-one who receives their salary from that fund is squeaky clean unless they have questioned, as many fans have, why the USA\u2019s main soccer league is promoting its closest rival\u2019s national side. Surely Landon Donovan cannot be the only American not allowed to make money out of El Tri?<\/p>\n
To be fair to the players, it’s unreasonable to expect them to publicly criticise the league that writes their paychecks. But given that they do, was it wise to so publicly pile into Donovan?<\/p>\n
Away from Donovan, those Mexican friendlies raise another issue of double standards. And this one is perhaps more serious than everyone giving Donovan a hard time.<\/p>\n
The ‘puto’ chant continues to be a feature of El Tri matches in the USA. If it happened as regularly at an MLS stadium, the league would be first to condemn and threaten its own fans under the “Don’t Cross the Line” campaign.<\/p>\n
As we will see in the second piece, that is not the only place where the league is selective about who may and may not cross the line without sanction.<\/p>\n
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