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Howard suspended three games for altercation with fans

Less than 24 hours before the Colorado Rapids are set to play Real Salt Lake, they learned they’d be without their starting goalkeeper for three games.

Major League Soccer announced on Friday night that Tim Howard has been suspended for three games for foul language directed at a fan at Children’s Mercy Park on Sunday in his team’s loss to Sporting Kansas City. He was also punished for an altercation with a fan after the match.

The Rapids followed up with a statement regarding the issue after the decision was made by the league office.

“Tim Howard made an unfortunate and regrettable mistake for which he is being disciplined by MLS,” the statement read. “While this is out of character for Tim, we do not condone these actions. We accept the league’s decision and look forward to moving past this. The incidents that took place during our match at Sporting Kansas City last weekend do not represent the Colorado Rapids Soccer Club or Tim’s character and beliefs, on and off the pitch.”

Howard will miss Saturday’s trip to Real Salt Lake, the April 23 match at Minnesota United and the April 29 trip to Orlando City.

Comments

  1. i’m interested to see what people think of this. obviously, if it’s true that he made physical contact with a fan after the match, then that’s beyond the pale, but yelling back at fans who are taunting you seems extremely mild (and even fun) to me. the cursed-at fans were obviously enjoying it.

    if it’s the fact that he used an expletive (this was a run-of-the-mill one, not loaded like colin clark’s) —i mean, if you don’t want kids hearing that, you probably shouldn’t allow them at the games. in fact, in this specific case, the fans swearing were exponentially louder than howard.

    Reply
    • I’m putting this one on Howard. you can’t let the crowd get to you no matter what they are saying. In this case the 12th man won out.

      Reply
      • I’m in this camp….TH has been doing this way too long to let some ignorant fans rile him up, and while I think players need to be protected better, players have to be above the fray!!

      • For what it’s worth, I’d jump into the stands and bite the dude/dudette’s (probably dude’s) ankle. Yes, Free Howard!

    • …but likely still lost in the game of life.

      Without having anymore details than what’s above, I’ll never understand the mentality of fans that escalate something from being “fanatical” about the game to making it personal with the athlete.

      Philosophically, fans feel like they’re closer (via social media) than ever with athletes and when you involve alcohol and ignorance, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often with each passing year.

      Again, I don’t have anymore details than what’s above but it’s not like Howard to let some random idiot in the stands provoke him. Perhaps he should have taken his frustration out with an air gun and made some random remark about a foreign President to avoid suspension.

      Reply
      • espn linked to the twitter video. it was a few fans yelling at him (no idea for how long), he yelled back, then they yelled some more. riveting.

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