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Reggie Cannon: “FC Dallas wanted apology for responding to fans”

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Reggie Cannon is now in Portugal with Boavista, but the defender recently responded to remarks on one of his final appearances with FC Dallas.

In an Aug. 9th league match vs. Nashville SC, Cannon and his teammates knelt during the National Anthem and were booed by some of its own fans. Cannon responded to those fans in his post-match comments, but admitted on The Crack Podcast with host Mabricio Wilson and former U.S. internationals Oguchi Onyewu and DaMarcus Beasley that Dallas wanted him to apologize for his comments.

“They had written out a statement for me that read, ‘I apologize to the fans I offended,” Cannon said. “My choice of words, I like to think that I let the heat of the moment get to me.”

“I said, ‘With all respect, I’m not apologizing. I didn’t do anything wrong. We all made the decision [to kneel].’ And I said, ‘What they did was disgusting.’ I never called anyone disgusting. The action that you guys chose to do was disgusting because you don’t understand why we’re kneeling.”

While several FC Dallas fans booed the actions of the players, one fan threw an object onto the field and was subsequently ejected. After the match, Cannon reacted to the actions of the fan saying: “You can’t even have the support of your own fans in your own stadium. It’s absolutely baffling to me.”

FC Dallas showed support towards Cannon including when reports of “threats of being lynched” came days following the Nashville match. The club even offered to have Cannon sit out of the subsequent Aug. 17th match due to several social media posts targeting Cannon and the club.

“The club just called me and told me I don’t have to play tomorrow because unfortunately we were sent another screenshot of people rallying up saying they’re gonna give me a surprise at one of the home games,” said Cannon. “Every post saying, ‘Let’s teach this boy Reggie Cannon a lesson about what true terror is.’ All this BS. So, now they’re taking added security measures.”

Several teams have stayed in their locker rooms for the National Anthem while some players have continued to kneel in support for the fight against social injustice.

Cannon, 22, has since been transferred to Boavista, playing in the club’s opening three matches of the league season. The U.S. Men’s National Team defender has risen through the ranks domestically and internationally, but has seen his opinions of the club change following the actions earlier this summer.

“Now I know what I stand for because I’ve seen this, I’ve seen how people truly think, I’ve seen how people truly are,” Cannon said. “Because I’ve always wanted to believe, like for example, FC Dallas is always a family and they always have your best interests at heart and always have your back.

“I’ve kind of had my eyes opened. I know what I stand for.”

Cannon and Boavista resume league play on Oct. 19th against Vitoria Guimaraes looking for its first win of the season.

Comments

  1. NBA ratings were at an all-time low for a reason. Fans don’t pay money to be lectured by athletes. I also don’t come to this website to read about yours either.

    Collectively, we’re all soccer fans. Let’s keep it at that.

    Reply
    • Oh god, not this fallacy again. Ratings for all sports are down this year, including the NHL and NCAA football (21% lower than last year). The only exception? The WNBA.

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    • Well its really easy, dont tune in or dont read anything that you think will turn you off bc u less someone is putting a gun to your head, you do have a choice. Furthermore, nobody is doing any lecturing, this aint about politics, this about basic humanity and if you cant see that, then you are a part of the problem

      Reply
  2. The old players can protest, just not anywhere we can see
    The old I am against the organization BLM while I say All Lives Matter
    They all came out, nice job.
    .
    Reggie is right, he did nothing wrong. Some guy boos him, he calls that ACTION, he is entitled to his opinion. Instead Dallas decides to turn off young players from joining their organization with dumb calls for an apology for something that wasn’t even a story until they did that.

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  3. Man, racist mofos always play the you racist for calling me out on my racism, or you need to apologize for calling out racism. Dealing with this right now I am the only African American and Latino in my town and everyone else is white, and they have been trying to run me out the town since July 2nd 2019. I am going no where I am 29 and I own my own home in cash and it is encumbered, with no mortgage and they hate that lol

    Reply
    • Mysterious,
      I am with you brother. Not in your town, not in your situation, but in spirit.
      We all are…and by all, check the comments, not all…just all that matter.

      Reply
      • Not about to go back and fourth with an all lives matter troll. If it does not apply let it fly homie. Your fragility is showing

      • is he going to then acknowledge “ethnocapitalism” ie the effects of Jim Crow on the 1900s work place? in plain english that in whole chunks of this country as capitalism took off blacks and others were legally excluded? that you would also have been excluded from borrowing to buy a home in most of your town? that this creates lingering differences in terms of inherited wealth, where one lives and goes to school? oh, but if you say that maybe we need to make up for that you’re “ethnomarxist.” maybe don’t be so racist the nazis copy your laws, and we’re still undoing the damage decades later. and since people are playing pretend like the left is just constructing racism from thin air, the first of the series of issues this spring was the lady calling the cops on a black birdwatcher in central park. the right likes to hang their hat on all the debatable ones but there is plenty of indefensible treatment out there, and even the debatable stuff should have thoughtful people wondering about practical fixes if not the racial dimension. that maybe we don’t need no knock middle of the night plainclothes witness search warrants — even if you shouldn’t shoot at the police — which it sounds like most witnesses say they would have had no idea about. and to me cannon can be discussing that without calling for worker’s nationalizations or white genocide.

    • actually england and germany were doing pro-black demos before games before we were back playing sports. small town/lower division england or europe west of italy might be another question.

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    • I studied political science with a lot of grad school. I had political theory classes, a graduate course where I did a paper on Utopian Marxism, studied communist systems and the different types of communism. I never heard the term of ethnomarxism. Is this some new right wing meme? Or are you just making it up? The only connection between Marx and ethnic issues is that Marx thought class identification would out weight every other mode of identification, which would make ethnomarxism an impossibility in Marxist theory.

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      • Idi Amin and BLM are the most widely known ethnomarxists. A Marxist ideology predicated on racism. Your welcome

      • This is more or less spot on, Gary. In my graduate-level sociology studies, I learned essentially two things: 1) I am no more a Marxist than I am a “capitalist”. 2) Most Americans don’t have the foggiest idea what Marxism (or socialism, or communism, or anarchism) is. Now, I’ve had to run a pretty fine line in my studies, acknowledging Marxism’s strengths (its diagnosis of the social perils associated with unregulated capitalism) while standing firm against what I view as its weaknesses (a material-reductionist approach to human behavior, motivation, and social organization) and one thing I can tell you without reservation is that the term “enthnomarxism” is pure self-contradictory nonsense. It’s a far-right buzzword based in fear and ignorance, and any suggestion that it’s somehow endemic to Europe (and because what — people have access to affordable healthcare?) is laughable. Europe has plenty of its own problems, racism and xenophobia being prominent among them, but ethnomarxism sure ain’t one of ’em.

        On another note, I don’t understand where these far-right soccer supporters in the U.S. are coming from. Listen, I don’t mean this in a partisan sense (I, myself, am fiercely independent), but U.S. soccer represents one of the most progressive versions of America one could imagine. It is global in scope. It is the melting pot. This isn’t Serbia or Belarus or any country that can rely upon ethnic solidarity and a strong sense of nationalist uniformity. To the contrary: here is no U.S. soccer without embracing America’s diversity as its greatest strength.

      • he’s conflating black lives matter in small caps — the idea we have a racism issue to work on — a majority belief in this country — with the specific far left Black Lives Matter group and its political agenda, which is horrifically marketed as “defund the police” as though they don’t care if anyone keeps listening. that is a tiny minority group. it does not represent many people’s beliefs. the game here is to paint a whole party or swath of people as raving marxists and incipient race warriors. does that sound like cannon? cannon didn’t basically end his career like colin. he capitalistically transferred to another team and once “out of there” vented at how his former employer treated him. he may have done so nominally in BLM’s name but nothing about him sounds like a race hater or anticapitalist. he is a pro athlete with a decent income. sorry but this whole line of discussion is a smear, trying to shut up black people (and friends) concerned about black mistreatment by pretending they adhere to the tenets of a particular, small political movement. he kneeled when a whole bunch of people kneeled, and got cranky when his fans couldn’t just sit there and nod like i do when they run 10 minutes of an overwrought salute to the troops (that i feel like promotes militarization in a country that hasn’t won a war in more than half a century, and needs to get out of the reflex). why can i just deal with it but the right wing has to shut him up and raise the specter of them not going to games??

    • Sounds like more than criticism. Saying that someone will see what true terror is like is an obvious threat of violence. If you think that is normal and acceptable, you need to get your head out of the sand and join civilization.

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      • Not everyone agrees with the BLM modus operandi. I’m not condoning violent speech or threat of death, but “booing” is neither violent nor threatening, which was the initial reason for this issue. We still have the freedom to vocalize an opinion; it doesn’t matter if you agree with it or not.

      • Actually it is, in fact, a severe form of criticism,- if I’m being technical- though not one with which I personally agree, nor should any decent human.

    • what you’re missing is that in 3 years the polarities flipped and it went from you can blackball colin, to mainstream player expression all over NFL NBA etc. at that point you need to straighten out the few fans with an issue as opposed to expose your player. “fans, feel free to disagree, or even boo, but abuse or threats will not be tolerated.” how hard is that?? and to be clear, it is unilateral political censorship to load games up with the flag and the military and right wing stuff and then say you can dictate to a leftie employee what they can express.

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    • cannon came up through FCD’s academy, is owed some loyalty, and did nothing wrong. the lightly attended team wanted to coddle its fans instead. what the right wing gets “twisted” is it might “patch” the fan relationship now, but at the expense of black players and others of similar sensibilities wanting to sign there. and then the team gets weaker. and then maybe a weaker team has fewer fans. my houston texans took a hard stand on such things, and even made comments like “inmates running the asylum.” the team has steadily emptied out of talent we had aside from the stupid trades. who wants to play for a team that doesn’t have your back??

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      • Your point I think you were trying to make is precisely the reason why politics and sports do not make good bed fellows. It’s fine if a player voices their opinion everywhere and anywhere aside from at the sporting event. People look to sports as a distraction from the circus our government has become and are subject to daily in the media. That said, if the professional voices their leanings on social media, or interviews, they should expect a reaction- good or bad. Have you not noticed the ratings of the “woke” NBA finals? Abysmal. Also, the flag and military are now “right wing things?” I don’t think so. They used to be things in which the entire country found great pride. Blue or red, we are all Americans, after all. And if you think that Cannon is “owed” loyalty just because he came up through the system, then you sounds like you favor entitlement over earning. If you’re willing to open your mouth you need to be willing to be disagreed with. And any team that lacks the support they used to have because they have integrity and do not bow to the woke-mob, I have the utmost respect for, as long as they don’t debase themselves in degrading speech and/or defamation or are in fact a racist/unjust organization. It’s hard to join mobs that don’t have great reasons or need to exist in the first place.

      • my point is very simple. if you want players to come to your team, you have to create an inviting and protective environment for the players as your primary goal. you are suggesting you should instead favor fan concerns and ratings. my argument is if you protect the fans instead, players will treat you as radioactive and join or transfer out to teams that will protect them. you will initially maintain fan favor doing so. but over time as players exodus you will have a weaker team and in turn fewer fans as the product decays. the houston texans held the line on kneeling and said the owners would dictate. they also traded nuk which sent a disloyal message. the team has emptied out of talent and is 1-4 this year. your argument wrongly assumes i will watch a team for “political correctness (of the right wing variety)” even as the product becomes uncompetitive because players feel unprotected or failed in loyalty. if you have no team you have no product and you soon enough lose the fans too. because most of them care more about product than politics. re your NBA point, if you are the only team that holds the line on BLM good freaking luck getting the majority black player pool to come play there. if that results in a slight ratings ding, so what. it’s necessary to keep the players happy and i am not sure that white right wing hoops fans were a core demographic anyway.

      • and you lose me quickly at saying that being concerned about black issues is a lack of integrity. as discussed above, you confuse the very popular BLM Lite — i care about black people and believe we still have racism to work out — with BLM hard core — a tiny minority position with radical ideas.

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