Saturday saw plenty of backlash to Fox Sports’ soccer analyst Alexi Lalas’ tweet of “now it takes courage to actually stand for the national anthem” (in response to NWSL players from every team wearing Black Lives Matter shirts and kneeling for the anthem). That tweet took criticism from current U.S. men’s national team player Jozy Altidore, former USMNT player Maurice Edu, and many more, leading to Lalas (seen above at the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia) trending on Twitter. Lalas eventually deleted the tweet, and early Sunday morning, he discussed that deletion, but only said he’s “sorry for any hurt or anger it caused.”
I wrote a few more words about today… pic.twitter.com/1jDGXEEK33
— Alexi Lalas (@AlexiLalas) June 28, 2020
Here’s a screencap of that tweet, via Andrew Joseph at For The Win:
And here’s some of the criticism Lalas took before that deletion:
https://twitter.com/JozyAltidore/status/1276962930156855296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1276962930156855296%7Ctwgr%5E&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fftw.usatoday.com%2F2020%2F06%2Falexi-lalas-tweet-anthem-backlash-apology-deletes-soccer
Alexi stop that
— Maurice Edu (@MauriceEdu) June 28, 2020
While we’ve interacted with Alexi Lalas in the past, we cannot support or ignore his recent statements. It’s time to change our country fundamentally. Protagonist will no longer share our platform with Alexi and will be removing any appearances on our site or podcast feed.
— Protagonist Soccer (@ProtagonistUSA) June 28, 2020
Lalas has voiced his opinions against BLM protests dozens of times over years and across platforms, and suffered no consequences for it until today when he… had to delete a tweet. 😱
Lalas is truly the victim here, just like athletes who don’t kneel are the courageous ones. 😢 pic.twitter.com/ATiMHCCeHg
— Dr. Bhaskar Ⓥ (((Parody))) (@xbhaskarx) June 28, 2020
[For The Win/Lalas photo from Fox Sports Press Pass]
