Look beyond the green shirt, ignore the Wells Fargo logo on the screen and the underlying message of Landon Donovan's cheer-for-Mexico campaign is truly wonderful.
That soccer can be more than a game.
This is quintessential Donovan. As a player, he had the kind of vision that was rare for an American and his uniqueness of perspective extended beyond the field. That's the case again here, the thoughtful Donovan viewing his sport as a vehicle to create support for a population vilified by many on the far right of the political spectrum.
Only the campaign hasn't been well received by U.S. Soccer fans, who wondered how a former national team symbol could become an advocate for an enemy.
Donovan's mistake was in complicating something simple. What he failed to realize was that to the majority of fans, a game is just a game.
When Donovan produced advertisements calling for U.S. soccer fans to back Mexico in the World Cup, he was thinking of the proposed border wall. The fans who rejected his plea weren't thinking in the same terms. They were picturing the time Ramon Ramirez kicked Alexi Lalas in the groin.
As much as politics can become intertwined with soccer and as much as a culture can be represented by players and teams in the sport, cheering against Mexico's national team doesn't equate to being anti-Mexican.
If anything, the opposite of that is almost certainly true in this country, as the new wave of American soccer fans have embraced a number of initiatives promoting various forms of diversity. Many U.S. fans who traveled to Mexico City for a World Cup qualifier last year carried anti-Donald Trump signs to show that not all Americans shared the ideas of their president.
And so long as cultural and political tensions don't ignite violence on the field or in the stands, there's nothing wrong with a rivalry. It's a fun, if not downright essential, element of being a sports fan.
The people of Boston mourned with New Yorkers in the wake of Sept. 11, but the guess here is that not every Red Sox fan cheered for the Yankees in the World Series later that year.
So, really, these are two entirely different arguments, Donovan's pertaining to human rights and dignity, the opposition's to the basic tenets of fan culture. And it's unfortunate the ensuing back and forth on multiple media platforms became as ugly as it did _ I won't bother to summarize it here _ because all of this started from a good place.
