LOS ANGELES _ The Los Angeles Galaxy released midfielder Aleksandar Katai on Friday, two days after the team was made aware of inflammatory social media messages posted on an account belonging to the player's wife.
Tea Katai's posts, which have been taken down, appeared to make light of the protests and looting that occurred in the wake of George Floyd's death while in police custody last week in Minneapolis. The team made the decision to release Katai after discussing the issue with him Thursday.
Katai's salary with the Galaxy has not been made public, but he was signed using targeted allocation money, meaning his salary exceeded $612,500. The Galaxy reached a financial arrangement with Katai and are not responsible for paying the remainder of his contract. He earned a combined $2.7 million in the previous two seasons with the Chicago Fire, according to the players union.
The first of Tea Katai's posts was a screenshot from a video showing two New York City police officers driving their vehicles through a crowd of demonstrators with a caption, in Serbian, that translates as "kill the s__!" The second shows an apparent looter with boxes of Nike shoes below English-language text reading "Black Nikes Matter." The Associated Press reported Tea Katai also wrote another post in Serbian that described the protesters as "disgusting cattle."
The Galaxy said Tea Katai was in Chicago when she made the posts while her husband was in Southern California participating in voluntary individual workouts alongside teammates at Dignity Health Sports Park.
Reaction to the posts, which appeared to go up late Tuesday, was quick, with Galaxy supporters demanding Katai's release. On Thursday four men stood before a statue of David Beckham outside the team's stadium holding a bedsheet-sized banner that read "No Racists in Our Club" with Katai's uniform No. 7 encircled with a red line through it.
After the Galaxy released a statement condemning the messages Wednesday, Katai placed a four-paragraph apology on Instagram, calling his wife's posts "unacceptable" and adding that "these views are not ones that I share and are not tolerated in my family."
Katai, 29, a Serbian national-team player who was signed by the Galaxy as a free agent in December, started both games the team played before the MLS season was suspended by the COVID-19 pandemic in early May. He had 18 goals and 12 assists in 62 games over two seasons with the Chicago Fire. He spent the first eight years of his professional career in Europe, where he played for Serbia powerhouse Red Star Belgrade as well as for clubs in Greece and Spain.
