Government used soccer tattoo, 'rock'n'roll salute' as evidence against Venezuelan deportee, lawyer asserts

According to his lawyer, a tattoo and a hand gesture are the sum of evidence against at least one Venezuelan man who was deported to the El Salvadoran gang prison among what the federal government has called "the worst of the worst."

Left: Real Madrid logo; right: artist conception.
Left: © Real Madrid CF, adapted in part by Coloring Pages for Toddlers;
here fair use. Right: Same crown with free clip art ball and Word lettering;
RJ Peltz-Steele CC0 with no claim to underlying works.

The face-off between the Trump administration and U.S. District Chief Judge James E. Boasberg over deportations has stoked strong suspicion that the enforcement action swept up men who pose no threat to the peace, have legitimate claims to refugee status, and now have been condemned wrongfully to imprisonment in El Salvador, a country foreign to them and their families.

The suspicion is not easily vindicated because the men are gone from the United States and inaccessible in El Salvador, and the evidence against them is secreted in the hands of the federal government. Yet one by one, stories are emerging that cast doubt on the official narrative. 

Immigration attorney Linette Tobin, a member of the D.C. Bar, has been making the media rounds to tell the story of one client, Jerce Reyes Barrios. Tobin told outlets, including NPR, that she has seen the evidence against Reyes Barrios (family photo via ABC News), and it comprises nothing other than a tattoo and social media images of a hand gesture, both with innocent explanations. 

Left: Horned hand. RJ Peltz-Steele with Google Gemini CC0
Right: ASL "I Love You." LiliCharlie via Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0

According to Tobin, Reyes Barrios is a 36-year-old professional soccer player and father of two who has a tattoo unrelated to any gang other than Spain's very legitimate and globally popular Real Madrid Club de Fútbol (RMCF). A variation on the RMCF logo, the tattoo pictures a crown atop a soccer ball and the word "Dios" (God), Tobin said.

The hand gesture pictured in social media, according to Tobin, is the "rock and roll salute." That gesture, known more widely as "the horned hand," became associated with heavy metal in the 1970s (more at Medium), then came into wider use in music culture. The gesture is sometimes interchanged, knowingly or unknowingly, with the ASL sign for "I love you" (literally, the letters I, L, and Y), which is similar but requires an extended thumb.

Tattoos imaged in 2024 Texas DPS presentation include these.
Public document; no indicated copyright notice.

Circulating online, a 2024 presentation by the Texas Department of Public Safety on the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (more from NPR), to which the federal government alleges Reyes Barrios and other deportees belong, depicts tattoos borne by gang members. While some of the tattoos might be indicative of Tren de Aragua—images of trains, for example—most are not so specific, e.g., a rose, a clock, a star.  (More from NBC News.) Tren means "train," and Aragua is a Venezuelan state west of Caracas.

Also among the imaged tattoos are a crown, similar to the Real Madrid CF logo; the Nike "jumpman logo" with Michael Jordan's and LeBron James's number "23"; and the initials "HJ," said to abbreviate hijos (sons), under a crown ("king of kings"), meaning "sons of God." While gang members might bear such tattoos, they're hardly a way to determine gang affiliation.

In fact, of two of my own tattoos, one is a train—not because of criminal affiliation. Another is a variation on a cross that might suggest a football club or a historical war campaign, neither of which I'm championing. So I find this evidence against Reyes Barrios unsettling, especially insofar as it might be exemplary of the government's shallow scrutiny in countless other cases, too. 

I can only assume that when Tobin joined the D.C. Bar, she was admonished as strongly as I was never to lie. So I'm inclined to believe her, and thus to share Judge Boasberg's skepticism.

Update, Mar. 31, at 3 p.m.: Too late for Reyes Barrios and others, but I learned today that on Friday, the federal district court in Massachusetts granted a temporary restraining order against the removal of immigrants to unrelated third countries without due process, that is, notice and "meaningful" opportunity to raise safety concerns. The case is D.V.D. v. U.S. DHS (filed D. Mass. Mar. 25, 2025) (Court Listener).

Apple Music drops Lady Gaga, Leo Messi interviews; L.A. producer Steele was behind the scenes

Morgan Steele, my daughter, based in Los Angeles, has worked lately on some star-studded and classified projects, two now public.

This (below) is Lady Gaga's Mayhem interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music in New York City, dropped March 5.

The interview took place at the lower-east-side "dive bar" that was a formative place in becoming "Gaga," as she described her early creative growth. She recalled writing lyrics at the bar and joked that that was "where all the cool kids hung out." Morgan confirmed that this place is the real deal, in no way a set, like entering a time warp into a corner bar that, in a comforting way, never changes as the decades elapse outside.

This (below) is Lionel Messi's interview with Zane Lowe in Miami, dropped February 28. That's right, a Messi interview with Apple Music!

Messi, probably the greatest of all time playing the beautiful game now, plays presently for Inter Miami in the MLS and is a star to watch in the upcoming 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. The Argentine player spoke Spanish in his responses; the interview is subtitled. (Incidentally, my mate Dylan is a Messi doppelganger, which, amusingly, has caused us more than once in Africa to be mobbed by children who refuse to accept his denial. If you're ever unsure, the tell is that Dylan speaks French and not Spanish.)

The Messi interview is a cross-platform promotion for Apple Music and the MLS. Messi is not (yet?) embarking on a music career. But Lowe is a football (soccer) fan, besides a music guru, and he aptly described Messi as a kind of artist. The two talked about Messi's relationship with music, a vital part of true-blue Argentine culture. Messi talked also about his decision to come with his family to Miami and the style of play in the MLS, relative to his longtime former club, FC Barcelona.

For those keeping track, I'm now two degrees of separation from Gaga and Messi. If you know me, you're at no more than three!

Don't forget to look for my friend Jose Benavides's football coverage on The Liberal Playmaker at Apple Podcasts.

Texas attorney launches football (soccer) podcast

A Texas attorney, co-author, and former student, Jose Benavides officially has launched his football (soccer)-and-politics podcast, The Liberal Playmaker. 

The podcast on the beautiful game is available at Apple, Spotify, and on video at YouTube.

Sixteen 2025 episodes are online already, for most recent example, "Copita del Rey," Feb. 27, below. Coverage includes but definitely is not limited to the Premier League. 

U.S. Soccer, FIFA lose antitrust appeal; defense shows short-sighted strategy to develop soccer in America

Cristiano Ronaldo plays for Real Madrid against Barcelona in 2011.
Jan S0L0 via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0

U.S. Soccer and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) will have to defend an antitrust action in federal court for refusing to permit a Spanish La Liga match on U.S. soil, the Second Circuit ruled in March. 

In 2017, world famous football (soccer) clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona faced off in an exhibition game in Miami. The match was fabulously lucrative for the commercial interests behind it, including organizer Relevant Sports, LLC, based in New York.

World sport likes the United States, because our infrastructure practically prints money. Americans, especially the top echelons of the wealthy, have been habitualized by our unregulated and often subsidized sport-and-entertainment monopolists to pay more than people elsewhere in the world to see live events, both directly for seats and indirectly in media rights.

Incidentally, that's the principal reason that bringing the FIFA (men's) World Cup back to North America in 2026 was not really a hard sell, notwithstanding modest public enthusiasm and the theater of the global bidding process. The 2026 co-hosts, the United States, Canada, and Mexico, likely did not even have to pay the half-billion dollars that Qatar apparently spent, mostly to FIFA executive committee members, in, uh, let's say, "incentives," in siting the 2022 World Cup (about my World-Cup-2022-contemporaneous lecture; Qatar on this blog): check out the investigative exclusive by Armin Rosen for Tablet (link from inset), published late last month, using U.S. court records in collateral matters.

Understandably, then, Relevant Sports wanted to maintain the momentum of the 2017 exhibition match. The company proposed that the Spanish La Liga subsequently might site a regular-season, full-stakes match in the United States. 

However, FIFA rules say that a match cannot be held in a country foreign to both sides without the approval of the football federation in the host country. U.S. Soccer said no.

Relevant sued, alleging that the rule improperly protects domestic football from being overshadowed, and therefore diminished in interest and income, by high-profile competitors. U.S. Soccer and FIFA defend the system on the merits under antitrust law, and, saliently in this intermediate disposition, argued that the FIFA "rule" is not really a rule, because FIFA doesn't make the decision for U.S. Soccer or La Liga. They're free to make their own decisions, notwithstanding potential adverse consequences, such as exclusion from international competition for players, teams, or federations that don't play ball.

The instant Second Circuit decision is limited. The court remanded the antitrust claim to proceed, recognizing that FIFA's rule is rule enough to represent the kind of concerted action in violation of antitrust law that Relevant alleges.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Cory Doctorow's enthusiasm, which I share, for the federal government's antitrust agenda—including the Justice Department investigation of Google. (I canceled my Google Nest Aware subscription upon the 25% rate hike. Google's not the only game in town. Yet.) U.S. Soccer's loss in the Second Circuit represents a judicial step in the same right direction.

I'm not an antitrust expert. But to my relatively lay eyes, the fact that the federal district court dismissed the case in 2021 on the faint theory that U.S. Soccer was not formally bound by FIFA's command demonstrates how appallingly far U.S. antitrust law has strayed from basic fair-market principles. Or maybe the court just didn't understand the governance system in world sport and its facility for subverting the laws of nations.

USWNT celebrates in times happier than this year's World Cup.
rachael.c.king via Flickr CC BY 2.0

The U.S. Soccer position in the litigation to me demonstrates furthermore a fundamental misunderstanding of what it will take to make football successful in America. American soccer advocates often wonder aloud why the sport seems to stall again and again, even after the men's World Cup in the United States in 1994 and the astonishing run of the U.S. Women's team in an unprecedented four World Cup titles.

To be sure, there are many, many reasons for the frustrating cycle of revving and stalling. But equally surely, one of those many reasons is the short-term greed of commercial actors that works a detriment to long-term development. 

I've written previously about this problem in the context of media rights. When NBC acquired the rights to English Premier League football, the broadcaster divvied up matches among its many media properties based on the popular appeal of each. NBC's strategy was to leverage interest in the league to sell separate subscriptions to multiple services: NBC, NBC Sports, (at one time, "NBC Gold,") Peacock, USA, Telemundo, Universo.

The network either didn't consider or doesn't care what that model looks like from the customer's perspective. Football in a place such as its home U.K. (at least before U.K. media companies such as Sky started merging with U.S. media giants and took sport away from the publicly minded BBC; that's another story) maintains a multi-generational foothold because supporters follow their teams.  

Divvying up the matches makes it impossible in the United States for a viewer to follow a team. Each week, one gets whatever match a selected service happens to carry, based on its level of market appeal.  If you subscribe to a middle-tier service and your team starts to lose, you might get more matches. If your team starts winning, and you start becoming more engaged, you find yourself suddenly deprived of matches.

That market behavior doesn't build a fan base. For American football or basketball, maybe there are enough viewers who will watch any game because they love the sport. But Americans don't yet love soccer that much. Sport-market development requires fostering two interrelated conditions at the same time: public enthusiasm for the sport, and public enthusiasm for a team. Neither can thrive without the other.

U.S. Soccer's refusal to permit La Liga to play a match on U.S. soil also is self-defeating, if for the converse strategic blindness. Both media rights usurpers and U.S. Soccer, focused on short-term profits, are dampening American enthusiasm by impeding U.S. viewers' access to the highest level of play in the world, in the Premier League and La Liga. While NBC's strategy deprives Americans of the opportunity to root for a team, the U.S. Soccer strategy deprives Americans of the opportunity to root for the sport.

Again, neither can thrive without the other.  U.S. Soccer is trying to protect Major League Soccer and the federation's underage and lower divisions. The federation reasons coldly that someone who buys a $500 La Liga ticket will skip five or ten $48 Tampa Bay Mutiny matches.

They're wrong. One of my U.S.-based family is a card-carrying member of the Toon Army, a dedicated supporter of Newcastle (U.K.) United FC. He traveled domestically to see Newcastle play an exhibition match in the United States this summer. Being a Newcastle supporter has made him a more, not less, enthusiastic supporter of his nearby D.C. United and the U.S. men's and women's national teams. With access to the matches of each, live and on TV, he's more likely to spend money on all of them.

Antitrust law is not a device to make commercial actors prioritize long-term interests over short. To the contrary, if NBC and U.S. Soccer put themselves out of business, that's a healthy outcome for the free market. But if antitrust inadvertently compels U.S. Soccer to up its game and compete for eyeballs by actually developing the sport, rather than constraining consumer choice, then that's an outcome I can get behind.

The case is Relevant Sports, LLC v. U.S. Soccer Federation, Inc. (2d Cir. Mar. 7, 2023). U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond J. Lohier, Jr.., wrote the opinion of the unanimous panel that also comprised Chief Judge Livingston and Judge Lynch. In 2017's "El Clásico Miami," Barcelona bettered Real Madrid 3-2.

Can Arsenal supporter be impartial in football inquiry?

A curious story of lawyering ethics and football allegiance broke in mid-May, just after I went off contract with UMass Law and left the States for a chunk of the summer.

Manchester City Football Club (City, or MCFC), my team, won a historic "treble" over the summer, topping the Premier League, FA Cup, and UEFA Champions League.

Thomas Jefferson, me, and a City kit
at Hofstra University, 2016
Morgan Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

While City was on its spring tear, a modest shadow was cast by allegations of violations of "fair play" financial regulations in the Premier League for transactions dating to 2009 to 2018. From as much as is publicly known, the allegations focus on financial transparency requirements. Any ultimate finding of violation can have consequences going forward, ranging from fines to relegation from top-tier play.

City denies any misfeasance. In 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) reversed a UEFA suspension of City for alleged violation of the financial regulations related to transactions from 2012 to 2016. The CAS decision was based principally on the exclusion of dated evidence, so the matter was not resolved on the merits. City then also denied any wrongdoing.

The present allegations, which themselves are reported to arise from a four-year investigation, have been referred to an independent commission. Its behind-closed-doors work will take a while. And City can be expected to litigate any adverse result.

The piece of the story that caused me to scratch my chin in May was the report that City had filed objection to the appointment of an Arsenal FC supporter, Murray Rosen KC, as chair of the independent commission.

Under rules of professional conduct in American law practice, being a fan of a sport team would not preclude a lawyer from representing a competitor. American Bar Association (ABA) Model Rule 1.7 focuses on conflicts in legal representation, not matters of social affiliation. Of course, the question comes down to the lawyer's ability to do the job "competent[ly]" and "diligent[ly]," so it's always possible for a lawyer to be compromised by sporting fervor. The best course is disclosure and client consent.

For a judge, ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 2.11 similarly, probably, would not demand a sport-fan judge's recusal from a matter involving a competitor. The requisite "personal bias or prejudice" is usually indicated by concrete evidence such as financial interest, familial affiliation, or former representation, not social preference.

More than lawyer ethics, the judicial canons give weight to public perception, testing expressly for objective perception of impartiality. But being a sport fan, absent economic investment, doesn't move that needle.

For example, in a fraud lawsuit settled confidentially five years ago, plaintiffs accused the New York Giants and players, including quarterback Eli Manning, of American football, of passing off memorabilia falsely as game worn. The plaintiffs asked New Jersey Superior Court Judge James J. DeLuca to recuse, because he was a Giants fan and, with his son, owned professional seat licenses—that's something, economically—to attend Giants games. DeLuca declined to recuse and pledged on the record his ability to remain impartial. All good, legal commentators opined. (E.g., NJ.com.)

JAMS guidelines for arbitrators are at least as permissive. Like the judicial canons, the guidelines look to both actual conflict and objective appearance of conflict. JAMS guidelines expressly condone "social or professional relationships with lawyers and members of other professions" as long as they do not "impair impartiality."

I don't know what ethics constraints pertain to Rosen, but I'm doubtful they are any more demanding. I also don't know, though, how deeply Rosen bleeds Arsenal red and white. City's filing is secret, so it's possible there's evidence of conflict that the public can't see.

Nothing in Rosen's public record raises a red flag. Based in London, he's a CAS-certified arbitrator and mediator. Any European professional, especially a Brit, and especially someone working in sport law, can be expected to favor a club or two in association football. Rosen was called to the bar in 1976. He's practiced media, sport, and art law and has served in a wide range of offices, even once chairman of the board of appeal of English Table Tennis.

A biography of Rosen at 4 Square Chambers, pre-dating the City matter, reported:

He is a strong believer in fairness and in the power and benefits of sport and has a keen appreciation of its social, political and financial aspects. He has participated in sport all his life, is a member of the MCC [I presume, Marylebone Cricket Club] and Arsenal FC, and still regularly plays real tennis and ping pong.

A 2019 biography at Herbert Smith Freehills mentioned in parentheses that Rosen "is an Arsenal season ticket holder." Arsenal of course was a contender for trophies City won in the end in its treble. But, at least upon what is publicly known, Arsenal has no direct interest in the financial regulatory matters, any more than another competing club.

The objection to Rosen might be part of a kitchen-sink litigation strategy, or, more likely, a public relations strategy. It's frustrating not being able to know the substance of the objection (or nearly anything about sport governance matters that wind up before CAS). On the public record, at least, the objection on ethics grounds doesn't seem to hold water.

In any event, the allegations against City do nothing to dampen my celebration of the treble! I wore my Erling Haaland kit to law school orientation just last week.

Nike, Puma stop making shoes with kangaroo leather

Nike and Puma both announced this year that they will stop using kangaroo leather to make shoes.

I didn't know that kangaroo leather was used to make shoes. Or anything. I didn't know "kangaroo leather" was a thing. So this news was simultaneously stomach-turning and a relief to me.

Kangaroo leather is a thing, apparently prized for its strength and durability. According to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), somewhere between 1.5 and 5 million kangaroos are killed annually for "k-leather" clothing and accessories. (NPR reported 1.3m in Australia in 2021, per a government count there.) PETA described violent killing of adults and joeys by hunters; I'll refrain from sharing the horrifying details. 

PETA named Nike, Puma, Adidas, Diadora, Versace, and Prada as companies that used kangaroo leather, though all except Adidas have now announced that they'll stop. Footy Headlines reported in March that Adidas will offer 2024 kangaroo football (soccer) boots.

Nike was under pressure from more than NGOs. Nike World Headquarters is in Beavorton, Oregon, and a bill introduced in the Oregon legislature would have banned kangaroo leather products, NPR (and Oregon Public Broadcasting) reported in January. California has since the 1970s. The Oregon bill died in March, but not without having left a mark in public consciousness.

A California representative proposed a federal ban on kangaroo leather in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2021. ESPN gave some press to the Kangaroo Protection Act during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar in December, but the bill never made it out of committee.

Photos: Kangaroos at the Australia Zoo in 2005, RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

Event celebrates hostelling, honors firefighters

Fire Station 2 today, a hostel and museum.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The extended family of the Firehouse Hostel & Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas, came together last week to celebrate accomplishment, to honor firefighters, and to raise funds for a new annex in support of fire safety education.

The event featured Razorback college football veterans David Bazzel, now a radio personality, who emceed, and Gary Robinson, 1964 national champion (then, now), who keynoted.

Gary Robinson is the younger brother of legendary Major League Baseball third baseman Brooks Robinson, a retiree of the Baltimore Orioles, who had planned to attend but could not. 

Gary Robinson and me.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The Robinson brothers graduated from Central High School (National Historic Site) in Little Rock. As kids, they spent time at Fire Station 2, where their father was a career firefighter. In a prerecorded video interview, Gary and Brooks reminisced over the firehouse, their father, and his co-workers.

The sporting legacy of the Robinson family is of course especially meaningful in Arkansas and in Maryland. As I lived in those states between 10 and 20 years each, I've felt a special connection to the Robinsons. My father is a big fan of Brooks, and I was a childhood supporter of the Orioles. Brooks retired in 1977, when I was six.

Linda Fordyce stirs up the crowd.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Long out of service and after years of neglect, Fire Station 2 provided the building that the city of Little Rock and an army of volunteers rehabilitated to serve as the hostel and museum, which opened in 2016. I worked on the firehouse hostel project as one of those volunteers until I left Arkansas for New England in 2011. I took (dubious) honors for having traveled the farthest for the event, edging out a charitable soul from Colorado who contributed more valiantly by populating two tables with local friends.

The Firehouse Hostel and Museum has been the brainchild and passion project of two extraordinary people, Linda and John Fordyce. They conceived of the hostel more than 10 years before the hostel opened in 2016, and they have shepherded the project with nothing short of parental love since. Last week they were in attendance as leaders and coordinators. With characteristic tirelessness, they now are spearheading the drive to develop the annex.

Reep introduces Benton; Bazzel looks on.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

The Fordyces' passion for travel as cultural education, hostelling as social learning, and the merits of the firehouse as an urban redevelopment project in particular are famously contagious. I could not resist signing on and served in roles as varied as bathroom cleaning and representative to a national meeting of Hostelling International USA.  At the event last week, the enthusiasm the Fordyces still exude was palpable. Many faces I remembered from the 2010s were there and still are vitally involved, importantly including Greg Hart, who lends his accounting wizardry, and Johnny Reep, a retired fire captain of legendarily large personality.

Other presenters and honored guests included Tanya Hooks and Marvin L. Benton. Another Central High alum and a major mover in the Little Rock non-profit sector, Hooks is a board leader for the hostel and museum. Another retired firefighter, Benton is an inspiring advocate for fire safety education, especially for children, and author of a book in that vein, Unfallen Hero.

In Unfallen Hero, Benton tells the near-death, line-of-duty story of having suffered agonizing burns over 39 percent of his body. When doctors said he could never fight fire again, he told the audience last week, he lobbied his superiors for a job in fire safety education. When they questioned whether he would be comfortable appearing before audiences with his disfiguring scars, he said, he answered: "If these scars on me would save just one child, ... it will all have been worth it."

After the example of the Memphis Fire Museum, Linda Fordyce said, the Little Rock museum, with Benton in the lead, hopes to make fire safety education accessible to all children in Arkansas. Fordyce and Benton said that fires and the horrific injuries they inflict are too often easily preventable.

You can support and read more online about the Little Rock Firehouse Hostel and Museum.

Weapon of Putin's war, anti-gay law jars NHL in US

The NHL Chicago Blackhawks Sunday will host an annual Pride Night, but the team will not be wearing warm-up pride jerseys as intended, for fear of jeopardizing the safety of Russian players and their families.

Yesterday I got to talk about the story with Sasha-Ann Simons of Reset on WBEZ Chicago Public Radio. You can hear the segment online. HT @ ace producer Micah Yason.

WBEZ sports contributor Cheryl-Raye Stout related the facts and layered some nuance on the story. She expressed concern that Blackhawks staff had not consulted their three Russian players. In a Philadelphia Flyers case in January, a player refused to wear a pride jersey, citing his Russian Orthodox religion. It's unclear where the Russian Blackhawks stand.

No one disputes, though, that wearing the jerseys might be problematic for the players as a matter of Russian law and policy. In December 2022, Russia doubled down on the 10-year-old anti-gay law that was a source of controversy during the 2014 Sochi Olympics and the 2018 FIFA men's World Cup.

Under international pressure, Russia was permissive in enforcement of the law during those tournaments. But the failure of the International Olympic Committee and FIFA to reconcile their bold anti-discrimination rhetoric with host-country legal jeopardy for athletes and fans was a bad look and did no favors for human rights. More or less the same drama just played out again with the FIFA World Cup in the fall in Qatar, where homosexual acts are criminalized.

As enacted in 2013, the Russian law imposes civil fines on persons and business, and detention and deportation for foreigners, who engage in "propaganda" promoting same-sex relationships. Propaganda, though, really means any representation of social acceptability, including even the rainbow flag.

The law was enacted as a child protection measure and referred only to expression to children, though that scope encompassed mass media. In 2022, President Putin signed into law an amendment to broaden the law to cover expression to any person, child or adult, and to make plain that trans representations are prohibited, too.

Russian refugees march in New York in 2013.
Bosc d'Anjou via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Thus, a Russian athlete photographed wearing a pride jersey in America might face legal repercussions upon returning home. But the risk is really much greater than just civil fines, I explained to Simons on Reset. Informally, the law has signaled indifference by Russian authorities to brutal violence inflicted on LGBTQ persons, or even persons suspected of being LGBTQ, by vigilantes, if not law enforcement. An athlete abroad fairly might fear such reprisal upon returning home, or fear for her or his family meanwhile.

One thing I did not get to say on Reset, that I think is important, is that Putin's expansion of the anti-gay law is complementary of his war in Ukraine, because he perceives both as integral to preserving Russian identity against Western acculturation. Foreign Policy called the issues two sides of the same coin, and Putin has spoken of Western territorial aggression and social policy in the same breath. Doubling down on the anti-gay law in December was calculated as just another salvo in the war. That means, if Brittney Griner were not warning enough, that Putin is prepared to weaponize the law.

Robbie Rogers, 2013
Noah Salzman via Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0

Our Reset discussion touched on other related matters, such as the Iranian side's protest at the Qatar World Cup, which I wrote about here in November and spoke about in Poland. I've written previously on the World Cup and sexual equality (with Jose Benavides), the World Cup and human rights, and football and development. 

A paucity of representation in top-flight world sport indicates that laws such as those in Russia and Qatar are hardly the only source of hostility toward LGBTQ athletes. In 2022, in the run-up to the men's World Cup, there was only one openly gay international footballer, and he didn't make the final cut for Australia's squad in Qatar. (There are openly lesbian players in women's world football.)

A good read in this area is Coming Out to Play (2014), an autobiography by Robbie Rogers, co-authored with Eric Marcus. An American and a Christian, Rogers played for Leeds United in the UK and for the U.S. Men's National Team. In 2013, he publicly disclosed that he is gay at the same time he announced his retirement from football, though he returned to the sport to play for four more years with the LA Galaxy in the U.S. MLS.

Politics complicates football: Sympathy for ... Iran

As advertised, last week in Kraków, Poland, I had the great privilege to talk law, development, and the FIFA World Cup, with the group stage under way in Qatar.

Students and faculty of the American Law Scientific Circle (KNPA) and American Law Program at Jagiellonian University (Koło Naukowe Prawa Amerykańskiego TBSP UJ and Szkoła Prawa Amerykańskiego UJ), in collaboration with the Columbus Law School at the Catholic University of America, generously hosted me.  The talk kicked off a KNPA lecture series on "Law and Sustainability." My especial thanks to KNPA President Zuzanna Maszniew and her leadership team.

Photo © Zuzanna Maszniew, used with permission.

I was no John Oliver, to be sure, but I hope I stimulated thinking about the Gordian Knot of sport and politics and its implications for the Middle East and North Africa's place at the table.

Today, November 29, the United States will round out its play in the group stage in Qatar with a match against Iran, simultaneously with a high stakes stand-off between England and Wales. It's a big day, football fans.

Meanwhile, coming home to the States this week, I've been disappointed that Americans are not more in tune with the fascinating stories of geopolitics that are unfolding under the sporting tents of the Qatar World Cup. I admit, what's happening now in China dangles meritorious distraction. But with the USMNT facing Iran today, I want to mention one of the stories from Qatar that has gripped me.

In Iran's opening match with England last week, Iranian footballers refused to sing their own national anthem (BBC).  Stony faced, the players apparently chose to stand in silent solidarity with rights protestors against the government at home (N.Y. Times). Subsequently, Iranian authorities arrested a former national-team footballer known for occasional anti-regime sentiments (Guardian). At Iran's second match, the lads toed the line.

The anthem stunt was extraordinarily courageous. The players had to have known the disgrace they brought on the regime would have consequences when they go home, if not sooner.

Iranian footballers in 2018.
Mahdi Zare/Fars News Agency via Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0

More, though, I was struck by the reminder that people and their governments are not the same thing.

I'm a reasonably bright person, as people go, and I've seen a lot of the world. I come from an immigrant family myself. I grew up with a dear Iranian friend. Her stepmother taught me how to make tahchin, and her dad eagerly gave me his own well worn copy of All the Shah's Men. I shouldn't need to be reminded that people are just people, much the same around the world, just trying to make the best of things and find some joy where we can; and that it's wrong to ascribe the Machiavellian motives of states, whether others or our own, to their citizens. The protests now in China say the same.

Yet, I admit, I had followed the USMNT into the World Cup with something of a Cold War mentality, maybe because of the era when I grew up. Yellow ribbons, burning effigies, and "Death to America" chants all bounce around my long-term memory. I was determined that we and our Group B compatriots from England and Wales should beat Iran to make some kind of political point. A Miracle on Ice or Rocky IV situation.

The Iranian men's demonstration unsettled my unconscious prejudice. As a result, a part of me has been pulling for Iran in their last matches, even while, still, I had to favor the England squad, which features some of my beloved Manchester City stars, and Wales, which invokes Lasso-esque Wrexham affections. And even while, of course, I support my home USMNT today, there will be a part of me that wants to see the Iranian side make a pride-worthy showing.

With FIFA World Cup under way in Qatar, law students study sport and soft power, law and development

I'll be talking law, development, and the World Cup today in Kraków, Poland.

Thanks to the American Law Scientific Circle (KNPA) and American Law Program at Jagiellonian University (Koło Naukowe Prawa Amerykańskiego TBSP UJ and Szkoła Prawa Amerykańskiego UJ), in collaboration with the Columbus Law School at the Catholic University of America, for hosting me. This talk kicks off a KNPA lecture series on "Law and Sustainability" and begins at 3 p.m. CET at Pałac Larischa 203, Bracka 12.

I'll share some of the subject matter later.  Too much football to watch!

Qatar World Cup opens Sunday; meanwhile, Netflix series stokes embers of FIFA corruption scandal

I visited CONMEBOL HQ in Asunción, Paraguay, in October.
The South American angle on the FIFA corruption scandal
was engagingly fictionalized in El Presidente in 2020.
(Photo by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

The sport world is abuzz over the Netflix documentary series, FIFA Uncovered, dropped November 9, just weeks before the FIFA World Cup opener in Qatar.

Many in Qatar are crying foul by filmmaker Miles Coleman for dredging up the ugliness of the FIFA corruption scandal, the focus of this docuseries, right now. But in an interview with renowned MENA scholar James Dorsey, Coleman, who created This Is Football for Amazon Prime in 2019, said he had no motive other than historical documentation. The timing of the release, Coleman said, is to bring football fans up to speed on the facts, so they can have informed conversations around the Qatar World Cup.

FIFA was rocked by scandal in 2015 when investigators led by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) arrested top officials in Zurich and issued an avalanche of indictments. It was revealed then that corruption practically poisoned every part of world football governance, especially the bidding process for the world's top sporting event and its 2010 award to Russia for 2018 and Qatar for 2022.

Qatar narrowly edged out a bid from the United States in 2010, and disgraced FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his allies accused the United States of spite. Purportedly relieved of corrupt process, FIFA in 2018 awarded the 2026 World Cup to the joint bid of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

When issues remain controverted, the docuseries presents all voices, Coleman told Dorsey. Indeed, the interviews are what makes the series worthwhile. Most of the story has been told already and well; I read and reviewed a number of books on the subject in the first pandemic summer. The docuseries, though, includes interviews with just about every key player, including Blatter himself, as well as Qatar bid chief H.E. Hassan Al Thawadi; "Qatar whistleblower" Phaedra Al-Majid, featured recently on Norwegian television; and Mary Lynn Blanks, romantic partner of corrupted American football official Chuck Blazer, who died in 2017.

Among the revelations, or at least confirmed suspicions, arising from the docuseries interviews is the fact, borne out by evidence besides his own testimony, that Blatter favored the United States rather than Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup. For all Blatter's failings, he was outmaneuvered by the colossal corruption machine that he helped to create. African Football Confederation President Issa Hayatou, a rival of Blatter's within FIFA, was key to securing the Qatari win. Hayatou was joined in his efforts by Jack Warner, president of the North, Central America and Caribbean Association, whose defection infuriated Blazer.

On Wednesday next week, November 23, at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, I will lead a discussion, "Law, Development, and the World Cup."  The program, in English, begins at 3 p.m. local time at Pałac Larischa 203, Bracka 12.

The World Cup opens Sunday night in Doha, Nov. 20, at 1100 US EST/1600 GMT, when Qatar hosts Ecuador in Group A. The United States MNT plays its Group B opener against Wales on Monday, Nov. 21, at 1400 US EST/1900 GMT. Poland plays its Group C opener against Mexico on Tuesday, Nov. 22, at 1100 US EST/1600 GMT/1700 CET.

Hat tip to Alessandro Balbo Forero, an alum of my Comparative Law class who wrote his final paper on football and Brexit, for alerting me to the drop of FIFA Uncovered. He's an Arsenal supporter, but nobody's perfect.

Here is the trailer for FIFA Uncovered:

And here is the Dorsey interview of Coleman:

UK orders commission to study women's football; rising TV prices warn of commercial monopolization

Karen Carney in 2019
(James Smed CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

The UK has announced "an in-depth review into the future of domestic women’s football" and appointed the decorated footballer and today commentator Karen Carney MBE to chair.

In the United States, this year marked the historic equal pay settlement for the blockbuster Women's National Team (USWNT). And in the UK, England hosted and won the 13th UEFA Women's Euro 2022, delayed two years by the pandemic, in a nail-biter over Germany.

Though to say women's football is coming into its own is an assertion decades late, just as it is decades early to say that women's football has at last been afforded parity with men's in social and commercial recognition.

The UK announced three points of focus for the review:

[1] Assessing the potential audience reach and growth of the game—by considering the value and visibility of women’s and girls’ football in England, including the potential to grow the fanbase for women’s football and whether current growth still supports home-grown talent and can be achieved without overstretching infrastructure.

[2] Examining the financial health of the game and its financial sustainability for the long term. This will include exploring opportunities and ways to support the commercialisation of the women’s game, broadcast revenue opportunities and the sponsorship of women’s football.

[3] Examining the structures within women’s football. This includes the affiliation with men’s teams, prize money, the need for women’s football to adhere to the administrative requirements of the men’s game; and assessing the adequacy, quality, accessibility and prevalence of the facilities available for women’s and girls’ football for the growth and sustainability of the game.

The UK does have already a system for youth development in women's football that looks sophisticated from the U.S. vantage point. Carney is a case in point. Even in the 1990s, Carney came up through the ranks of Birmingham City since age 11. She became one of England's top capped players, scoring 32 goals for the national side from 2005 to 2019.

After three years at Arsenal, in 2009, Carney moved to the United States to play for the Chicago Red Stars, a team then affiliated with the Women's Professional Soccer league (WPS). The WPS was a short-lived installment in the fits and starts of women's pro soccer in the United States. The league collapsed after scarcely a year. Carney returned to England in 2011 to play for five years again for Birmingham City, then three years for Chelsea.

Today, Carney comments on both men's and women's football for Sky Sports and Amazon Prime. The Chicago Red Stars play today as part of the National Women's Soccer League.

Sky, like NBC in the United States, is a division of Comcast. The anti-competitive bundlings of these interrelated companies is making it unaffordable for viewers in the UK and in the United States to follow a team. I'm not sure how long UK viewers and regulators will tolerate the exploitation. Some Latin American governments have been increasingly ruffled about commercial efforts to make access to football a privilege of the elite. I've speculated that in the United States, NBC is effectively killing the goose that laid the golden egg. U.S. viewers will never commit to world-class Premier League football if they're given access only to different teams and lower priority matches week to unpredictable week.

Unfortunately, commercial development of the women's game presents the same conundrum. Commercialization in the priorities of the Carney review is presented as an undisputed good. To be sure, that's where the money is, and it will take money to bring the women's game to gender parity.

At the same time, there is evidence already in the United States that commercial success, ironically, invites audience exclusivity and, thus, narrows public appeal. USWNT television rights presently lie with ESPN and Fox Sports, both divisions of Disney. But Disney+ viewers won't find the USWNT there, nor in the Disney+/ESPN+ bundle, as "+" seems to be a number less than (ESPN)2 and (ESPN)3.

In March, US Soccer awarded USWNT and men's team rights together in an eight-year deal to HBO Max and Turner properties, all divisions of AT&T by way of WarnerMedia. An HBO subscription doesn't come cheap, and different Turner channels require subscription to different bundles.

With media empires now controlling access to football on both sides of the Atlantic, fans' budgets will be stretched thin, and appetite for allegiances to new endeavors, such as expanded women's football, might prove difficult to stir. If the women's game is to be kept from becoming a victim of its own success, the goal of commercialization should be viewed with a discerning eye, wary of monopolization.

A call for evidence in support of the Carney review is expected from the UK Football Association in the coming weeks. HT @ lawyer Paul Maalo, writing for the Wiggin digital commerce team in London.

NBC resists TV free market, overcharges U.S. viewers: PL football costs $20 in Canada, $70 in United States

Each year, I become freshly enraged at the cost of seeing Premier League football in the United States, a ready example of antitrust non-enforcement in the communication sector.

The Sporting News had the audacity, or stupidity?, to describe NBC carriage of PL matches in the United States as a "luxury." I guess it is, a luxury only the rich can afford. To follow one's team, one must, at minimum, subscribe to NBC partner FuboTV for $70 per month. Access via FuboTV costs just US$20 per month in Canada.

The tangled cross-ownerships of what used to be broadcast TV are indicative of the dearth of consumer protection in the area. NBC "competitor" CBS (Viacom) owns a stake in FuboTV. The legacy broadcasters are using their weight in contracting power to lock down content in channel consolidators that emulate the old cable TV business model, by which consumers were compelled to overpay for a sliver of content in a library they didn't want. Hardly the free market promise of streaming.

But the FCC long ago left the helm unmanned on consumer protection when broadcasting gave way to cable. And the FTC and DOJ have had little interest in expanding their purview in times of corporate-captured governance. As usual, the United States purports to model free market capitalism in an oligopolized market that is anything but.

FuboTV in Canada at left, United States at right.
The package in Canada has fewer channels,
but if PL is all you want, that's not an option.

Qatar drops beIN sport piracy claim as World Cup nears

Sideline interview with beIN
(Ronnie Macdonald CC BY 2.0 via Flickr)

Qatar withdrew its complaint in April in the World Trade Organization against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) over piracy of Qatari beIN Media Group sport broadcasts.

I wrote about this dispute in May 2020. A pirate outfit cheekily called "beOutQ" was rebroadcasting beIN content in the KSA without a copyright license. Riyadh disclaimed responsibility. But there was little doubt that the Saudis at least looked the other way, if not sponsored the piracy, as the two nations were locked in a tense diplomatic standoff and Qatar was isolated by a regional embargo. Read more background from James Dorsey.

Now World Cup 2022 in Qatar is focusing global attention on the Middle East. Neither nation stands to gain from negative publicity, least of all heightened attention to human rights issues (see Dorsey this week), so Qatar and the KSA are trying to work past their differences. They both joined a statement of the Gulf Cooperation Council signed at al-Ula after a summit in January 2021 (Middle East Institute analysis), and they have been working through the implications since. BeIN has broadcast rights to the World Cup, so setting to rest that piece of the dispute made the agenda.

Alyssa Aquino wrote further analysis of the Qatari withdrawal of the WTO complaint for Law 360 in April. The matter in the WTO was No. WT/DS567/11 (terminated Apr. 25, 2022).

U.S. footballers celebrate equal pay settlement

Alex Morgan
(Jamie Smed CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons)

I was elated in April to hear of a proposed $24m settlement in the equal pay dispute brought by U.S. Women's Soccer.

I wrote about the matter in April 2021 and May 2020. There were ups and downs, and, frankly, things were not looking good for the plaintiffs.

However, the case is a lesson in persistence and the value of a public relations campaign running alongside a litigation. U.S. Soccer had the upper hand in the court of law, but was taking it on the chin in court of public opinion.

The case is Morgan v. U.S. Soccer Federation (C.D. Cal. filed Mar. 8, 2019). A June 22 motion seeks court approval of the class action settlement. Named plaintiff Alex Morgan talked to MSNBC about the settlement last week.

UPDATE, July 4, at 1934 EDT: Watch today's CONCACAF match and tell me Alex Morgan should not be US Soccer's highest paid player!

Crisis worsens in Lviv; FIFA at last suspends Russia

Stand with Ukraine rally at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. (image by Victoria Pickering CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

ABC News has published a list of aid organizations supporting Ukraine, including the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees itself.  The number of persons fleeing the war has now exceeded a half million.  Matt Gutman's latest report from Lviv, not yet freely available, is heartbreaking, including a train interview with a little boy and images of a sobbing girl, both contemplating fathers left behind.  A TikTok video gives a flavor.

@abcnews Matt Gutman reports from the train station in #Lviv, #Ukraine, where hundreds of people are waiting to board to leave the country. #news #russia ♬ original sound - ABC News

Recent days have seen moving recognition of the war in professional football (soccer).  My own Manchester City's Oleksandr Zinchenko, who hails from Ukraine, met Everton countryman Vitaliy Mykolenko on the pitch for an embrace before the Saturday match-up, as the stadium overflowed with azure and gold.

💙💛

With their homeland Ukraine still under attack by Russia, Vitaliy Mykolenko and Oleksandr Zinchenko embraced ahead of Everton's match with Man City in the Premier League.#BBCFootball

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) February 26, 2022

Born in Radomyshl in Ukraine, about 70 miles west of Kyiv, Zinchenko perfected his skills with the youth squad of FC Shakhtar Donetsk, where he became captain.  Then, with his family at age 17, he was forced to flee the conflict in the Donbas region, according to the BBC.

The support at the Etihad on Saturday brought Zinchenko to tears. Subsequently, he had harsh words for Vladimir Putin and joined a statement demanding Russia's expulsion from international football. After some earlier ambiguous statements, FIFA, the world governing body of football, yesterday at last settled on suspending Russia from all competitions, including ongoing qualifiers for the World Cup in Qatar late this year.

Manchester City chief Pep Guardiola said Saturday that Zinchenko wanted to play, despite the circumstances. He is set to start today in Man C's FA Cup match against Peterborough, 1915 GMT, on ESPN+ in the United States.