LOYAL’S DONOVAN SEEKS CHANGE, NOT HARSH PUNISHMENTS

Hopes everyone will learn from team’s actions in matches

Concerning the human tongue, biblical writer St. James wasn’t a big fan: “It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”

Taming the tongue — his own and others — was a topic Landon Donovan spoke to Friday in view of recent events involving the former soccer star who coaches the San Diego Loyal in the second-division USL Championship.

“I’ll give you a dumb example,” he said. “At one point in my life, my twin sister said, ‘Landon, you cuss too much.’ ”

Donovan offered to pay her a dollar for every profanity he uttered in her presence. That was 10 years ago.

“We made a deal. So, guess what happened the next time I was about to cuss. I didn’t cuss,” he said.

Lately, Donovan called attention to men who used offensive language during matches involving his team.

Objections he raised led to punishment of players accused of yelling racial and homophobic slurs at his players.

The desired outcome, said team leaders, was to effect change, not to hold anyone up for scorn.

“You hate to see certain players have to go through this,” said Loyal player Sal Zizzo, an alum of Patrick Henry High. “Credit to our leadership to give us that opportunity to speak out and actually take action.”

Donovan led his team off the field — forfeiting a game it led 3-1 — after the Phoenix Rising coach refused to bench a player accused of directing a homophobic slur at openly gay midfielder Collin Martin. Days earlier, after alleging an L.A. Galaxy II player directed a racial slur at Elijah Martin, who’s Black, SD Loyal sought to forfeit because, per team owner Andrew Vassiliadis, “we don’t even want to recognize being a part of a match where these types of actions take place.”

Both players were suspended for six games by the league. The Galaxy also released its player accused of the racial slur.

Donovan said he reveled in neither punishment.

“Nobody in our leadership wants to see peoples’ lives ruined or careers ruined,” he said. “So the goal here is not to exert the maximum amount of punishment to destroy someone’s life. The goal here is to change this behavior and ultimately to change the way people view each other.”

He gave an example.

“If we knew going into next season that we were going to get 10 points reduced from the standings if one of our players did something like that,” he said, “I’ll tell you exactly what would happen. First day of preseason we’d sit down in the room and we would walk through why this is not acceptable from a competitive standpoint, but more so why as human beings we don’t do this, and I promise you that would change the behavior.”

Donovan, 38, mentioned criticism that SD Loyal overreacted to “just words” in a “competition.”

“The problem is,” he said, “that words can also lead to worse, can lead to violence, but more so than that, your words shape your behavior, and your behavior shapes your beliefs. So, if you know that it’s not acceptable to call someone gay or the N-word, it starts to change your behavior, and you see why it hurts people, and then it changes your beliefs.”

Donovan’s protests generated vast publicity for the first-year soccer club. “Messages and love we’ve received is overwhelming,” said Donovan.

Vassiliadis, 37, said he’ll seek stricter punishment of players using slurs.

“More importantly,” he said, “I hope some children learned messages from that. I hope that a kid watched that game and watched what Collin and the group of men did, and the next time they’re playing a game and something is said that they don’t like, not necessarily that they walk off, but they know that they can stand up and understand that’s the right thing to do.“

Donovan’s club finished 6-5-5, short of the playoffs.

“The problem is that words can also lead to worse ...”

Landon Donovan

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SD Loyal coach