As of this morning, here’s where we stand with the Supporters’ Shield debacle:

- Fans overwhelmingly hate the decision.
- Current and former players are outraged.
- Coaches are speaking out against it.
- The league has started to remove mentions of the Shield from their website.

And as far as I can tell, the response from the ISC is “not our fault, talk to the SSF” while the SSF’s stance is “please refer questions to the supporter groups” who were possibly informed of the decision maybe on some Slack channel.

This is gross incompetence from a leadership perspective, full stop. Not taking responsibility for your own actions, passing the buck, and then playing the victim on your personal Twitter accounts.

Fans of this league deserve much, much better. So do the players and staffs.

And remember that their original reasoning for this disaster was that STADIUMS WERE MISSING PASSION, which was then walked back because of how insanely dumb it is.

Seriously. This is Precourt Sports Ventures level of negligence.

This is a season where players and their families have been separated so that games could continue to be played. Coaching staffs, digital teams, and hundreds of other employees of the clubs too.

And then 5 unelected chodes on a Slack channel decided there wasn’t enough PASSION.

And this absurd idea that the only fans who count are the ones in the stadiums, give me a fucking break. That kind of elitist, self-serving bullshit is exactly why people hate supporter culture. Get over yourselves. Out-of-market fans don’t take a backseat to ANYBODY.

I personally know Crew fans who travel from Massachusetts, New York, California, Florida, Texas, etc every season for multiple Crew games. I know a guy who drove from West Virginia to watch the TEAM BUS leave for Orlando. Don’t you dare lecture any of them about passion.

This, of course, isn’t even dealing with the fact that A LACK OF STADIUM PASSION has never, ever been used to determine the Supporters’ Shield, nor has the perceived competitive balance of regular season scheduling.

Never. Not once.

And the argument that “well 2020 has been crazy” doesn’t hold water. Of course it’s been crazy. Who the fuck is arguing with you? No one. The fact remains: a regular season is happening, and a team will finish at the top.

LITERALLY ALL CRITERIA WILL HAVE BEEN MET. THE END.

But that’s not good enough for the kind of fan who has never discovered a cool and unique aspect of American soccer that they weren’t willing to selfishly manhandle and break open and let wither to death.

If that’s how you define “passion”, no thanks. We don’t want any.

This is the same argument AO made when installing capos for Dos a Cero 2013, the same ambition-related bullshit Precourt leveled in 2017, and now we’re getting a fresh dose of it from the ISC in 2020.

This unique thing needs to be broken so we can fix it by destroying it.

And every single time the best way to deal with shooting yourself in the foot was to admit you screwed up, take responsibility for your actions, and promise to do better next time.

That’s what leaders do.

Be a leader.

I’m not done with this thread.

One of the things I thought about EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. during #SaveTheCrew was how insanely important it was for all of us to remember that we only existed as a movement because the community that we were fighting for trusted us to do what was right.

If we broke that trust, if we didn’t fulfill our pledge to stand up for what was right, we would immediately and permanently lose the trust of the people, which was the very foundation upon which our movement was built. Without that trust, we would cease to be.

All of us knew that STC didn’t belong to anyone, it belonged to everyone. Not even just Crew fans, either. We were fighting for those people who they’d come after next, because we believed those who were yet to come mattered just as much as we did.

This is what good leadership should always look like. You’re only where you are today because of the hard work of those who came before you, and your only job right now is to check your ego at the door and fight like hell to make things better for the next generation.

Absolving yourself of the responsibility of dealing with the fallout from your unilateral actions is what cowards do, not leaders. Saying that the only people who care are TFC fans is dangerously misunderstanding your role as a caretaker, and also fundamentally not true.

The Supporters’ Shield exists thanks to those who believe in its worth, not those who installed themselves to lord over it. It belongs to those who protect it by celebrating it, not to those who cancel it and call others butthurt for daring to care about its preservation.

Your worth and value as a supporter based organization is tied DIRECTLY to the trust you are given by those around you. If you lose that trust, you lose everything. Earning that trust, maintaining it, and passing it along to the next generation is your only reason for existing.

: Supporters’ Shield Update

Sounds like the SSF has begrudgingly agreed to open the matter to a vote by ISC membership, but will not agree to be bound by any consensus that may be reached. I’m told they have only agreed to discuss the outcome of the vote.