Galaxy release Aleksandar Katai following racist posts by his wife
The 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.
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.”
{she actually wrote "disgusting cattle burns the churches"}
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.”
The Galaxy released Aleksandar Katai after learning the midfielder's wife posted racist comments to social media in the wake of George Floyd's death.
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