UNSMT Captain and MLS Toronto FC player Michael Bradley was amongst the athletes who took a stand in light of recent events and criticized US President Donald Trump and his administration. In a conference call with the members of the press on Thursday, Bradley addressed the current protests and social unrest across the US that was sparked with George Floyd’s death on May 25. He said that country must resolve issues of racial inequality and social injustice. And offered a straight out solution: “Trump can’t be president, it’s as simple as that,” Bradley said.
The UNMT skipper, who’s been part of the national soccer team since 2006, took a pretty clear stance, and spared nothing from the White House current tenant. “We have a president that is completely empty. There isn’t a moral bone in his body,” Bradley added: “There’s no leadership. There’s no leadership from the president, there no leadership from the Republican senators who have sat back and been totally complicit in everything he’s done for the last three and a half years.”
The 32 year-old talked about the emotional tilt he went through when watching the violence and unrest that took the country by storm following death of Floyd in Minneapolis while three policemen restrain him, one pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck: “I’m angry, I’m horrified, I’m sand and I’m determined to do anything and everything I can to try to be a part of the fix,” Bradley said. “Because it has to end, and we all have to be part of that fix.”
While saying that politicians, policy makers and other authority figures should be held accountable, Bradley says that he, and the rest of the public has a lot of lessons to learn from what’s going on. And he believes that each of us needs to be part of the solution to the problem by casting a vote: “I just hope that people are able to go to the polls in November and think about more than just what is good for them, more than what is good for their own status, their own business, their own tax return…the future of our country and the future of our democracy is at stake,” he said.
Another prominent MLS and soccer figure Jozy Altidore, who is also Bradley’s Toronto FC teammate, retweeted the interview with Bradley and added: “My man Mike is as real as they come. Nothing but the truth there.”
Bradley has been vocal before about the Trump administration, and in 2017 he said he was “sad and embarrassed” by Trump’s travel restrictions on citizens of Muslim countries.
Looking forward to what is next with the MLS plans to return to action, the Toronto Captain said that he was pleased to see the MLS resolved the impasse with the MLS Players Association (MLSPA) regarding paycuts. On the shared vision and spirit he brought into the talks Bradley said: “I kept coming back to that idea. That we have all put so much into growing the game [of soccer] in North America, at all levels…everybody is important to what we are trying to do.”
Michael Brandley has been playing professional soccer since 2004, and has been with MLS Eastern Conference Toronto FC since 2014 where he registered 163 appearances and scored 11 goals. Since 2006, Bradley marked 151 appearances and scored 17 goals with the US National Soccer Team. In the MLS Cup Final against Seattle Sounders on Nov. 10 last year, Bradley suffered an ankle injury which was said to rule him out for the MLS 2020 season, had it been run according to the original schedule (and not been suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic). But now his rehab is over, and he was already attending a small-group training session on Thursday.
