Robbie Rogers Wanted to Embrace His "Inner Zidane" After Opponent Used Gay Slur During Match [UPDATE]

The American soccer scene is imperfect. The issues prohibiting it from producing sufficiently good players for its men's national team to properly compete at World Cups remain many. And on the youth scene, it is exclusive in various ways.

But it has also harbored redeeming stories, perhaps none more so than the universal acceptance and embrace of Robbie Rogers, of the Los Angeles Galaxy, who came out as gay three years ago, retired, then un-retired and has played well and entirely without incident in Major League Soccer ever since. His reintegration into the game has been so smooth, in fact, that nearly everybody seemed to have forgotten about his pioneering.

He remains the only openly gay male athlete who is actually playing in a professional sports league stateside.

But on Saturday night, as Rogers appeared in an LA Galaxy II game against the Orange County Blues of the United Soccer League in a rehab stint, he was the target of several gay slurs.

"In the heat of the last fifteen minutes of the game a player from the opposing team called me a 'queer' repeatedly," Rogers wrote on his Facebook page. "To be honest my initial reaction was one of shock. This is my fourth season back in the MLS and I've yet to hear another player use that or any other gay slur during a game. I quickly became enraged, I spent the drive home wishing I had channeled my inner Zidane and punched or head-butted this player even though I knew punching this person wouldn't have helped either of us, my team, or the greater cause of advancing equality in sports.

"I went to bed upset last night," Rogers continued. "Angry at this player and and [sic] his ignorance. Angry at myself for not doing more in the moment. Sad the [sic] we still live in a time where this kind of intolerance still exists in my sport and elsewhere. And if I'm being honest, I was even a bit ashamed that a single word could make me feel, even just for a moment, all the awful feelings I felt for so many years: small, less than, wrong, and unworthy of love and respect by my family or god forbid by my teammates."

Rogers said that one opponent and several teammates had apologized for the single player's actions. And he reiterated that he was glad he'd come out so he could "help change a culture."

MLS and the USL are investigating.

Statement from Major League Soccer pic.twitter.com/trdJaX1Upc
— Dan Courtemanche (@courtemancheMLS) August 22, 2016

Update: After conducting an investigation that included reviewing game footage, and interviews with referees and players from the game, the United Soccer League has suspended Orange County Blues FC midfielder Richard Chaplow two games for "offensive and abusive language directed at" Robbie Rogers. You can read the full statement here.