As reported Front Office Sports Rocco Commissoowner of Fiorentina and central figure of US football in past years, is the protagonist of a heated legal dispute between the Nasl (North American Soccer League), the MLS (Major League Soccer) and the US Federcalcio (USSF). The procedure, which is taking place in the United States, saw on Monday his ninth day of hearing, with Commisso on the defendant’s counter for using anonymous accounts on Twitter (now X) to attack the leaders of American football.
The origin of the dispute
The case was born from the US Soccer decision, in September 2017, not to renew the Nasl license as a second division of US football, a choice that led to the bankruptcy of the League. At the time, Commisso was president of the Nasl and still remains the owner of the New York Cosmos, a club that however no longer participates in national competitions since 2021.
Feeling damaged, the Patron Viola has filed a cause against MLS and USSF to obtain compensation of 170 million dollars. In parallel, through the anonymous account Global Soccer Fan, he repeatedly attacked the MLS commissioner, Don Garber, and the former president of the US Football Federation, Sunil Gualati. Some of his tweets have even compared the two to controversial figures such as Harvey Weinstein and Bernie Madoff.
The admission of Commisso
The investigators connected the anonymous account to Commisso precisely as part of the case. During Monday hearing, the patron of Fiorentina admitted that he wrote those tweets of his own hand and that he has opened a second account under the false name of Virgil Kane, also delegating his responsible for public relations to the management of attacks on social media .
The attacks of Commisso, however, would not have stopped at football. The entrepreneur in fact tried to influence the Fox television network, after the analyst Alexis Lalas had criticized his cause against MLS and USSF. Commisso would have sent a letter to a Fox manager asking for an intervention against Lalas, leveraging the commercial relations between Mediacom (the company founded by Commisso) and the issuer.
The final excuses
During the testimony, Commisso expressed regret for his actions: “I don’t feel good for what I did, because it is not from me. I stopped using Twitter and I don’t publish anything more on social media for five or six years. I am Happy to have moved away from it. ” We read on Football