Heroes: French soccer teams on strike due to high taxes...

They are protesting a 75 per cent income tax rate.

Via the Financial Times:

François Hollande has bent over backwards since becoming France’s president to avoid provoking the Gallic propensity to strike. Now, of all unlikely sources, he faces a weekend of strike action by the country’s football clubs, who have instructed players to hang up their boots in protest against his 75 per cent income tax rate.

Angrily condemning the “unfair and discriminatory” tax for threatening to cripple struggling clubs, Jean-Pierre Louvel, head of the UCPF, the professional football club union, declared on Thursday: “We are talking about the death of French football.” …
The 75 per cent tax, a key Hollande election pledge, which is set to take effect from next year, will be levied on employers who must pay it for two years on all annual salaries above €1m. …
“We are already the most taxed league in Europe and the other leagues are already much stronger than us,” complained Mr Louvel.

LA Fans Cheer for Mexican Soccer Team Over USA Team

Having a large percentage of the population loyal to another country is a very dangerous thing.

(LA Times)- It was imperfectly odd. It was strangely unsettling. It was uniquely American.

On a balmy early Saturday summer evening, the U.S soccer team played for a prestigious championship in a U.S. stadium … and was smothered in boos.

Its fans were vastly outnumbered. Its goalkeeper was bathed in a chanted obscenity. Even its national anthem was filled with the blowing of air horns and bouncing of beach balls.

Most of these hostile visitors didn't live in another country. Most, in fact, were not visitors at all, many of them being U.S. residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere.

Welcome to another unveiling of that social portrait known as a U.S.-Mexico soccer match, streaked as always in deep colors of red, white, blue, green … and gray.

Iran imposes lifetime ban on pro-democracy soccer players

Support for democracy in Iran comes at a heavy price for four Iranian World Cup soccer players. They received a lifetime ban.
The Guardian reported:

Their gesture attracted worldwide comment and drew the attention of football fans to Iran's political turmoil. Now the country's authorities have taken revenge by imposing life bans on players who sported green wristbands in a recent World Cup match in protest against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.

According to the pro-government newspaper Iran, four players – Ali Karimi, 31, Mehdi Mahdavikia, 32, Hosein Ka'abi, 24 and Vahid Hashemian, 32 – have been "retired" from the sport after their gesture in last Wednesday's match against South Korea in Seoul.