SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – This is the story of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Bay Area soccer team and a GIF gone wrong.
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The Oakland Roots – the Town's professional men's soccer team, which has played in the second-division USL Championship since 2021 – went viral on social media this week when they blasted Cruz, who had previously tweeted a GIF of a Roots player.
Cruz, in a Wednesday quote tweet responding to a story about Mexican President Lopez Obrador's comments about him, used a GIF of Roots player Akeem O’Connor-Ward saying "Rent Free Baby."
The team responded the next day by quote-tweeting Cruz's post and telling him to keep content related to the team "out your mouth."
The post has been retweeted 2,300 times and garnered over 25,000 likes. Cruz, who has 5.2 million Twitter followers, was retweeted 124 times as of publication, and his tweet with the Roots GIF received a little more than 700 likes.
As of this writing, Cruz has not responded to the Oakland club.
The Roots' forceful response to the Republican Senator is unsurprising, given the organization’s off-field priorities.
Since their inception as a National Independent Soccer Association club in 2018, Roots have become one of the most progressive sports clubs in the Bay Area, with a previously stated goal of "using soccer to promote positive social change."
In June 2020, became the first U.S. soccer team to join the "Common Goal" movement, pledging to donate at least 1% of all their ticket sales, player and staff salaries to help fight social inequality. That October, the Roots hosted their inaugural "Justice Match," raising money for the club's charitable fund supporting racial and gender justice causes.
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