A poster that featured Kamala Harris in Eagles gear with a caption that read, “Kamala, official candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles,” was spotted at a Philadelphia bus stop and later proven to be forged last week.

The artist who took credit for the piece, Philadelphia native Winston Tseng, released a statement on Monday claiming the poster was supposed to be a satirical piece and never meant to be put up in a public space. He denied any knowledge of how it ended up there. 

“The absurd poster of Kamala Harris wearing an Eagles helmet is my artwork, but I don’t know how it ended up at bus stops in Philadelphia,” Tseng wrote. 

Tseng claims that the piece was not meant to be promotional for the Harris campaign when he designed it. Instead, it was meant to satirize the concept of celebrity or sports entities giving endorsements of political candidates as a whole.

“My work uses brands and advertising to communicate societal issues. On one level, the poster is a parody of the ads we see along I-95 promoting the ‘official beer’ or the ‘official accounting firm of the Philadelphia Eagles.’ But the title of this work is ‘Political Endorsement,’ and that’s the issue at hand,” Tseng said. “Why the f— do we care who Hulk Hogan or some corporation endorses? Yet here we are, and I think the strong reaction we’ve seen to this satirical endorsement is a reflection of our times.”

The posters were initially spotted during the first two days of September on 16th and Spring Garden streets, 18th Street and JFK Boulevard, and 34th and Walnut streets in Philadelphia. The poster pictured below at 16th and Spring Garden streets was later removed last Monday afternoon.

However, the posters also had a URL printed underneath the caption, which directed to an Eagles voting website that shows past Pennsylvania and New Jersey primary election voting deadlines from the spring. It also provided links for first-time voters, polling locations, and guidelines on voting registration and requesting a ballot. 

EAGLES’ POLITICAL AD ENDORSING KAMALA HARRIS FOR PRESIDENT IS ‘COUNTERFEIT,’ NFL TEAM SAYS

Tseng has also previously posted photos of his designed posters in which he appropriated a company’s official brand at Philadelphia bus stops, including a Ben & Jerry’s-themed poster of President Biden eating an ice cream cone, with the caption “Rocky Road to Democracy.” 

Tseng has also posted a photo of one of his posters that featured former president Trump, in which he appropriated the Pepto Bismol brand. That poster showed Trump against a white background with the text: “Nausea, heartburn, insurrection, upset stomach, diarrhea. 

Meanwhile, the Harris Eagles posters came just one week before the presidential debate between Harris and Trump, at the National Constitution Center Tuesday night in Philadelphia, which will be broadcast on ABC.

The posters garnered a strong reaction out of one Philadelphia resident, identified by FOX 29 as Joe from South Philly. The man took it upon himself to cover up the bus station posters with printed-out screenshots of the Eagles’ official statement decrying the posters as counterfeit. 

Philadelphia Eagles fan, Joe from South Philly, printed out copies of the Eagles statement to coverup a fake political ad that appeared to show the team endorsing presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. (FOX 29)

“My concern here is not that someone is expressing an opinion, which everyone is entitled to do, but this person is lying to everyone that comes and uses this stop. That’s what I’m very concerned about — the fact that they’re spreading lies that the Philadelphia Eagles endorsed Kamala Harris as a candidate for president in the United States,” Joe said. “We all know that Philadelphia’s the battleground for Pennsylvania, and these types of lies are things that prevent honesty in the election process.”

A city spokesperson told NBC Philadelphia that someone must have broken into a contained space where bus station posters are stored, and replaced the ones that were in there with the counterfeit Harris endorsement posters.

“This was not a digital breach; whomever is responsible for the illegally placed posters, broke into the securely covered shelter ad space and somehow put the posters in the space. Intersection has advised the City’s Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) that they plan to conduct a full inventory tomorrow of all bus shelters, and remove any illegal posters. The City has a process to review all bus shelter ads but this, again, was not a digital ad.”

Pennsylvania could be the “tipping point” in the 2024 presidential election, according to electoral and polling analysis. Betting favorites with Harris taking Pennsylvania showed the vice president winning 270 electoral votes compared to Donald Trump’s 268, but if Trump were to win the commonwealth, that would put him at 287 electoral votes to Harris’ 251. 

Polls in the state have showed Trump gaining ground and closing Harris’ previous lead in the state. 

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U.S. Soccer finally got its man Tuesday, announcing it has hired Mauricio Pochettino to coach the men’s national team.

Pochettino, a former player who grew up in Argentina and most recently coached Chelsea in the English Premier League, reportedly reached an agreement weeks ago to coach the U.S. men through the 2026 World Cup. But the deal couldn’t be closed until the final details of his departure from Chelsea last May were cleaned up.

With those issues resolved, he will be formally introduced as the team’s new coach at a news conference Friday morning in New York and will manage the U.S. for the first time in next month’s friendlies with Panama in Austin, Texas, and Mexico in Guadalajara. Mikey Varas, who formerly coached the U.S. under-20 team, managed the senior national team in this month’s games with Canada and New Zealand.

“The decision to join U.S. Soccer wasn ‘t just about football for me,” Pochettino said in a statement. “It’s about the journey that this team and this country are on. The energy, the passion and the hunger to achieve something truly historic here, those are the things that inspired me.

“I see a group of players full of talent and potential and together we’re going to build something special that the whole nation can be proud of.”

Financial terms of the deal were not released, but a U.S. Soccer spokesperson confirmed it is a multi-year contract that runs through the 2026 World Cup, which will be co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. The U.S. will play two of its three group-stage games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Pochettino, 52, guided Tottenham to a Champions League final and won a Ligue 1 title with Paris Saint-Germain but he has never coached a national team. He will be tasked with righting a U.S. squad that grew stagnant under former coach Gregg Berhalter, bowing out of this summer’s Copa América in the group stage, the first time the U.S. has been eliminated in the first round of an international tournament it was hosting.

The USMNT went into Tuesday night’s game with New Zealand having lost three straight games in the same year for the first time since 2007. U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone said Tuesday she’s confident Pochettino can turn that around.

“Mauricio is a world-class coach with a proven track record of developing players and achieving success at the highest level,” said Cone, a World Cup winner as a player. “His passion for the game, his innovative approach to coaching and his ability to inspire and connect with players make him the perfect fit for this role.”

While the Americans were criticized for conservative, risk-averse play under Berhalter, who was sacked in July, Pochettino is known for a high-pressing, attacking style of play. His teams are encouraged to pressure opponents and that style has produced results in three of Europe’s top five leagues.

A center back, Pochettino signed his first contract with Newell’s Old Boys at age 17 and played in nearly 500 matches in Argentina, Spain and France. He also made 20 appearances for Argentina’s national team before retiring as a player in 2006 and beginning his coaching career with Spanish club Espanyol three years later.

He went on to manage at Southampton, Tottenham and PSG before landing at Chelsea, signing a two-year contract before the 2023-24 season. But he was sacked two days after a season in which Chelsea finished sixth, leaving the coach and the club, chaired by Dodgers’ part-owner Todd Boehly, to sort out the terms of Pochettino’s separation from Chelsea, which was reportedly paying him an annual salary of $13.2 million.

JT Batson, U.S. Soccer’s chief executive officer, was said to be instrumental in helping the two sides cut through that while also negotiating a contract with Pochettino that is reportedly the largest in the federation’s history. Berhalter earned $2,291,136 in 2022, including $900,000 in bonuses.

“Hiring Mauricio is a step forward in our mission to compete at the highest level and make a lasting mark on the global soccer landscape,” Batson said. “Mauricio understands the unique potential of this team and this country and he shares our belief that U.S. Soccer is on the cusp of something truly special.”

Chelsea coach Mauricio Pochettino spreads his arms and reacts incredulously during an FA Cup semifinal against Manchester City Wembley Stadium in London on April 20.

(Alastair Grant / Associated Press)

U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker, who led the search for Berhalter’s replacement after firing the coach in early July, overlapped briefly with Pochettino at Southampton, where Crocker served as academy director.

Pochettino is one of the highest-profile names to lead the national team and is just the second foreign-born U.S. manager since Boris Milutinov in 1995.

“Mauricio is a serial winner with a deep passion for player development and a proven ability to build cohesive and competition teams,” Crocker said of the coach, who is fluent in English, Spanish and French. “His track record speaks for itself.”

Berhalter, a former U.S. Soccer and Galaxy player under Bruce Arena, was hired in December 2018, 14 months after the U.S., under Arena, failed to qualify for a World Cup for the first time in 32 years. He led the team to a Gold Cup championship, two CONCACAF Nations League titles and to the round of 16 in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. With a record of 44-17-13, he left with the best winning percentage of any coach who worked more than seven matches with the national team.

But he was undone by the team’s poor performance in the Copa América, which the U.S. exited in the group stage after losing to Panama and Uruguay.

“After the Copa América ended, there was a mutual feeling within the dressing room of disappointment,” forward Folarin Balogun told ESPN last week. “But we knew that we had to put it to rest, we had to go away, reflect and come back for this camp.”

Only Arena (81) and Jurgen Klinsmann (55) won more games with the U.S. than Berhalter, who survived an earlier challenge to his job after former teammate Claudio Reyna and his wife, Danielle, upset over Berhalter’s treatment of their son Gio during the 2022 World Cup, informed U.S. Soccer of an alleged 30-year-old physical confrontation between Berhalter and the woman who would become his wife.

The federation launched a months-long investigation into the incident before clearing Berhalter in the spring of 2023. Crocker then rehired him 13 months ago for the current World Cup cycle.

U.S. Soccer decided to offer Berhalter a new contract based on his performance and positive relationships with most players but his second stay lasted less than a year.

The night before Liverpool’s former owners faced the media for the first time at Anfield in February 2007, a meeting was held about the running order for business.

George Gillett, a junk bond millionaire, had initially been batted away from the club because he did not have deep enough pockets. To change his possibilities, he enlisted the help of Inner Circle Sports, an investment bank from New York City. Ultimately, the conversations sent him to Tom Hicks, someone he’d worked with before after they put money into a meat-packing company.

Hicks’ interest in Liverpool came relatively late, and because of this — according to one club official present at the time but who spoke to The Athletic on condition of anonymity to protect their current position — it was suggested that Gillett should field the earliest questions in the press conference. Hicks was having none of it. “I’ll go first,” he said. And he got his way.

It was an early indication that this marriage was never likely to last. Within a few months, the club was unofficially in the grip of a civil war, with the co-owners no longer on speaking terms.

Their reign staggered on for three agonising years before a High Court ruling led to another sale, this time to Fenway Sports Group (FSG), with the whole exercise just serving to underline how difficult it is to make co-ownership work in the high-stakes world of Premier League football.

All of which brings us to Chelsea, and the strife between co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, of Clearlake Capital.

The London club’s fans may not appreciate the parallel, but they could do worse than look north if they wished to understand how and why things can go so wrong so quickly with joint owners. 

In the Gillett role, you have Boehly. Both are American businessmen with pre-existing sporting interests (Gillett owned ice hockey’s Montreal Canadiens, Boehly part-owns baseball’s LA Dodgers) who were wealthy enough to control one of England’s biggest sporting institutions, but not quite rich enough to do that and fulfil those clubs’ vast ambitions.

The parallels don’t end there. Gillett only completed his takeover after other bidders failed. With Liverpool urgently needing money to fund a new stadium project, he returned with Hicks.

At Chelsea, it was only possible for Boehly to claim the club as his own because of money from Clearlake and Eghbali. And here, too, time was of the essence: the UK government had set a deadline of May 31, 2022 for Chelsea to be sold amid ongoing sanctions against the previous owner, Roman Abramovich, a Russian oligarch.

Since the takeover’s completion, Boehly has taken many of the headlines but Eghbali has played a big part in a lot of internal processes and decision-making. It was the same at Liverpool, where Hicks — despite being introduced to the club by Gillett — always tended to come first when their names were mentioned in tandem.

If anything, Liverpool’s ownership partners fell out even quicker than Chelsea’s. In Brian Reade’s book about the period, An Epic Swindle, he quotes an unnamed senior football executive and a Liverpool fan who met both owners individually. 

“It was only two months into their joint ownership of the club but George was talking about his view versus his partner’s view. When I later had lunch with Tom and some of his American associates, I asked about the dynamics of their relationship. Tom shrugged and said, ‘You’d better ask him,’ pointing at a senior figure from Inner Circle Sports, who had brought the two together for the deal.”

From the beginning, there was a lack of understanding about who was really in charge at Liverpool. This stemmed from the fact each partner had an equal number of shares — a difference to Boehly and Clearlake, with the latter’s stake totalling 61.5 per cent and Boehly’s less than 13 per cent.

By December 2007, with further differences being exposed around whether to revamp Anfield or relocate from it — sound familiar, Chelsea fans? — Gillett had already started exploring an exit strategy, having realised he’d made a monumental mistake with his choice of partner.

The challenges of running a business in the meat industry were a little different to a football club the size of Liverpool: a responsibility that invites emotion, attention and criticism, with each factor testing a person’s ego. Those who dealt with Hicks — a brash Texan whose investment firm had initially made money in radio and soft drinks — suggest he had one as big as Mount Rushmore.

Personality clashes are often at the root of co-ownership implosions, although tensions are often strategic as much as personal.

Take Crystal Palace, probably the club whose current ownership issues most closely resemble Chelsea’s in the top flight. 

In 2010, Palace were brought out of administration by a group of wealthy local supporters led by Steve Parish. After an unexpected promotion to the Premier League in 2013 and a couple of seasons of struggle, the ownership model changed, with Parish seeking outside investment from America in the form of private equity tycoons Josh Harris and David Blitzer, who bought stakes in 2015, and John Textor, who purchased around 40 per cent of the club six years later. His stake has since crept up to 45 per cent.

John Textor wants full control of a Premier League club (Wagner Meier/Getty Images)

Despite their vastly differing-sized stakes, Parish, Textor, Harris and Blitzer all have an equal voting share, which is a problem given the strategic differences between them.

Parish, who runs Palace day to day, wants to follow a long-term sustainable economic model, based around infrastructure improvements, while Textor is keen to attack the transfer market and take advantage of the other elements of his Eagle Football multi-club model (he also owns Ligue 1 club Olympique Lyon, Brazil’s Botafogo and Belgian side RWD Molenbeek). Blitzer and Harris seem happy, by and large, to retain the status quo.

It would be stretching it to claim Palace are in the grip of a Chelsea-style civil war, but the strategic impasse effectively means the club is stuck — hence why Textor is now trying to sell his Palace stake and buy Everton, which Farhad Moshiri has been trying to sell for a couple of years.

Officially, Moshiri has been the sole owner of Everton since 2016 when he displaced the late Bill Kenwright, who stayed on as chairman. Although Kenwright’s power was gone, he remained influential and a high-profile presence around the club, a point which created its own issues. His views did not always align with Moshiri, notably around decisions such as sacking manager Roberto Martinez in 2016 and around some transfers, and the result was barely-controlled chaos.

There was, perhaps, something similar at play with Newcastle United and the recent departures of Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi — the couple who helped secure the club’s Saudi Arabian-backed takeover in 2021.

Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi watching Newcastle United in August 2023 (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

At that point, there was no sporting director or CEO at the club, so Staveley and Ghodoussi assumed responsibility for those areas until an executive team was eventually put in place, becoming the public faces of the club’s executive team. But their influence was belied by their 10 per cent ownership stake.

Ultimately, once those pre-existing vacancies had been filled, there was a sense of too many competing voices and, in that scenario, there was only ever going to be one winner.

Will the same thing happen at Manchester United? INEOS and the Glazer family have never worked together before. Sir Jim Ratcliffe has had much influence over the club since his investment but it will be interesting to see what sort of pressure he is subjected to internally if results on the pitch continue.

Co-ownership structures can be a success, but only — it would seem — when the partnerships are not flung together simply through circumstance. Wrexham’s duo of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney seem to have found a way to work in harmony, although if their project ever reaches the Premier League, with all the attendant scrutiny and financial demands, that partnership could come under renewed scrutiny.

Who knows where Chelsea will be by then? Either way, the chances of Boehly and Egbhali still being in partnership seem minimal.

(Top photos: Getty Images)