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Soccer, the most international of sports, can't escape real-world politics in wake of Trump's executive order

Related Topics: Executive order, Serbia

Sports are supposed to offer a relief from politics, except, of course, if the sport in question is soccer.

In that case, the sport is impossible to separate from the outside world, as U.S. national team midfielder Sacha Kljestan was reminded Sunday. The U.S. played against Serbia, his father’s homeland.

With President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration inspiring protests across the country, Kljestan could only think of his father’s story, which he called “the American Dream — the real American Dream.”

The story starts with a young man named Slavko running away from an abusive home in Yugoslavia and relocating to Canada, where his sister was living.