Landon Donovan has always seen the big picture. This week proved it again.

Throughout his exceptional playing career, Donovan saw the big picture in sports and life. He did not care when some fans criticized him for choosing the happiness of playing at home in California rather than pursuing a longer European career.

His roundtable interviews at U.S. training camps were mandatory listening.

Now, as a first-year coach, the 38-year-old demonstrated Wednesday that he still gets it.

Donovan is not the first coach to take a stand; the NBA’s Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich have been speaking about racial and social justice issues for years. They have joined their players in acts of protest and defiance. But Donovan united with his players in sacrificing what all athletes work for in sports: winning. The cause was greater than the pursuit of points and playoffs.

What was striking was the way Donovan handled it.

In field-level audio capturing interaction between match officials and the head coaches at halftime, Donovan told counterpart Rick Schantz: “This is beyond soccer. We have to get this out of our game.”

Donovan already was thinking ahead of how his team would respond. Before rejoining the players, he told referee Joseph Salinas that if he did not red-card Flemmings, “we’re probably not playing.”

Salinas did not eject him. Schantz did not bench him.

And so when San Diego returned for the second-half kickoff, the players, coaches and support staff knelt for a moment, then walked back to the locker room, resulting in a forfeit.

As they left, some of Martin’s teammates put an arm over his shoulders and patted him on the back.

“The support from him has meant a lot. His big thing is he really does focus on the stuff that isn’t just the soccer,” Martin said of Donovan in an interview with The Washington Post. “This isn’t acting or taking advantage of a moment. He really is that type of leader. He cares about that stuff more than playing in some ways.

“Maybe because he was such a big player, he knows you don’t remember a lot of the results but you remember some of the bigger moments when you stand up for yourself or when you do something bigger for the team. That was the point he tried to get across.”

“We don’t even want to recognize being a part of a match where these types of actions take place,” Loyal Chairman Andrew Vassiliadis said the next day. Ontiveros was subsequently suspended by the league and cut by the LA organization.

In retrospect, Donovan said, he and his players regretted not taking a stand when that incident happened, in the 71st minute. On Wednesday, they had planned to stop the game in the 71st minute and, with the Phoenix players, unfurl a banner that read: “We Will Speak. We Will Act.”

“Because,” Donovan said, “we don’t just want to talk about it; we actually want to do it, and we wanted to send a message.”

That comment was part of Donovan’s postgame interview on the San Diego team website, a calm and thoughtful statement viewed almost 2 million times as of Thursday afternoon.

It was a master class.

“It was a really difficult, probably, 20 minutes” before the second half was supposed to start, said Donovan, who is also the club’s co-founder. “Because the players in the passion of the moment still wanted to play. I mean, they were kicking Phoenix’s a–, right? And that’s a great feeling as a soccer player. But if we want to be true to who we are as a club, we have to speak and we have to act.”

Others in the sport were not surprised by Donovan’s stance.

“He has always had a really good moral compass, and he has always understood things outside of soccer,” said D.C. United Coach Ben Olsen, who is Donovan’s former World Cup teammate. “It’s one of the qualities I have really admired in Landon.”

With the forfeits, the Loyal relinquished hopes of advancing to the playoffs in its inaugural season. Phoenix and Galaxy II will represent the group in the round of 16.

For Donovan and his players, taking action and doing the right thing eclipsed postseason ambitions.

“I understand most people watching from afar probably don’t really get it,” Donovan said in the video, “but we’ve been living it.”

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