Long Island soccer slapping trial: Michael Stallone convicted of child endangerment, acquitted of assault charge

A Nassau jury returned a split verdict on Tuesday in the trial of a Floral Park father accused of rushing onto the field of a youth league soccer match and striking an 11-year-old girl in the face after she collided with another player from his daughter’s team.

The jury took an hour and a half to acquit Michael Stallone, a landscaper, of the top charge of third-degree misdemeanor assault.

They convicted him of endangering the welfare of a child.

"I think they split the baby," defense attorney Marc Gann said. "It doesn't really shock me. I knew the harder of the charges to kind of disprove would be the endangering welfare of a child, because it's kind of an amorphous charge."

By stepping onto the field, he said his client had made a mistake and violated league rules for parent conduct.

"It kind of makes it difficult not to find somebody guilty of that if they've stepped on a field and engaged in any way with a kid on a soccer field," Gann said.

The girl's father was visibly angry after the verdict. Newsday is not naming him or his daughter because she is the victim of a crime.

"Not guilty?" he shouted outside the courtroom. "What did she do wrong? Tell me? Play the sport she loved? This [expletive] is not guilty for hitting my kid on a soccer field? Nobody understands."

The girl, her coach and her mother took the stand over the weeklong trial, telling the court how stunned they were when Stallone stormed onto the playing field to scream, "What do you think you are doing?" and said he hit the preteen with the butt of his palm, prosecutors said during closing arguments.

A 7-second video clip from the game between SUSA  soccer academy and the girls age 12-and-under team in the Long Island Soccer League on Sept. 28, 2024, played repeatedly during the trial, shows the collision between the girls and the father’s intervention.

The footage was shot from across the field toward the opposing team’s goal, showing the alleged victim in a light blue jersey run into the player in white, knocking her to the ground.

Stallone’s lawyer maintained that the referee had lost control of the game. Other players had been taken out after suffering injuries on the field, he said.

After the Long Island Soccer League player gets knocked to the ground, the video shows Stallone approach the victim on the field and appear to shove her.

A parent in the video can be heard saying "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Ref!"

The victim remains on her feet in the clip, but appears to double over after her exchange with Stallone.

"He reacted instinctively, not intentionally," the defense lawyer said. "Instinctively as a parent, after seeing a collision."

Photos shown to the jury show the young girl’s face with a red welt on her cheek under her right eye.

Gann said the injury happened during the crash between the players.

"This video actually undermines the testimony of their witness," he said. "What their witnesses say happened is physically impossible in the time they say it happened."

The lawyer said he would not have been able to strike at her right side from the angle from which he approached.

"For him to hit [the girl] with the right butt of his palm, as she said, he would have to come completely around her, and I submit to you that is impossible," Gann said.

Stallone’s wife rushed to grab him afterward and pull him off the field as the referees stopped the game.

Gann said that was just a wife protecting her husband, but prosecutors said she was trying to restrain him from doing more.

"When Michael Stallone took matters into his own hands, and struck a child with those hands, it was because he was angry with a play on the field," Assistant District Attorney Daniel Golden said during his closing arguments Tuesday. He added, "His intentions were clear; he intended to hurt [the girl]."

Officials and coaches shut down the game immediately and Nassau County police were called, eventually arresting Stallone on the third-degree assault and endangering charges.

The girl’s parents said she was shaken and scared by what happened and reluctant to keep playing soccer.

However, Gann said she has returned to the sport in the year since this happened.

Stallone faces a year in jail on the A-level misdemeanor conviction. He's scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 3.