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The Chargers first season in Los Angeles seems to be one never-ending public relations nightmare and the team added some fuel to their PR fire when they cropped an Army veteran out of a photo that the team shared on Twitter earlier this week. 

The month of November is "Salute to Service" month in the NFL, so the Chargers shared a tweet on Tuesday that showed 10 soldiers in Afghanistan posing with an American flag and a Chargers flag, which seems innocent enough. 

The problem with the photo is that what you see above isn't the original. In the original uncropped photo, you can clearly see that the flag says "San Diego." However, the LOS ANGELES Chargers didn't want a San Diego flag in the photo, so they cropped it out, and while doing that, they also cropped out one of the soldiers who was originally in the photo, as you can see below. 

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This is the uncropped version of the photo the Chargers shared on social media. 

The solider who arranged the photo, retired Army Sgt. First Class Johnny Case, wasn't thrilled to see that one of his buddies had been cropped out. 

"For them to do that to my picture, and not even ask, to crop out one of our guys … it was like, 'Wow, of course they're going to do that,'" Case told the San Diego Union-Tribune on Friday. 

Even though the Chargers want nothing to do with San Diego, Case was baffled that he team would actually crop a soldier out of the photo. 

"They have this spite for San Diego. But it's not about San Diego. It's a soldier. It's Veterans Day. You cropped out a veteran," Case said. "I was (mad), but I guess social media had my back and took it over for me."

Social media definitely did take over for Case. The Chargers immediately faced some serious backlash for cropping a soldier out of the picture, even if they were doing just to get rid of the words "San Diego." 

The soldier who was cropped out of the photo, Minh Tran, told the Union-Tribune that he felt disrespected. 

"I felt it was disrespectful of them to crop me out, but I'm more upset about them cropping out the bottom of the flags," Tran wrote in a text to the paper. "Everyone in that picture supported the San Diego Chargers. I grew up watching the team and I supported them whether they won or lost."

In a statement, the Chargers admitted that they probably should have left the photo uncropped. 

"The photo should not have been cropped," the team said. "The Chargers have a long history of supporting service members and their families. It is a history we are proud of, and it is a history we even detailed in our game release this week."

No matter how you spin things, this isn't a good look for a Chargers team that has been dealing with controversy all season. Not only have TV ratings for the team bombed in the L.A. area, but they've been unable to fill the stadium to capacity for any game this season despite the fact that they play in a building that only seats 27,000 people. And even when fans do show up, none of them are there to cheer for the Chargers.