I’m not a fan of Formula One at the best of times. Supporting the bunch of lower league chancers that I do, it’s simply asking too much of me to sit through more than one mind-numbingly tedious and ultimately dissatisfying sporting event a weekend. Indeed, the uproar accompanying our motor-racing cousins’ refusal to boycott Bahrain while the Arab nation literally slaughters its citizens in the street reminds us of all that is wrong with the ‘sport’; a dead-eyed focus on hard cash at the expense of spectacle, not to mention morality. Yet before we in the footballing family cast the first stone, let us examine what this debacle calls to mind about our own sport. Football is the most popular sport in the world. Its reach into the hearts and minds of billions across the globe make it a frighteningly powerful tool. Its refusal to use this power for good, however, is utterly shameful.
Before I elaborate, let me first address that great lie so frequently peddled by the businessmen who run our, and indeed almost every, game: that sport is apolitical. It is the most deceitful, moronic and greed-induced maxim that haunts the world of organised sport, no easy feat in a modern age so fixated with hard capital. How can sport fail to be political? Every year we hear of musicians cancelling concerts in suspect countries because it is inappropriate to support these regimes. Politicians would never be seen in the presence, let alone nation, of those that perpetrate acts against humanity. Yet every year established, liberal democracies send their teams to play in nations that actively flaunt human-rights laws. England played recently in Belarus, Europe’s last remaining totalitarian regime, without anyone raising an eyebrow. It is move which drew little opinion from the comfort of our living rooms, but which acts implicitly as a device to lend legitimacy to these regimes. We may not think of sport as political, but these dictators do. Think of North Korea’s cynical exploitation of their country’s qualification for the World Cup as more evidence of the government’s success. Think of Ramzan Kadyrov, president of Chechnya, rumoured to be spending his state’s money on Anzhi Makhachkala to bring in players like Christopher Samba and Samuel Eto’o. This is not simply corruption, it is the political misuse of football to appease his people and back-up a president widely accused of human-rights violations. Why should the West continue to demand that football be treated as apolitical, when is it abused as exactly the opposite by some of the most inhumane nations on Earth?
Of course, that question is rhetorical. Everyone knows why the Beautiful Game retains its resolute silence on all things political. Money. Take, for example, the granting of the rights to host the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. This gesture goes beyond the implicit lending of legitimacy playing a simple game provides; it is the grandest signal of endorsement football, or rather FIFA, has to offer. It infuriates me that the furore over Qatar has died down, given that it must be viewed as the most monumental error that FIFA has ever made, which is some feat. I can put aside the fact that Qatar 84th in the world rankings, just below the mighty powerhouse of Burkina Faso. I can ignore that they expect the tournament to take place in near 50 degree desert heat. If push comes to shove, I’ll even overlook the almost overwhelming, frequently silenced evidence that Qatar bought the rights to the tournament, making a mockery of fairness in the process. What I refuse to pass over is that FIFA is granted the crown jewel of football to a state that is so, for lack of a better word, evil. How it can on one hand ask to “Kick Racism out of Football” while on the other asking footballers to play in a state that openly condones anti-Semitism in the press. It seems a bit pointless that FIFA opposes homophobia if in Qatar there are no open homosexuals to be offended, given these “unnatural acts” will land one in jail. And while FIFA makes contract laws more and more pro-player to the pleasure of millionaires, Qatar is widely condemned as a nation built on the back of “modern-day slavery”. In short, the world body has sold what little soul it has by backing Qatar. Football isn’t apolitical. On the contrary, FIFA’s lending of legitimacy to this totalitarian state is a most hideous, hypocritical, greedy and most definitely political move.
The sporting boycott of apartheid South Africa was led by Cricket and Rugby Union, and is widely credited for, if not bringing the injustice to an end, at least helping shine a light on the horrors of the regime. It is perhaps less known that FIFA was part of this boycott, ejecting South Africa from the organisation until the 1990s. Sport has power, and it has history in the political, for all of the denial of the suits in charge. Just as F1 will shame itself this weekend by almost certainly racing amidst a civil war, football has disgraced itself for far too long in the pursuit of lucrative television markets as opposed to perhaps thinking what conditions those tuning in to watch the game find themselves in. Football sold everything gram of respect it had in granting the World Cup to Qatar, for nothing but a promised profit that will line the pockets of no-one but the few ageing FIFA delegates in their ivory tower of a Zurich headquarters. It is imperative that this soul is regained, that everyone from the ordinary football fan to the heads of national bodies understands that our game has the potential to be so much more than a tool for dictators lacking legitimacy.
And for those that would say the citizens of these countries deserve football, that to boycott them would be to deny their wishes and kick them while they are down, I have but one response. If there is even the most minute chance that football can change their world, it must be seized. After all, what is more important: lasting liberty, equality and democracy, or the ability to watch Rooney et al kick a ball around in the desert sun for 90 minutes?
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