This World Cup is surely the strangest of global events. A fiasco of hypocrisy, and yet at the same time a sporting tournament of a magnificence.
Do you start with FIFA president Gianni Infantino and his ramblings? The bizarre musings were insulting to many people. But especially so when he expressed his feelings, that he was a wheelchair-bound homosexual African/Arabian migrant scaffolder.
Or do you instead start with supposed impossibility that morphed to actuality; Saudi Arabia’s stunning triumph over Argentina? For surely, the Kingdom of Saud’s men produced one of the greatest upsets in the history of football’s showpiece.
You could start there, but isn’t to celebrate Saudi Arabia’s victory also to spotlight the grandest of hypocrisies? For this is the same Saudi Arabia that much of the thinking sporting world has wrung their collective hands in relation to.
The same Saudi Arabia which, through the appropriate shielding of establishing sovereign wealth funds (so as to at least portray an independence from the influence of the state), owns the majority of English Premier League club Newcastle United.
The same Saudi Arabia which funds Greg Norman’s LIV Golf tour, which is designed to chew away at the establishment PGA Tour.
Gianni Infantino (left) and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman at Saudi Arabia’s win against Argentina.Credit:Bloomberg
For anyone who’s criticised their ownership of Newcastle or LIV Golf it’s surely pharisaic to turn around following the defeat of Argentina and celebrate the achievements of Saudi Arabia’s squad. Can you celebrate the victory and still throw spears at the Kingdom?
But as alarming as these matters are, they in another sense fade to tangential significance.
For one must compare the fiasco of FIFA’s own making; threatening to award yellow cards should the captains of England, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and/or Wales dare wear a rainbow-emblazoned armband.
Any analysis must start with FIFA’s own statutes which proclaim that FIFA is committed to respecting all internationally recognised human rights, and that on that basis FIFA shall strive to promote the protection of those rights.
Belgium’s Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib wears a “One Love” armband while talking to FIFA president Gianni Infantino.Credit:AP
In the very next section, the statutes say that FIFA prohibits, with the threat of suspension or expulsion, discrimination of any kind against any person or group of people on account of race; skin colour; ethnic, national or social origin; gender; disability; language; religion; political opinion or any other opinion; wealth; birth or any other status; sexual orientation or any other reason.
FIFA’s own constituent governing document says all of that. Nonetheless, what happens is a debacle of this past week of practically any garment displaying any variation of a rainbow design drawing the ire of Qatari security, and the Persian flag being banned inside stadiums because it’s a form of protest against Iran’s theocratic regime.
And moreover, we end up with the captains of seven European teams caught in a FIFA squeeze play, forced to choose between using their platform in a manner entirely consistent with FIFA’s own motherhood statements, and on the other threats of causing quite possibly damage to their teams’ chances at this World Cup. All of this, over rainbow armbands.
Football’s Laws of the Game do provide that a player’s equipment – including, relevantly, a captain’s armband – mustn’t incorporate any political, religious or personal slogans. It’s a stretch to conclude that an armband with a rainbow-striped heart, the words “One Love” and the digit “1” , traverses that threshold of impermissibility.
Credit:Illustration: Simon Letch
And unless you can confidently conclude that the armband incorporates a political, religious or personal slogan, it’s hard to understand how the match referee or FIFA could have dished out any sanction whatsoever.
But even if the armbands do offend those laws, it’s then difficult to understand how, under those same laws, the captains could have been yellow-carded. Law 4 of the Laws of the Game is drafted in terms where the referee must direct the player to leave the field to correct the equipment, with any further sanctioning power only invoked if the player re-enters the field without permission. There’s no obvious sanction, just for wearing the garment per se.
Further, Law 12 deals with fouls and misconduct and the circumstances in which a yellow card can be issued by the referee to signify a caution. The laws don’t explain how a yellow card can be issued for a player wearing an item of clothing or kit which contravenes Law 4, even if the clothing or kit does breach the law at all.
What all of this suggests quite definitely is that FIFA is a bully. Regardless as to what its own rules actually say, it’ll stop at not much to stamp out dissent.
FIFA’s words actually make no sense in context. You have the FIFA statutes, which are all fine as they appear on the page, but how likely is it that FIFA ever would enforce its stated powers in the face of identified discrimination against marginalised groups? FIFA’s more interested in flexing muscle to squash free speech.
And for however “gay” Infantino felt earlier this week, how does a man who says that he feels that way nonetheless go the full sledgehammer on those who seek to show solidarity with those who actually are gay?
FIFA’s messaging is so jumbled that it’s borderline impossible to decipher whether the governing body stands for much at all, besides the appeasement of the hosts that it corruptly awarded the World Cup hosting rights to 12 years ago.
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