Football and politics don’t mix. Or they shouldn’t mix, rather. This is something that you hear a lot, and it never seems to run out of juice. But it’s not true and it’s never been true. Football and politics have lived side by side for eons, for good and bad.
Everyone knows the story of how the Germans and the British stopped killing one another one Christmas Day during the First World War, and took to playing a game of kick-about in No Man’s Land. Football has always been able to do that. To unite people.
Surprisingly few people are aware that football is widely credited with having started a war once, after a game between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969.
The game was the spark between two countries who were already at each other’s throats, and when the teams played each other in a two-leg World Cup Qualifier the stage was set. They were tied after the games, during which there had been widespread disorder. A third match had to played, which El Salvador won 3-2 after extra time. The following day, they attacked Honduras with aircraft in what became known as the 100 Hours War.
When FIFA did a global minute’s silence for Nelson Mandela, nobody said that politics and football ought to be separate things. The world just embraced it, and the memory of the sort of man we are lucky to get once in a generation. Few stopped to ask how that gesture fitted around the famous Strict Liability rules which FIFA and UEFA had about political expression.
I understand why those rules exist. They were introduced by FIFA and UEFA at a time when there were genuine fears that right-wing extremism was gaining a real foothold in the stands in certain countries and with certain national teams. Those rules were introduced because the governing bodies didn’t feel that clubs and associations were doing all they could to tackle the problem. The rules were supposed to change that.
In the end, they ended up resulting in absurd situations like the one Celtic found itself in where we were fined for fans holding up the Palestinian flag. The fans paid the fine, and the story made international headlines and UEFA looked abysmal in the aftermath. Still, the rules exist and no-one knows it better than we do in Scotland, where we just defeated the Offensive Behaviour at Football Act and have had to endure speculation that it’ll be replaced by something worse, an actual Strict Liability law, enforced by the government.
The Palestinian issue is a running sore for FIFA, and for UEFA now too since Israel was admitted to European competition football. Protests against the Israeli regime erupt sporadically across the football world, whenever their team plays games. It was such a match that prompted Celtic fans to bring their flags to Parkhead, en masse, the year before last.
Today news has broken that the Argentine national team has cancelled a high profile, pre-World Cup friendly with them because of the recent massacre in Gaza, a crime which has shocked people everywhere, even some who thought they were beyond being shocked. Politics and football have melded once again, and Israel hit first in the PR offensive.
They have claimed that Messi was the target of “unspecified threats”; in fact, the only threat was to his global image, as Palestinian protesters said they would burn his shirt if he played. “He is a global ambassador for peace,” one pointed out, and rightly. It’s not that long ago that UNICEF adorned the front of the famous Barcelona jersey, themselves one of the most political clubs in the world, and who were also fined for a Palestinian flag display.
In spite of Israel’s bullish statement, the PR side of this is atrocious for them, and it feels as if things are swinging in the other direction. It’s all well and good Israel’s government saying the Argentines “caved in to pressure” but the Argentine Foreign Minister hinted at more going on that met the eye when he said that some of their players “were not prepared to play the game.”
He left it just ambiguous enough that there will be no repercussions for their footballers, but the point has been made and understood. For years, South Africa was an international sporting pariah and some think Israel should be too.
Argentina is the first. They will damned sure not be the last.