With one crude gesture, Robbie Williams sums up Putin’s whole tawdry circus
Radiating all the magic of root canal treatment, the sleaziest global sporting event since the 1936 Berlin Olympics kicked off yesterday evening with a charmless little ceremony and a lopsided match between the two worst teams at Vladimir Putin’s latest vanity project.
itV commentator Clive tyldesley neatly captured the esprit of the 2018 FiFa World Cup in his opening line: ‘a game between the world’s two biggest crude oil-producing nations.’
the hosts, Russia, were indeed playing Saudi arabia. there sat President Putin and the Saudi Crown Prince, either side of the president of the utterly discredited world football authority, FiFa. What a perfect curtain-raiser for a tournament that has always been about money.
Remember this championship was a perversion of justice the very moment FiFa awarded it to Russia back in 2010. Since that vote – in which England’s bid came last by a mile – the world footballing authority has been exposed as a global extortion racket. its former president, Sepp Blatter, has now been banned from having anything to with football for six years.
Of his cabal of corkscrew-shaped ex-FiFa officials, some are in the clink, some are awaiting sentencing and others are fighting extradition to the USa which has been probing global soccer corruption ever since.
no such problems for our World Cup hosts, however. during the same period, the Russians may have invaded their neighbours, shot down a civilian airliner, stirred up war in Syria, been banned from the Olympics and organised statesponsored terrorism on the streets of Britain. But none of that has ever threatened to dislodge this World Cup from the grip of President Putin.
‘Russians love football. it is what we call love at first sight,’ declared the ex-KgB colonel ahead of last night’s kick-off in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. ‘Welcome to Russia!’
Unfortunately, the host broadcaster was so inept that Putin appeared to be speaking in front of a half-lit garage door. W
E were thus spared the sight of the full galaxy of stars filling the presidential box around him. Putin’s stature as a revered world statesman was reflected in a ViP turnout consisting of the leaders of abkhazia, azerbaijan, armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Moldova, Panama, Paraguay, Rwanda, tajikistan, Uzbekistan and South Ossetia. Oddly, none of these except Panama actually had a team in the tournament.
at least the opening ceremony was mercifully brief. Unlike the Olympics, World Cup opening ceremonies are governed by FiFa, not by the hosts. FiFa had decided to keep the overture to the most politically sensitive World Cup of all time to a minimum – 15 minutes in fact.
they had chosen Robbie Williams as the star turn, perhaps in the hope of injecting a mild note of irreverence. Williams attracted widespread criticism in Russia two years ago for his latest hit, Party Like a Russian.
the video for the song features Williams living the oligarch dream as he sings: ‘ain’t no refutin’ or disputin’/i’m a modern Rasputin/Subcontract disputes to some brutes in Louboutin/act highfalutin’ while my boys put the boots in.’
now i wonder what all that could rhyme with.
Unsurprisingly, that song had been removed from the playlist last night. instead, the nightingale of Stoke-on-trent stuck to a few old favourites like Let Me Entertain You.
But then the former take that singer managed to lower the tone – inexplicably sticking his middle finger up at the camera during the live performance. the broadcast was being watched by an estimated one billion people.
Fans reacted angrily with one writing online: ‘What a joke! i’m watching with my kids and that happened? Wow.’
a teacher said her Year One students were ‘sticking their middle fingers up at each other’ after watching the performance.
Williams was surrounded by a modest band of dancers dressed either as footballs or Russian cosmonauts carrying what appeared to be flashing ironing boards during the show.
i think we can safely say that danny Boyle, the architect of the London 2012 opening ceremony, had not been hired for this event.
it had a deliciously dated feel, right down to the pointless walk-on part for a former Miss Russia (the Metoo thing has yet to reach Russia). this was austin Powers-meets-Eurovision – without the humour.
a low-tech giant bird on stilts flapped in bearing the Russian opera singer, aida garifullina, to sing a duet with Williams.
apparently he was also meant to sing Rock dJ but the television coverage cut away to a panel of football pundits so we didn’t hear that. at least itV’s coverage loyally resumed in time for Mr Putin.
His speech lasted nearly as long as Robbie Williams. the President also seemed to receive rather wilder applause than the British pop star. those Russians really do know how to party. and so on with the game, which Russia won by a thumping 5-0 margin. the cameras kept cutting to the sight of Mr Putin and the Saudi Crown Prince.
i kept my eye on twitter, expecting a thunderous wave of denunciations from the chatterati. Here were two leaders of two nations with infamously unreconstructed attitudes towards human rights, particularly when it comes to gay people, women and minorities.
GIVEN how incandescent the liberal Left become at any suggestion that donald trump might be having a good day, i looked for outrage. i looked in vain.
ahead of Vladimir Putin’s Winter Olympics in Sochi four years ago, British celebrities lined up behind Stephen Fry to demand an ‘absolute ban’ on the games because of Russian homophobia. ‘the idea that sport and politics don’t connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid,’ Fry wrote in a furious letter to the Prime Minister, david Cameron, backed by all the usual suspects.
Yet, there was barely a batsqueak of condemnation for the World Cup yesterday.
as far as we know, not a single luvvie has penned an open letter to the Prime Minister demanding that the England team should be brought home. Perhaps it is fine to complain about our participation in minority posh sports like skiing that no one cares about whereas different rules apply when it comes to football.
after all, as BBC pundit gary Lineker has reminded us this month, it is very hypocritical for anyone in Britain to criticise Russia’s hosting of this tournament.
that is because the UK is just as evil. ‘Who are we to start getting judgmental on who should have the World Cup?’ Lineker asked the Radio times. ‘We all know how corrupt our country is at times. Perhaps we don’t like some things that Putin has done, but we’ll be there, we’ll be their guests.’
it takes a bold person to prick the vast bubble of hype around the start of a World Cup. One such, however, is the eternal human rights campaigner, Peter tatchell. While other so-called ‘activists’ fire off the occasional tweet and demand a Waitrose boycott of things they disapprove of, tatchell is the real thing. He frequently ends up in hospital as well as jail for his troubles.
Yesterday, having made it to Russia, the indefatigable aussie-born Londoner began a one-man protest outside the Kremlin attacking Russian persecution of gay men in Chechnya – and was arrested.
He was later released, having been told he can either leave the country by the end of the month or return for a further hearing. no sign of a celebrity ‘twitterstorm’ in his defence, though.
We now have four weeks of this ugly charade to go before Putin removes the mirthless smile from his face and the Cold War resumes as usual. at least, given England’s form, we should be heading for home soon enough.
there is precious little chance of Harry Kane going up to the presidential box to receive the trophy from Putin. But if it does happen, Harry, remember not to shake his hand. You don’t know where it’s been.