Let’s hope this was not just a cynical move
ENGLAND and Scotland defied FIFA and wore their poppies at Wembley on Friday. Quite right, too.
The remembrance of those who have sacrificed their lives in conflicts over the years overrides any bureaucratic ruling on political slogans.
The Welsh and Northern Irish FAs elected not to wear poppies. That doesn’t make them bad people. They found other ways of paying tribute.
It’s a problem because football has been thrust to the forefront in all matters of political correctness.
The game has always had a special relationship with the armed services, going back to the Christmas truce during the First World War and the fact many clubs had players killed in the conflict.
Yet it has only been making an overt public display relatively recently.
Poppies weren’t worn on club shirts until 2010 and England didn’t put them on armbands until 2011.
It’s palpable nonsense to suggest that Sir Alf Ramsey’s or Sir Bobby Robson’s teams had less respect for those who’ve perished than modern-day players.
Many who played for England in the 1920s or 1950s had served themselves and even lost comrades. Yet they were content to wear the poppy in their lapel and stand in silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
But there’s been a cultural change. Public figures are now required to be seen to show respect.
We expect newsreaders, chat show hosts and, most of all, footballers, to be at the vanguard.
So with each passing year, the game finds more ways of telling us it cares.
This season clubs staged “poppy matches” on October 29, two weeks before Remembrance Sunday.
Managers have been sporting specially-designed ceramic pin badges, with their particular club crest sitting alongside the poppy.
The FA announced that the England players would stop for a two-minute silence during a walk at the team hotel on Friday – “not open to the media, however footage and imagery available on request.”
In other words, they wanted people to know they were doing the right thing, and that’s become an obsession at the top level of the game.
Perhaps that’s because top footballers are perceived as rich, pampered and living in a bubble, while clubs are looked on as being divorced from their traditional fanbase.
Maybe the poppy is a way of reconnecting, of showing a human face.
I hope the game isn’t that cynical. What’s being remembered is far too important.