No escape from dirty truths ... but players should not be targets
THIS IS why looking to sportspeople for moral instruction is unwise. A righteous pile-on holds much appeal for those inclined towards outrage, and the embarrassing climb-down by the captains of England, the Netherlands and five other European countries, hours before they were to make a stand for human rights at the World Cup, undammed a tremendous deluge.
The players were cowards. They were disconnected. They were millionaires whose moral rectitude did not survive first contact with the shameless bullying of FIFA.
The last charge is the most persuasive; after making bold noises that indicated their resolve, the captains of the countries involved, no doubt under instruction from their management and the respective associations, shrank away from action for fear of being booked.
It was a dismal retreat from the moral high ground.
On the scale of moral failings around this World Cup, however, the surrender to unscrupulous officialdom by Harry Kane, Virgil van Dijk and the other would-be protestors is a minor infraction.
It is easy to fulminate about rich soccer players, though, to denounce them for their poor example, and all that posturing is much easier than untangling the complex, stomach-churning machinations that took the World Cup to Qatar in the first place.
That shameful decision was arrived at 12 years ago, and in all the time since, there was no serious suggestion that any of the mighty European powers would exercise the ultimate protest move and stay away.
The FAs of England, the Netherlands, Germany, and the other heavyweights from the world’s richest and most influential continent, could have signalled their disgust by declaring that no matter what, they would not play in the rotten charade facilitated by FIFA.
The English FA should have had a particular desire to show their unhappiness, given that on the same day Qatar was announced as 2022 hosts, Russia trumped the FA for the right to host the 2018 tournament.
The process stank, of course, and there was outrage in England.
No meaningful action followed.
They are among the associations expected to vote Gianni Infantino, the grotesque FIFA president doubling as a Qatari stooge in these times, into another term in an election next spring in which Infantino stands unopposed.
Given that brief little taster, ridiculing captains for losing their nerve to protest under intense pressure and threats from FIFA, rather misplaces the scorn.
It also falls back on the dubious premise that sporting figures with big profiles have a responsibility to provide moral instruction for society, and for its young people especially.
This is because millions of children idolise players like Kane for their athletic prowess. But teaching children right from wrong relies on instruction from parents and guardians, not Premier League strikers. None of that stopped the predictable pieties oozing out of social media, which added precisely nothing to the debate.
What this episode has shown is that modern sport is wretchedly conflicted and compromised, and its complexities cannot be reduced to a string of pompous hashtags.
The most potent manifestation of this comes through sports-washing, and the pitiful contortions attempted by fans of Manchester City and Newcastle in justifying the takeover of their clubs by undemocratic regimes, fired by petro-dollars, with atrocious attitudes to human rights considered fundamental in the west.
It goes beyond that, though, with money dislocating old certainties in every significant sport in the world, including here. The provenance of the money is relevant, too, and that is why this World Cup is making such searching demands of people.
But players should not be the target of ire, any more than fans who choose to go to Qatar should, or members of the media in attendance. It’s easier for administrators and politicians to see the low-hanging fruit targeted, though, because it saves them having to find answers to disquieting questions.
Roy Keane’s disdain for the cowed captains was not convincing, but his contention that the World Cup should not be in Qatar was the truth, and he had the gumption to say it.
This week’s agonising might fatefully undermine the risible argument that sport is somehow apart, a refuge where unsettling facts and quandaries do not apply.
It also revealed the hollowness in tinny whinges about players failing as role models.
The world cannot be shut out for the next three weeks. If sport was ever a sanctuary from the messy, maddening realities of life, that time passed long ago.
There is no escape from the dirty truths that now shadow much of our lives.