Time to think again about role football plays in days of mourning
GARETH Southgate could have had his players in for training yesterday. He didn’t, because he is smart and thought that, on such a momentous occasion, these young men wanted to be watching, at home, with their families.
So there was no forced photo-opportunity of the England squad with their heads bowed, no forced statements, nothing that attempted to insert the national team into a ceremony in parts solemn, moving and magnificent. And that is just how it should be.
If there is one thing the last 10 days of mourning should have taught the sporting world it is that there is a time and a place. And maybe that place is not in a stadium of 60,000 people and that time is not two minutes before kick-off.
Yesterday’s state occasion was a reminder of how perfectly planned and observed an event can be when it is supported by people with one purpose. Nobody queues for 14 hours to shout obscenities at a coffin, nobody camps on the streets of London to cry one sentence of Republican insurrection as a hearse passes by.
If they do it is lost amid the cheers and throng. The reason football has struggled to achieve the same decorum is that its crowds have not bought a ticket to pay tribute to a dead monarch.
So they are a mixed bag of the moved, unmoved and plain insolent. The overwhelming majority inside will be polite and respectful, a handful may not.
And as what is being attempted is complete, pin- drop silence, that tiny minority wield enormous power.
Football put itself through a lot this week, and some of it unnecessary. Prior to kick-off, the mood among club officials when Liverpool played Ajax was anxious. There was hope that the evening would pass off without incident but not certainty. The club had been unnerved by the hostile reaction on social media to captain Jordan Henderson publicly signing a book of condolence. They hoped those commenting were mere keyboard warriors, not Anfield regulars, and ultimately that hope was justified. The interruptions during the minute’s silence were isolated, no more than five or six strong, but enough to spook referee Artur Dias into concluding after just 24 seconds. There was not the mass dissent and disturbance some had gleefully anticipated, but there did not need to be. It only takes a solitary selfish voice to undermine the collective intent of 50,000 others.
The same small disturbance happened at Nottingham Forest, Wrexham, Tottenham, Everton and elsewhere too, and at all of those clubs there would have been embarrassment and disappointment. In Scotland, meanwhile, a sense of outrage followed some of the chanting by Celtic fans, whose songs and banners were both obscene and vengeful. So perhaps it is time to think again about the part football must play in national commemorations and, indeed, why it feels the need to incorporate these moments into what is increasingly brand identity.
From Center Parcs to Morrison’s supermarket the previous 10 days have been full of companies taking their place in society far too seriously. Would we really have been offended by the beep of cash registers or if holiday makers were allowed into dining rooms? No.
And does football have to be central to every act of remembrance, every senseless murder, every passing? Shouldn’t we at least ask whether the one plan fits all approach is appropriate?
Rangers is a club at which the monarchy is revered, Celtic a club at which it is reviled. Not by everybody, but by enough. So why were both guided to remember Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the same way?
THE divisions are not as great further south but, even so, some supporter groups are more patriotically inclined than others. Chelsea more than Liverpool, say. So had they been allowed to meet on Sunday, might some Liverpool fans have thought disrupting a silence or the national anthem an easy way to antagonise their rivals? If so, shouldn’t that have been taken into consideration?
Chelsea already had a minute’s silence against RB Salzburg, yet had they played Liverpool in a game with far more potential for disturbance, they would have been instructed to have another, followed by the national anthem.
Would that be wise? Flags did not fly at half- mast in the Rhondda Valley after the death of Sir Winston Churchill due to his decision to deploy troops to confront miners in Tonypandy in 1910. Even the most widely admired figures will not enjoy universal popularity.
There was no controversy in
other sports, it will be argued. Why is football different? Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but it is. Fans sit side by side at rugby but cannot at a football match. drinking is allowed at cricket in a way that is deemed problematic for a football crowd. These are not qualities, but they are realities.
Yet somehow a busy football stadium, full of people that are partisan, boisterous and hyped with anticipation has been deemed the perfect venue for those same people to become solemn, introspective and respectful at the tweet of a referee’s whistle.
And sometimes it works, beautifully. At Brentford’s match with Arsenal on Sunday, the tributes were faultlessly observed. Yet each club has its culture, its personality, and these traits can include republicanism, or anti-establishmentarianism — and even if they don’t, the fans can still try the clothes on for size, if it upsets the opposition.
Watching yesterday’s funeral it was inescapable that what made it so affecting is that everything, and almost everyone, was in its right place. This does not mean that football has no role to play, but it should perhaps put more consideration into where it plays, and when.