FIFA’s poppy ban is political hypocrisy

HISTORY shows that FIFA do politics when it suits them. Fascism was waving a baseball bat in Europe’s face when football’s governing body awarded the 1934 World Cup to Benito Mussolini’s Italy.

Vowing to make Italy ‘great, respected and feared’, the World Cup was Mussolini’s crowning glory.

It was essential from the start that he hand the World Cup to an Italian captain. So important that nothing was left to chance.

The Italians won a quarter-final replay against Spain after two legitimate Spanish goals were disallowed by referee Rene Mercet, later banned by the Swiss FA.

For the semi-final, Mussolini invited Swedish referee Ivan Eklind to handle the game between Italy and Austria.

Which might explain why the Austrian goalkeeper was shoved into his own net from three yards out, while clutching the ball in his hands. And the goal stood.

On the basis that one good turn deserves another, the Swedish referee was then handed the unprecedented honour of handling the final, as well.

Legend has it that he dined with Mussolini the night before the game to ‘discuss tactics.’

Unsurprisingly, Italy won the trophy — and retained it four years later after Mussolini warned his players with a telegram reading: ‘Win or die.’

After that 1938 final, Hungary goalkeeper Antal Szabo had a hell of an excuse for shipping four goals.

‘I may have let in four goals,’ said Szabo, ‘but I saved their lives.’

Eventually, good people made a stand against Mussolini. Just as they stood up to Hitler’s Nazis. And, many years later, the Jorge Videla military junta who stage-managed the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.

Allegations of match-fixing, substance abuse, assassination attempts and political interference by military generals have dogged Argentina for years. But that didn’t stop one of the Junta’s leading lights, Captain Carlos Lacoste, becoming a high-ranking FIFA official, of course.

FIFA have always been perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of sociopaths and dictators.

All of which makes the stand taken by football’s moral guardians against England and Scotland wearing poppies at Wembley a laughable business.

Rules are rules, is the defence. Make exceptions for one or two countries and, soon enough, they’ll all be at it.

Listen, if England were wearing poppies against Argentina to remember the Falklands dead, you might see their point.

But who stands to take offence if Scotland and England choose to commemorate the fallen of the first and second World Wars during a game in London?

FIFA argue they don’t do wars. Like religion and pyrotechnics, it’s a no-go area.

But not all wars have an equal capacity to anger and offend. Will the people of Germany and Italy really care if poppies are on the jerseys of footballers at Wembley? Well, no, they won’t.

The poppy has never been used as a tool to rile a rival nation.

Not everyone wears them. That’s their choice. But surely even the naysayers can see the FIFA stance is daft.

Because if the governing body really are hell-bent on eradicating war references from Wembley next week, then why not go the full hog? Why not ban the national anthems?

Nationalists love nothing more than telling anyone daft enough to listen that God Save the Queen once included a verse about Field Marshal Wade crushing ‘rebellious Scots’. There’s no evidence it ever did, but no matter.

Because it’s a ready-made justification for lusty renditions of Flower of Scotland — an anthem glorifying the fighting and death in a Bannockburn field before Edward’s English army were sent home to think again.

If war and politics really are a no-no in FIFA’s rulebook, you might think a dirge marking Scotland’s Wars of Independence might be an obvious target for a ban or a fine.

But, no, there is no mention of banning the anthems. Only a dogged determination to outlaw poppies — a symbol devoid of bloodlust or glorification of wars or ugly nationalistic sentiment.

No one is proposing a 21-gun salute, for crying out loud.

Only the right to wear a small symbol on a football shirt in memory of the men and women sent to fight fascist dictators like Mussolini.

The same Benito Mussolini allowed to bully, bribe and cheat his way to the 1934 World Cup by the moral pygmies of FIFA.