The truth about the World Cup

You have to admire their bravery, don’t you? The stoicism with which they put up a fight in the name of principle and decency. The England football manager, Gareth Southgate, and his similarly equine captain, Harry Kane, had pledged that the latter would wear, throughout England’s World Cup campaign, a rainbow ‘One Love’ armband to show the team’s support for the LGBTQI community, despite objections from football’s governing body, Fifa. Nothing could stop them from displaying to the world their deep discomfort at the fact that the World Cup was being played in a place where homosexuality was illegal.

And then, when Fifa announced that anyone wearing the armband would be booked and the team fined, Mr Southgate made the following announcement: ‘As you know, it was our intention for the team captain to wear a rainbow One Love armband to show our deep commitment to the cause of inclusivity and LGBTQI rights in Qatar and indeed the wider world. But, important though this issue is, we cannot afford for our lantern-jawed captain to miss any games. So for the time being, it’s a case of sod the homos.’

OK, he didn’t quite say that. But that was the gist – and there was no armband in sight when Kane took to the field for the opening game against the liberal gay-loving democrats of Iran. As a principled stand against oppression it’s not quite the Tolpuddle Martyrs, is it? Imagine if it had been Gareth on that bus in Montgomery, Alabama, all those years ago:

‘If you don’t move your seat I’m going to have you arrested.’

‘Oh, OK. Where do you want me to sit, suh?’

‘At the back. And not in that seat over there. That’s reserved for cripples. White cripples.’

‘Right away, suh!’

Remarkably, pretty much nobody over here has suggested that Southgate and Kane – and the other western European teams who had pledged to wear the armband – were being unnecessarily rude to their hosts. Imagine for a moment that Iran played a football match against England at Wembley and the Iranians, in an attempt to show their discomfort with our own LGBTQI laws, wore armbands depicting a gay person dangling from a 100ft crane. We would take offence, I think. But the Iranians wouldn’t do something like that. It is only the liberal evangelists of western Europe, utterly convinced of their own rectitude and intolerant of contrary opinions, who perform that kind of grandstanding. It is a kind of arrogant neocolonialism and it rankles with me, much as it rankles over in Qatar.

Not that I admire the ghastly blinged-up desert satrapy. If we were going to protest about anything, how about the fact that nobody in the country gets a meaningful vote? Isn’t that a more fundamental human right? Remember that there are another 68 countries in the world where homosexuality is illegal and an enormous majority – 124 – where same-sex relationships are not legally recognised. It is hardly as if Qatar is alone.

But at least we know that despite Southgate’s sententiousness, his devotion to principle and ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ was wafer-thin and could be jettisoned at the slightest intimation of trouble. In other words it was all smug, self-righteous, performative toss. The truth which we all know is that if England and Southgate and Kane truly gave a monkey’s, then they wouldn’t have turned up in Qatar at all. They still took the knee, of course – though I don’t think anybody anywhere in the world knows why.

Still, just as Gareth dropped the baton – or, more properly, threw it away as far as he could – the BBC was on hand to pick it up and run a few more paces. The corporation disdained to show the opening ceremony on BBC1, just to annoy the Qataris, and Gary Lineker introduced the first game by delivering a series of platitudes and non-sequiturs about how ghastly Qatar was, is. But he was still there, wasn’t he?

And next to him in that studio was Alan Shearer, who also delivered himself of a bit of gratuitous Arab culture-bashing, once again paying lip service to those twin strikers of diversity and inclusion. I really like Shearer as a football pundit. He is sharp, concise and, like Roy Keane, is rarely so captured by the moment that he loses sight of the bigger picture. He has also always seemed to me an honest chap and clever with it. But Alan, dear God! I cannot imagine that anybody in our country has cheered louder than Alan Shearer at Newcastle United’s excellent performances and league standing this season – all that success entirely the consequence of Saudi Arabian money. You simply cannot shake your head sadly at the governance of Qatar and then pull on your black and white shirt to exult in the performances of al-Toon. Or you can, but you risk making yourself look like a bit of a dimbo and a hypocrite.

The football? You want to know about the football? I haven’t caught much of it – which is very unusual for me as I adore World Cups and the prospect of generating a fervent animus against countries I heartily dislike. I noted that the Qatar fans, watching their opening fixture against Ecuador, sang and cheered throughout the entire match but with absolutely no relationship to anything taking place on the pitch. There was no murmur of excitement when Ecuador messed up, nor a roar of approval when Qatar attacked. They were just singing and cheering for the sake of it.

Which is just as well, because their team was fantastically useless and will almost certainly be only the second host nation in the history of the tournament to go out during the group stage. The first to do so was South Africa, who – unlike Qatar – were adored by the BBC pundits.