Few top-flight football matches these days kick off without an expression of solidarity with a cause or condolence. Along with the customary tributes to footballing legends or club stalwarts, just last week Premier League players took the knee, yet again, to show their opposition to racism.
In recent weeks, we have had silences for the victims of the Moroccan earthquake and the Libyan floods. Support has been shown for Ukraine, and for the victims of terror attacks in Paris in recent years. And yet, strangely, no decision has apparently been made about honouring the now more than 1,000 victims of Hamas terrorism in Israel.
Sunday’s Premier League games – including the high-profile clash between Arsenal and Man City – unfolded without a tribute. A few days on, there still appears to be no mention of the appalling events on the Football Association’s website, even in the ‘Equality and Inclusion’ section.The Premier League’s ‘No Room for Racism’ page also appears to be silent on the atrocities.
Talks over whether to illuminate the Wembley arch in the colours of the Israeli flag when England play Australia on Friday are underway, but the FA Chief Executive Mark Bullingham appears to have been concentrating instead on the UK and Ireland’s successful bid for Euro 2028.
This is a problem entirely of the football authorities’ own making
You might say that focusing on the day job is the right thing for the likes of Bullingham to do. And yet, the way in which football has gone out of its way in recent years to mark tragedies and honour causes, such as Black Lives Matter, makes this silence on Israel troubling. If football is going to involve itself in international tragedies then surely there should be no equivocation over formally registering solidarity with the victims of the worst single loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Events have moved quickly but the Wembley arch was lit up in Ukraine colours within 24 hours of Russia’s invasion and Downing Street managed to stage a projection of the Israeli flag this week. David Bernstein, who led the FA between 2011 until 2013, has strongly criticised the governing body’s inaction.
The FA are clearly fearful of appearing to take sides in one of the world’s most protracted disputes. Taking a stand over the atrocities in Israel would lead to immediate claims from some that a similar position should be adopted over the loss of life in Gaza as a result of the Israeli retaliation. Once you start, where will it end? Who will adjudicate which horrors are worthy and which are not? The prospect of crowd disturbances in and possibly outside the ground in the wake of the pro-Palestine demonstrations in London must be unnerving the football officials too.
But this is a problem entirely of the football authorities’ own making and one that can be traced back precisely three years. After the death of George Floyd, the rush to signal unqualified support for Black Lives Matter led to all Premier League clubs having the group’s name emblazoned on their shirts for 12 weeks. Players were also allowed, some would say expected, others might suggest mandated, to take the knee to show their support. Nearly all did. The FA and the England team, with the enthusiastic cooperation of manager Gareth Southgate, who sees it as part of his job to ‘educate people around the world’, followed suit.
This appeared, to some at least, though few were brave enough to say so – and if they did they risked losing their jobs – over the top and setting a dangerous precedent. There was a suggestion of panic about the BLM response, of a multibillion-pound industry with a not quite forgotten unsavoury reputation from a minority of supporters, desperate to avoid accusations of not doing enough in the global war on racism that Floyd’s death seemed to have triggered. So, the Premier League and the FA without much analysis of what exactly it was they were pledging allegiance to, threw their considerable weight behind BLM, as visibly as possible, as a means of establishing their ‘anti-racist’ credentials and thus protecting their assets.
But having assumed the mantle of moral arbiter on a range of global issues the football authorities have now left themselves open to accusations of cowardice, or partiality when it comes to Israel. For the Premier League in particular, this is a an especially thorny issue. Shameful antisemitic abuse has been a problem at Tottenham Hotspur matches. To do nothing when the state of Israel has been defiled in the most appalling manner is hard to square with the exhaustingly reiterated ‘No Room for Racism’ message. It begs the question of whether this anti-discrimination agenda is as inclusive as it claims to be.
The moral of the story seems to be that you can either show your support in every case of global tragedy or none. There is a good argument for the latter. A dignified position for clubs would have been to honour football heroes, and show sympathy to victims of domestic tragedies, and leave it at that, acknowledging that it is crass and presumptuous to assume to have a role in the grief of those in the wider world. Leave the national response to governments, and let the individual players and fans pay their respects in the manner they see fit as individuals.
But it’s too late for that. BLM saw the British football authorities summon up the sorcerer’s apprentice, invoking powerful spirits that it is now struggling to control. British football has chosen to be an actor in social issues and global politics. As a result, it has some awkward decisions to make in the next few days, and there will doubtless be many more in the weeks, months and years to come.
Comments