8 April 3, 2022The Sunday Times
Football
The Sun headline “It’s Iranian Men —
Hallelujah!”, encapsulating England’s
supposedly easy draw for the World
Cup, is probably my favourite
football headline since that one about
Celtic getting thumped by Inverness
Caledonian Thistle.
We may be sniggering too soon.
Iran are no mugs, ranked 21st in the
world and the game is being played in
the land of Iran’s closest allies, Qatar.
They will have overwhelming and
probably fanatical (in not entirely the
nicest sense of the word) local
support. We have never played them
before, but there were plans for a
friendly match back in the early years
of this century and for reasons never
properly explained it had been due to
take place at Millwall.
Presumably the footballing
authorities were seeking a venue that
would be as peaceable and free from
potential trouble as possible. My
fellow Millwall fans had been
dreaming up chants on the
football forums. My favourite
was, “You’re Shiite and you
know you are.”
Should we play them at all?
We don’t like them, politically,
for good reason and
they do not like us,
historically, for even
better reasons. Few
countries in the
world — just Egypt,
perhaps — have
suffered more at
the hands ofBritish perfidy, high-handedness and
double dealing than Iran.
But we cannot play against only
teams from countries that our
politicians find agreeable, or we
would be limited to endless friendlies
against Ukraine and Poland.
Whether we should be in Qatar at
all is an entirely different matter. We
go there knowing full well that the
decision to base the tournament in
that scorching and sand-blown
totalitarian satrapy was corrupt,
and that hundreds of foreign
workers, little better than slaves,
died during the construction of what
will undoubtedly be the usual Middle
East bling stadiums, a style of
architecture that seems to be a
blend of Albert Speer and the
Candy Brothers.
Yet the formerly pious, knee-
bending Mr Southgate seems not to
give a monkey’s about any of that —
and we fans are all too thrilled and
bloated with expectation to care
about such trivialities as democracy
and human rights.
On the footballing front, England
are not always at their best against
Middle Eastern sides. The only team
we have played more than once and
never beaten are Iran’s nemesis,
Saudi Arabia. But perhaps Qatar
really is our chance to win a decent
tournament for the first time in 56
years, as Southgate seems to be
suggesting.
My suspicion is that that chance
came last summer and went as aconsequence of extraordinarily bad
game management right up to the
final second.
Our other certain opponents in
group B should similarly not be
written off. The United States are 15th
in the Fifa rankings and have recently
waltzed past those perennial
underachievers, Mexico. Their last
game against a decent team came
more than a year ago, a narrow
defeat by those perennialoverachievers, Switzerland. You
would imagine that the US v Iran will
be the fixture that determines who
finishes bottom of the group, though
— much as it did in the first meeting
between the two at the 1998 World
Cup in France.
This was a somewhat fraught
encounter, preceded by various
expressions of diplomatic nastiness
on both sides. Ayatollah Khamenei
insisted that his side must not walk
towards the representatives of the
Great Satan for pre-match
handshakes — so the doveish Yankees
did the walking. Whereupon each
player was presented with a whiterose representing peace by his
Iranian counterpart. Iran won the
game, provoking the usual scenes of
exuberance in Tehran.
More politics may attend to
England’s final group game against
Scotland, Wales or... Ukraine. It
would be cheering to think that
Ukrainians will find time to play
football, given that they have a lot on
their plate right now. The second
lowest ranked of all the sides we
could possibly meet in the group
stage, Ukraine will nonetheless have
a large sympathy vote around the
world and probably in England too.
Will Ukraine turn up? If they do I
suspect they will be rather fired up.
As of course will Wales or Scotland.
Truth be told, I have seen nothing
from the Scots — ranked 39th in the
world, and that’s being generous —
that in normal circumstances would
instil much fear. But games between
Scotland and England — and to only a
slightly lesser degree, Wales and
England — are not normal
circumstances. They are
opportunities for centuries of envy,
spite, hostility and inferiority
complexes to reemerge and strut
their stuff. If Scotland beat England
the celebrations north of the border
will match those in Tehran in 1998.
Most World Cups usually have a
“group of death”, but in lieu of that
this time, group B seems to be a
“group of fervent political hatred and
animosity”. I have to say I’m rather
looking forward to it.Middle East bling
stadiums seem to be
a blend in style of
Albert Speer and the
Candy BrothersThere’s no
‘group of death’,
but I’m excited
about England
in the group
of fervent
political hatred
Ro d
Liddle