parties that kids and their mums and dads can enjoy together, most
likely from afar. Like Sochi 2014 and Russia 2018.
here’s nothing new here. Despots are keen on sot power, as well
as hard power. hey always have been. And the World Cup, like the
Olympics, has always been there, to help them out.
he Olympics, famously, was there for Hitler in 1936. he World
Cup had been there for Mussolini, two years earlier, when the Ital-
ians won at home, and again in 1938, when the Italians won again, in
France. Italian football as we know it today was basically invented by
the fascists, as a propaganda tool.
The World Cup was there for the murderous military junta in
Argentina in 1978 — the focus of Will Hersey’s excellent piece, on page- hat was a shameful episode in the history of the world’s favourite
sport, but for some reason the world’s favourite sport does not seem
ashamed. Which is how the World Cup comes to be in Russia, this
time. It’s there for Vladimir Putin, just when it suits him most. And
it will be there again, in 2022, for the rulers of Qatar, to help them
distract us from their delightful record on human rights.
he England team didn’t go to Italy in 1934. Not for moral reasons.
We were in dispute with the body that then organised it. We didn’t go
to Argentina in 1978, either. Again not for moral or political reasons. We
didn’t have the opportuniy to register a protest then. We hadn’t qualified.
We were too crap. (Four years later, Britain registered a diferent kind of
protest at the junta, by going to war with them over the Falklands.)
It won’t happen, it will never happen, but this time we do have an
opportuniy not to repeat the mistakes of the past. We could not go. We
could boycot. his would not be the English FA “politicising sport”. In
the sense that it has been used as a weapon of sot power, sport has
been politicised since the Greeks. Fifa has politicised the World Cup,
consistently, by allowing repressive regimes to stage it. Instead we
would be reacting to its politicisation. It’s been said that such a boycot
is a pathetic response to Putin’s criminaliy, and that he won’t care a jot
if we don’t turn up. It’ll be our loss, the loss of football lovers every-
where, not his. But cultural and sporting boycots are deeply shaming
to the regimes whose policies they explicitly protest.
However, since it’s true that a World Cup without England might
not be, if we’re honest, considered such a great loss to the competition,
we could lobby others to join us. Italy and Holland are out already.
But imagine a World Cup without them, and England, plus Germany,
France, Spain, Brazil and Argentina.
As I say, it’s not going to happen. Instead, our formal protest is
to announce that Prince William, as president of the FA, won’t go to
Russia. Worse still, for Putin, no British government ministers will
atend. Honestly, how will the world’s football fans manage without
them? Talk about taking the shine of the whole tournament. One can
only imagine the howling gales of laughter that swept through the cor-
ridors of the Kremlin as heresa May outlined this uncompromising
approach to international diplomacy.
Of course, our Oscar and many millions like him would be guted if
the World Cup didn’t happen. But I’m hopeful that when, years later, he
came to understand the reasons why he was denied the thrill of
watching us being taken apart by de Bruyne and Eden Hazard and the
rest of them — the fact that kids his own age in the Middle East are
being killed with their families — he might feel a tiny bit proud of that.
England won that match in Berlin in 1938, by the way. It was 6–3.
You don’t need a five year old to tell you that that is the precise defini-
tion of a hollow victory.The England football team
give the Nazi salute before
kick-off against Germany in
Berlin, 14 May 193822
PAJune 2018
Alex Bilmes
Editor’s Letter