Love Football not FIFA

Mark Perryman of Philosophy Football argues to understand Qatar, start with how the World Cup has always been political

As Sunday’s Qatar World Cup kick off approaches, “Stadiums of Shame,” screamed the Guardian back page sports headline on Tuesday. Inside two pages of facts and figures featured the plight of migrant workers, with former German international Philipp Lahm saying he won’t be going because the World Cup doesn’t belong in Qatar, plus the launch of a new online resource “beyond the football”.

All of this is being framed by the editorial self-justification, ‘This is a World Cup like no other.’ Meanwhile on Saturday, as with every Saturday preceding a World Cup for as long as I can remember, there will be free with the Guardian their 56-page guide to the tournament full of ‘inimitable team-by-team guides’ followed on Sunday in the Observer a free World Cup ‘brilliant wallchart’. Confused? We might well be.

Mmm, or as the terrace chant goes ‘ If you know your history…‘, because the idea that Qatar is ‘like no other’ is the product of a deep-seated ahistoricism. Qatar is simply the latest World Cup to be used as a political platform, and if we can cut through both the cultural relativism and the liberal platitudes to recognise there is nothing remotely ‘like no other’ about this World Cup – rather it suits the well-worn norm – that would be a start.

To begin at the beginning: 1930, the first World Cup, hosted by Uruguay, the tournament invented by a Frenchman, Jules Rimet, organised by FIFA, founded by another Frenchman, Robert Guérin. The FA, never knowingly described as the English FA, because after all we invented the game, promptly announced they would be boycotting it. Nothing to do with human rights or the like in Uruguay, rather the very idea that these Johnny Foreigners might think they can run our game.

The next one England boycotted as well in 1934. It boycotted 1938 too, before finally entering the 1950 World Cup. A squad of England legends, including Billy Wright, Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney, was promptly knocked out at the group stage. England was beaten by the USA, at the time a team of amateurs. No, football didn’t come home (sic) back then either, and we’ve had to live with the ideological legacy ever since.

The 1934 World Cup was hosted by Mussolini’s Italy, with his Blackshirts explicitly using the Italian national team to build support for fascism, winning their home tournament. France in 1938 was the first team to win an away World Cup. Prime Minister Harold Wilson turned England’s 1966 win into a reason to vote Labour: “Have you noticed we only win the Word Cup under a Labour government?”

It’s one old Labour pledge that has stood the test of time, in this case more’s the pity. At the World Cup in 1970, Israel qualify via the Asian Football Federation (AFC), which it’s a member of. One World Cup later, Israel is forced to leave the AFC because most member countries refuse to play a nation that mistreats Palestine in the way Israel does.

UEFA, on the other hand, welcomes Israel with open arms, the only non-European country it has allowed to join. World Cup 1974: the USSR team are expelled from the tournament for refusing to play Chile following Pinochet’s coup; Chile take part in their place. Or the last World Cup, 2018: Putin’s World Cup, just four years after his annexation, aka invasion, of Crimea. This time round, 2022, all Russian participation is banned. Qatar, a World Cup ‘like no other’? No, in a myriad of ways, it’s like all the others, framed by politics, most of it bad.

For this World Cup, the England team flew out to Qatar in a plane renamed for the trip ‘Rainbow.’ It was a powerful and very public statement of LGBT solidarity in the face of widespread laws in Qatar outlawing both LGBT relationships and a variety of women’s rights we take for granted. This solidarity was amplified by widespread coverage of the issue in the sports media too. Good. Yet on that plane there wasn’t a single out gay male player, nor do any of the squad play alongside any out gay men and none are managed by an out gay man. To be gay and out in England isn’t illegal, yet to play professional football, it might as well be. Perhaps a degree of self-reflection wouldn’t go amiss.

Qatar using, abusing, the World Cup? It was ever thus. This is the downside of football as the one truly global sport. Yes Rugby (both versions) and cricket (all versions) have their World Cups but they’re not truly global, are they? These are sports fundamentally framed by the British empire with the odd other international hangers-on who can score upsets but never get remotely close to the latter stages of the tournament. The winners of football’s World Cup are a likewise select few from Europe and South America, but in contrast to the cricket and rugby World Cups semi-finalists, quarter-finalists come from every continent, every corner of the world. This is the upside, including Qatar: a World Cup as a festival of popular internationalism.

I’m lucky enough to have travelled as an England fan to four World Cups including Asia’s first, Japan and Korea 2002 and Africa’s first, South Africa 2010. Never mind – well actually I do mind, a lot – that England didn’t come close to lifting the trophy, the experience was utterly unforgettable. Yes, it’s a holiday of privilege, but being there is also hopelessly mixed up with, despite the unfamiliar and different, what we shared as visitors with our hosts: the love of football, not as tourists, but as fans, united.

That’s what Qatar should be about. The first Middle Eastern World Cup: good. The first in a majority Muslim country: good. The first that recognises that not the entire world follows the European (not even all of Europe) league season calendar, August-May: good But, of course, we all know it won’t be, and that is a huge loss, barely recognised.

There are certainly plenty of good reasons to give this World Cup a miss: the mistreatment and appalling deaths of migrant workers, who bult the magnificent stadiums that teams are so much looking forward to playing in near the top. There is the corrupt way in which the bid was secured too. But England were part of that round of bidding too, and played an international in Trinidad and Tobago with the sole intention of getting that country’s vote. England won, lost the vote – moral high ground abandoned.

To boycott or not to boycott? In the 1970s, protests and disruption stopped overseas tours from apartheid South Africa and led directly to South Africa being banned from international football sport by FIFA, as well as the Olympics. Result.

But let’s be brutally honest: for Qatar it’s a non-question. Despite all the coverage, all the exposure of a media determined to expose Qatar as an unsuitable host, and still give the tournament every bit of coverage they provide as per usual, there is no mass, popular movement. Because the contradiction is shared by all those looking forward to the games but not having much time, for a wide variety of reasons, not all good, for the country where they’re being played, and next to no time for the organisation that chose that country as the host.

Best chance of a boycott? England exit in ignominy at the Group stage and the boycott will be unstoppable. Prospects for solidarity? Wales march on triumphantly to the knock-out stages and there’s a tidal wave of Welsh solidarity with their team. Because when it comes down to it for the next four weeks, any moral gymnastics can be reduced to four words. Love football not FIFA.

Further Reading: Mark Perryman Ingerland : Travels with a Football Nation

Mark Perryman is the co-founder of Philosophy Football