Sport and politics? Perish the thought

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is a rank blasphemer. Yesterday he offended Britain’s second religion (the NHS being the first).

Commenting on yet another Russian murder attempt in Britain, Boris alluded to the possibility of boycotting the football World Cup to be held in Russia this summer. “Thinking ahead to the World Cup,” he said, “it would be very difficult to imagine that UK representation at that event could go ahead in the normal way.”

He might as well have said that the NHS should be disbanded. Window panes all over Britain are still shaking from the ensuing thunder of protests. Typical among them was the tirade issued by Gary Neville, ex-footballer cum commentator and a knee-jerk leftie (footballers’ beliefs in anything outside football are knee-jerk by definition).

Speaking of our loquacious Foreign Secretary, Gary screamed on Twitter: “He’s a useless idiot! Why bring football into it?” If I were Gary, I wouldn’t throw the first ‘idiot’ – his own IQ drops to below room temperature whenever he ventures outside the subject of overlapping fullbacks.

Boris writhed under Gary’s attack, fortified as it was by a universal chorus of condemnation. He didn’t mean, God forbid, that our football team should boycott the World Cup, cried his spokesman. What do you think he is, a godless pervert?

Of course England footballers must go through the quadrennial ritual of losing in the last 16. All Boris meant was that there shouldn’t be a retinue of royals, FA officials and politicians trailing in the ball-kickers’ wake.

Since Prince William is president of the Football Association, his absence would really show Vlad what’s what. A commensurate response if I’ve ever seen one: they murder people on our soil; Will stays at home to entertain his pregnant wife. Vlad must be quaking in his jackboots.

Now Gary seems to think that football, and presumably sport in general, shouldn’t be brought into politics under any circumstances. I agree: there’s no need. For politics is already brought into football and sport in general.

Now here’s a question for the quiz night at your local. Which country has ever hosted both summer and winter Olympics in the same year?

This will catch out all but the most fanatical of trivia hounds. The answer is: Nazi Germany in 1936. First came the winter rehearsal at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, which was followed by the grandiose spectacle at Berlin.

The latter was captured with technical mastery and moral decrepitude by Leni Riefenstahl in her film Olympia, starring the Führer grinning from ear to ear each time a German won a medal.

Each victory, clamoured Goebbels’s hacks, struck a blow for the superiority of Nazism and the Aryan race. All German winners responded by giving the Nazi salute on the podium, that went without saying.

But pornography watchers among you will also enjoy the footage of the England football team saluting Hitler in the same fashion. For purely protocol reasons they shouted neither “Heil Hitler!” nor “Sieg heil!”. But, had the protocol demanded it, they would have been in fine voice.

Football wasn’t brought into politics then, Gary. It was the other way around.

Following on that fine tradition, I wonder what will happen at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar? Will the England team drop on the ground and shout “Allahu akbar!” if the muezzin happens to sing during the opening ceremony?

Since 1936 politics has been inseparable from sport, especially but not exclusively in the more disgusting countries. Just as Hitler used the Olympics as propaganda for Nazism, so did the Soviets and their satellites use it as propaganda for communism.

Every gold medal won by a Soviet weightlifter on steroids or an East German woman swimmer turned into a man by drugs advanced the noble cause of transforming the whole world into a giant concentration camp. I still remember the nauseating din accompanying each such triumph in the Soviet press.

And I’ll never forget the bone-crushing abandon with which Czech hockey players defeated the much favoured Soviet team at the 1969 world championship, a year after Soviet tanks rode into Prague. Anybody who didn’t see it wasn’t just about ice hockey was indeed a ‘useless idiot’, to use Gary’s locution.

Nor is boycotting sport events for political reasons unheard of. One recalls the boycott by some Western nations (Britain went along only partially) of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, followed by the Soviets retaliating at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

It was understood then, as it should be now, that politics and sport have become inseparable. It’s for political reasons that Putin’s junta has turned their international athletes into junkies, showing that the fine tradition of state-sponsored doping hasn’t gone the way of the Soviet Union (most other Soviet traditions are just as resilient, but this is by the bye).

The easiest way to deny tyrants the opportunity to use sport as propaganda of evil is not to put major sporting events into their countries in the first place. But, since both FIFA and IOC rival Putin’s junta in corruption, this option is unavailable.

Boycotting such events when the tyrants do something particularly revolting is more difficult. But it’s an excellent punitive measure to be held in reserve.

If the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was grounds for boycotting the 1980 Olympics, why doesn’t the Russian invasion of Georgia and the Ukraine call for boycotting this World Cup? And considering that Putin has turned Britain into a killing field, this time we should go the whole hog.

If evil acts aren’t punished so it hurts, there will be more evil acts. Surely even Gary Neville can get his head around this simple logic?

The world doesn’t revolve around football or, if it does, this is an abomination. The world does revolve (to a much greater extent at any rate) around discouraging and punishing political evil.

And yet so far not a single public figure has demanded a boycott of this World Cup. Not by Prince William but by the England team, including the overlapping fullbacks so dear to Gary’s heart.

Nor has any bank said it will impound Russian assets and refuse to accept more. God forbid the monthly influx of over a billion in purloined and laundered cash will slow down.

That leaves only one question unanswered. Whom will Vlad ‘whack’ next? In Britain, publicly, proudly – and to the accompaniment of trumped-up rage only surviving until the next news cycle.

P.S. Turns out Skripal’s wife and son didn’t die in car accidents, as was previously reported. The former died of cancer; the latter of liver failure; and Skripal’s brother also died recently. Natural causes of course, but all surviving family members would be well-advised to watch out.

2 thoughts on “Sport and politics? Perish the thought”

  1. The English soccer [football] players can get down on one knee in emulation of the American football players as showing a way of displeasure. Such protests are like a cold and very catching.

  2. I thought I read overlapping buttocks, but fortunately it turned out that Gary was merely speaking through them.

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