I can’t be arsed and I don’t think the pundits are either

Has there ever been a World Cup - or, indeed, any international sporting event - to generate so little excitement than the tournament now underway in Qatar? You’d have to go back to the tit-for-tat Cold War-proxy boycotts of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 and it’s equally mardy sequel in Los Angeles four years later to see the sort of apathy coming across from the Gulf.

Even in the opening match of the FIFA World Cup 2022, between the hosts and Equador, half the locals buggered off at half time, leaving vast swathes of empty seating in the Al Bayt Stadium. But if they were disinterested, what about the BBC’s presenting panel of Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Alex Scott and Ashley Williams? Let’s just say the energy in the room, as they introduced the fixture, was weird. As, by now, you’ll have read on Twitter or in the Daily Mail, it was the oddest opening to a football tournament ever. None of the eye-twinkling cornyness of the Des Lynam era, or slightly dodgy cultural cliches about the host nation. No. Not even a two-hour buildup and the promise of a “footballing fiesta”. Just a dead-eyed Lineker piece-to-camera, a canvass of pundits for opinions on the controversies-numerous of Qatar hosting the event, a forensic analysis of the issues from Ros Atkins, the presenter of the BBC’s Outside Source (does he ever wear anything other than that blue shirt underneath a blue blazer?) and for some ‘balance’ an interview with the BBC’s esteemed International Editor, Jeremy Bowen, on the tiny kingdom on the Arabian Peninsular. And then, more or less, straight into the opening game.

Controversially, perhaps, there was no mention or inclusion of the tournament’s opening ceremony on BBC1 (it was shown on the online iPlayer), all adding to the sense that the BBC was making the point that everyone else has been making about this World Cup being staged in a country with an atrocious record of human rights, and in which hundreds of migrant workers are alleged to have died building the tournament’s stadia in appalling conditions. 

The day before Lineker had promised a “mini Panorama”, and in that respect, the dour introduction to what should be the quad-annual highlight of the footballing calendar was a spectacularly joyless affair. “Woke virtue signalling”, came the inevitable online reaction, with the usual effluence of right-wing bile attacking Lineker - as per - and, equally, predictably, Scott (whose status as a female, black and - recently revealed - gay presenter didn’t need emphasising to wind up those with, clearly, an agenda). And, of course, the fact that it was on the BBC was enough to send keyboard warriors of a particular political persuasion fuming into orbit.

I’ve blogged before about Scott’s treatment from people who seem to have a problem with her being female, or speaking with an accent or, more likely, being a woman of colour. Credit, then to football writer Oliver Holt who - in none other than the Daily Mail - called out the “scorn” and “cynicism” her presence on the BBC in Qatar has met. “Some people want to silence voices like hers, voices which make inconvenient observations about FIFA and its decision to hold the World Cup in a country that treats women as second-class citizens and gay women as criminals,” he wrote. “She deserves our admiration for having the courage to travel to Qatar to work for the BBC and continue doing a job she loves, and which she has earned on merit. At this men’s World Cup, in particular, it is more vital than it has ever been before that there are top-class female broadcasters reporting on the sport and reporting on the issues.”

It could easily be argued that everyone should just focus on the football, and embrace the hippy ideals of nations coming together in the name of sport. The music journalist Lesley Ann Jones made the point today in a blog post that there wasn’t such indignation over the Romans executing Christians in the Colosseum, or Egyptian slaves dying in the construction of the Pyramids. But while all of that is true, the Romans and the Ancient Egyptians didn’t exist in the modern age of enlightenment. Plus, you’d have hoped that in the millennia since, migrant labourers shouldn’t be forced to work in inhumane conditions on extremely low pay, or under extremely restricted terms of employment.

I get it, that Qatar’s religious laws and culture - as anywhere else, for that matter - should be respected but why, then, award the staging of a competition to a country where being gay can result in execution, when the institution awarding those rights wants everyone to know how diverse and inclusive it is? Of course, we now know why those rights were awarded. And how. And while I will watch the World Cup this year, I will do so uneasily at best, and queasily at worst.

Once upon a time you’d await a World Cup with giddy excitement. While I’ve never been one to prepare for an international tournament by pinning a fixtures calendar to the fridge and compulsively filling up a sticker album with every competing squad member, I have enjoyed the traditions. Chief of these has been the fact that World Cups are staged in the northern hemisphere summer, with most of the contributing domestic leagues done for another year, and the players able to focus on their countries long enough before heading off to the beach for a few weeks until the new season gets going again. But clearly not this year. No barbecues before games, not even the draping of national flags outside houses and flying from car aerials. This World Cup has come around to flat relative indifference. 

In time, the actual football might change that, but I’m not holding my breath. I might eat my words if England progress, and I won’t pretend that I won’t be watching. But the controversy surrounding the tournament will not abate. And for that, anger must be awarded equally to both Qatar and FIFA. 

Saturday’s ridiculous rant by FIFA president Gianni Infantino (“Today I feel Qatari, I feel Arab, I feel African, I feel gay, I feel disabled, I feel a migrant worker.”) in which he effectively equated being bullied for having red hair as a child to the treatment Qatar is receiving from Western sensibilities, wasn’t just a surreal moment, but underlined the preposterousness of the competition coming to the country in the first place. “You are not gay,” Alex Scott scolded him in the BBC’s opening segment. “You will not understand travelling to a country where you are fearing for your life about your preference of who you choose to love.” Bravo, Alex. In a sport where the bland go to extraordinary lengths to avoid having opinions (even Shearer, sitting to Scott’s right, took the beige route in his own comments on the controversy), it was refreshing to hear it called out.

Not enough, though, have called out the decision to award Qatar the event in the first place. Not enough have stood up to FIFA, despite the overwhelming evidence of its snout being buried deep in the trough. In April 2020 it was reported that, following years of investigation, the United States Department of Justice said that representatives working for Russia and Qatar had bribed FIFA officials to secure hosting rights for the World Cups in both countries. In 2015 FIFA president Sepp Blatter resigned amid investigations by both Swiss police and the FBI, while several FIFA administrators have been convicted of corruption. Even the slippery Blatter admitted recently that the decision to award the World Cup to Qatar had been a “poor choice”, not that his comments will have exonerated himself from culpability in the appalling decision.

Picture: Twitter/England

The event is here now. I suppose we have to get on with it. The controversy of how it got here will not go away and, inevitably, as the tournament proceeds, fans will get caught up in all the usual arguments over penalties that weren’t, offsides that should have been given, VAR making a mockery of everyone else’s 20-20 vision, and all the pantomime villain-booing that comes with watching other countries play football (or, in other words, players from certain Latin nations diving like they’ve been shot).

England are up and running, with a comfortable win over the equally controversial Iran under their belts. England captain Harry Kane dodged an immediate yellow card before even kicking a ball by not wearing a ‘One Love’ rainbow armband (though Alex Scott did it for him). England avoided a fine from FIFA for the intended gesture. “England bottled it”, came the reaction on Twitter. “They’re just bowing to the oppression of the Qatari government.” one fan told the Press Association. “Let the players focus on the football,” came another viewpoint. They both have valid arguments. 

Nor will this undercurrent of disquiet go away as the next few weeks continue. The tournament might be progressing, but it’s a coin toss as to whether football is.

Why we shouldn't have been surprised...and nor should UEFA

Take the ingredients: England; the unfortunate reputation of some England fans; the port city of Marseille; the history of England supporters in Marseille; a fixture with Russia; the advanced intelligence that Russian 'ultras' were heading for Marseille in search of 'action'; a local community of disaffected youth relishing the prospect of a scrap. Add to the mix all-day drinking, a tired, jaded and nervous police force with a penchant for tear-gassing first, asking questions later. 

It hasn't exactly been a shock to see the sickening violence in the Mediterranean sunshine over this last weekend. The trouble is, those organising Euro 2016 shouldn't have been shocked, either. Moreover, they should have been better prepared for it. UEFA are probably doing the right thing in threatening the Russian and English football associations with ejection from the tournament if the disgraceful scenes in Marseille are repeated - what else can they do? - but then what did UEFA do to prevent them? Stopping football fans fighting is no easier than preventing any spontaneous bar brawl, but it could have been mitigated if the recipe's ingredients had been examined before the sun started to cook them into a bloody stew. The memory of 1998 should have been the first red flag when scheduling an England fixture in Marseille. But, then, threats from local youths, spoiling for a fight over their social situation and, potentially, global events, should have been another red flag. 

However, before we look for excuses, there's no escaping the fact that England fans, drinking from first thing in the morning, dressed in identikit combos of shorts and trainers, stripped to the waist and, by mid-afternoon increasingly belligerent, will have made themselves targets - either for the police (understandably jumpy given the apparent terror threat against Euro 2016) or for any locals wanting to 'defend' their turf. 

It shouldn't have to be this way, of course. The build-up to any football match should be enjoyed with a pint or two, even better with a blast of warm sun. But with England fans arriving in Marseille on Thursday for Saturday night's game, the potential for trouble was always there. What doesn't make sense is why bars around the Vieux Port were open and serving beer at 9am - exactly 12 hours before kickoff.

The drunken, casual xenophobia that accompanied some of the England fans on Thursday and Friday (the usual "no surrender to the IRA" songs, the ISIS goading and "ironic" World War Two references), however, pale into insignificance with Saturday's arrival in the port area by Russian thugs. By all accounts, it was like a military operation and it became clear they weren't just drunken yobs of a different hue. Some wore gum guards and MMA gloves. Some wore England shirts to blend in and confuse. Some had improvised weapons, including reports of a hatchet. Some England fans even noted that they were physically different, as if the special forces of hooligans had been unleashed. Clearly, this was no impromptu violence. This was as premeditated as it was possible to be. Which begs the question, why weren't the authorities better prepared to prevent it? A group of thugs that large doesn't organise itself without some intelligence spilling out.

Even more disturbing were the scenes in the Stade Vélodrome: after suicide bombers targeted the Stade de France last November, it is baffling as to how a flare gun was allowed into the England-Russia game, how a firework went off (chillingly echoing the sound of suicide vests being detonated seven months ago) and how a thin line of just 20 matchday stewards separated Russian and England fans given what had been going on in the town that day. The sight, though, of clearly motivated thugs charging at English fans - including women, children and the elderly - at the end of the 1-1 draw will and should set off alarm bells at both UEFA and FIFA headquarters.

Euro 2012 in Poland & Ukraine was marred by violent incidents involving Russian fans, with the Russian Football Union threatened then with severe sanctions by UEFA, on top of fines for specific acts of what amounted to outright nationalism. These events should have put the Russian Football Union under severe probation. Most of all, the staging of FIFA's 2018 World Cup in Russia must now be placed under the severest scrutiny. If extremist Russian hooligans can bring the sort of terror to Marseille as we saw last night, imagine what they would do on home soil?

I'm not, though, taking sides. English football hooliganism has never, truly, gone away. Thankfully, trouble at home and abroad has been severely mitigated by effective policing and planning. What has happened - and it would be naive to assume that it no longer does - takes place largely out of view and therefore unreported. Domestic games are now, thankfully, dry affairs, family entertainment-orientated, even (you do become impervious to the fruitier language). The days when I remember elements of the West Ham ICF appearing, threateningly, in the old family section at Stamford Bridge are long behind us.

But, whether it is just being reported more or is actually happening, there have been more incidents of old-style trouble at football matches in the UK in recent months. Which should have been another red flag to the prospect of Marseille repeating the chaos of 1998 and Charleroi in 2000. Perhaps, then, we've been lulled into a sense of false security, even if we should have been simply enjoying a behavioural change. The headlines in 1998 were justifiably despairing. The English club ban following Heysel had served to demonise football to some extent in England, but by 1998, eight years after the ban had been lifted, it was hoped that lessons had been learned.

In 2006 I went to several World Cup games in Germany, including all of England's, and couldn't have enjoyed a better experience. There was drinking, there was sunshine, there was singing (including the inevitable references to events between 1939 and 1945...), and there was, of course, the ever-present threat of trouble from agents provocateurs. But there was also supreme German organisation, and no sense of foreboding emanating from policing. It appeared that the combination of stringent law enforcement, intelligence gathering on known troublemakers and an appreciation by yobs that getting caught abroad will result in jail sentences was finally paying off. Now, one has to wonder whether the guard has been let down.

As has always been the case, those mixed up in the Marseille madness will be the minority. Most of the fans from both England and Russia will have been there for the football, the camaraderie and the banter, even if they are, to put it politely, "boisterous". Football fans enjoying a beer while discussing team selections will not attract media attention. Brawling, beer bottle-throwing, bloodied - or worse - fans, facing down notoriously heavy-handed riot police with their tear gas and water cannon, will. That shouldn't just be a stain on the reputations of the nations involved, but on those responsible for organising Euro 2016. Which is why if England and Russia are kicked out of the competition, UEFA will have to face some very severe questions indeed, because Germany and other host nations have demonstrated that you can stage a football tournament and not have it descend into violence.