England's FA struggles with the limits of armband activism
Old and busted: You have to wear the ribbon! New hotness: No ribbon? Well, I got nothing.
The English Football Association’s post-World Cup inquiry (I don’t want to call it a “post-mortem” because, well, you know, Qatar) will center around four questions:
Why did they trust FIFA’s assurances that they’d be able to wear the OneLove armband?
Why did they plan on doing nothing else activist-y alongside or in place of the OneLove armband?
Seriously, how much time did they put into this armband campaign, come up with that and that alone, and are we really still talking about this weeks after the World Cup ended?
Something something building a squad upon the foundation of Harry Maguire.
FIFA followed the example of their Qatari partners – it’s hard to say who’s the student and who’s the master in the realm of perfidy and untethered immorality - by altering the deal at the last moment. Hours before kick-off, FIFA announced that team captains could only wear FIFA-issued captain’s armbands.
Initial reports were that the captain would receive a yellow card for wearing a bootleg armband, but SkySports later said the penalty could have been a one match ban.
Regardless of the sanction, the FA had no response. No backup plan. No “other things we were doing as part of our commitment to… we’ll get back to you on this…of which the armband was only a small but visible part.”
An upcoming season of Amazon Prime’s behind-the-scenes sports docuseries will be “All or Nothing: England’s FA and the OneLove Armband.”
SkySports summarizes the flailing at England’s FA:
Suggestions have been made that maybe Gareth Southgate could wear the One Love armband on the touchline for the next game against USA, even though this again would likely be sanctioned by FIFA.
Another option may be for Kane, or other England players, to wear the armband during training, in front of the cameras.
Sky goes on to report similar scenes at the Football Association of Wales, followed by equally armband-centric, nay, armband-only takes from their in-house pundits.
Shorter:
FIFA and the eight countries of the ex-OneLove bloc deserve back-handed credit for how they handled the OneLove armband tempest.
The associations, by backing down with a reaction time that makes Edouard Mendy look like the Zootopia sloth, protected their captains by absolving them of having to choose between an empty gesture and a yellow card or match ban. It’s bad enough when external, non-sporting entities pressure players into one or more of the Current Thing. Football entities should never countenance - let alone force, themselves - players having to choose between their sport and, well, anything. The associations took this unjust choice off the players.
FIFA, for their part, performed an even greater public service. First, they showed how to defeat an empty gesture: threaten a response. Then, by doing so, they showed that not only was the OneLove armband “campaign” empty, but the motivations and commitment behind it were so shallow as to be only nominally two dimensional.
Perhaps FIFA will next say that any player who takes a knee before kick-off will also receive a yellow, unless they can prove they were tying their shoe. This would put Gareth Southgate in an uncomfortable position, having said that his England squad will take the knee, although he didn’t say why they would be doing so. I’m old enough to remember when it was solidarity with Black Lives Matter, then it became (appropriated by???) LGBTQ causes, then there were rumors of solidarity with Iranian protestors… who can keep up?
FIFA’s action will hopefully clear the board of empty gestures and paint-by-number protests. What will remain, then, is beautifully brutal honesty: strength or weakness, resolve or pantomime. If a federation, squad or player wants to make a stand, they’re going to have to make it count. Anything less will be revealed for what it is.
This may already be happening, independent of any governing body’s action or inaction, and in a way that will be particularly thorny for Gianni “I’m a gay migrant Qatari, in fact, I’m every woman it’s all in me” Infantino.
Shortly before the appropriately uniformed Harry Kane and his squad mates knelt for a moment pre-kickoff, the Iranian national team stood impassively silent during their national anthem. There is not only a non-zero but a not insignificant chance that that action – especially if it is repeated – could cost those players and their families some comforts, some of their remaining minimal freedoms or even their lives.
Put that on your arm and wear it.
England and their OneLove counterparts, along with any other entity or individual who wants to take a principled stand at the World Cup, is going to have to do two things that modern Western activists show little ability or interest in. First, they will have to take a meaningful action. It can still be symbolic, but it has to be substantive. And second, they’ll have to be willing to take the consequences.
The OneLove armband activism was the perfect gesture because it fell so far short on both counts, and FIFA’s counter was impeccably planned and executed. What happens next will reveal how well FIFA understands their constituent adversaries. If England and the OneLovers spend the next two weeks VPN-ing TikTok videos of players wearing the armband around Qatar, then FIFA will have won, deservedly.
If, however, these associations and players realize that what FIFA did is the equivalent of a 75’ goal that breaks the deadlock, and now they need to make attacking substitutions, change tactics, play a high line, leave only one man back and open up the play, then they give themselves a chance of winning, or at least winning back some respect.
And if all else fails, maybe Harry Kane can throw a bucket of tomato soup on Gianni Infantino.
Photo credit: G Travels / Flickr, under CC BY NC-2.0.