The greatest show on earth?

I was asked the other day if I was looking forward to the world cup. I guess that should be FIFA men's world cup these days but I'm of the generation where "world cup" unqualified by any other words can only mean one thing. As I am not a great fan of international football between world cups the answer was a little surprising: enormously. Now I'm retired there should be plenty of tme to watch it, like many famous games I watched back in the day: England against The Argies, Portugal and Germany in England 1966; Brazil's carnival of football in Mexico 1970 with Carlos Alberto lashing in the final goal of the final after a flowing move; bleary eyed at work after staying up to watch Argentina beat Peru 6-0 then go on to win the trophy in their own country in 1978; Italy beating Brazil 3-2 in Spain in 1982 and going on to win that tournament (I think I got to watch that because I was on holiday, in Italy possibly - or maybe skiving); Lineker's golden boot year and Maradona's "hand of god" goal in 1986; Gazza's tears in 1990 and Michael Owen's wonder goal against Argentina in 1998. 

I didn't expect to won't watch many of the games live, other those of England and Wales, until the knock out stage but in practice the timing of the matches has meant I've had the telly on quite a lot already. My appetite for this world cup has been whetted partly by listening to a wonderful series of podcasts by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Both are serious historians and their The Rest is History podcasts (there have been over 250 episodes) range across the aeons covering things like the fall of Rome to the fall of Liz Truss. But last week they issued three hour long podcasts on the history of the world cup.

They started the first by noting that many of their listeners would groan at the prospect of them talking about football, indeed even sport, feeling that it's "not history". But Holland points out that football is "the single most popular activity that's ever been known to humanity". Hmm, what about sex? (He went on to clarify "it's followed by more people than any other leisure activity that we've ever had"). Calling it a "brilliant window" on history they noted that the world cup has reflected political events and issues ever since it started in 1930. It represents a "four yearly temperature check on the state of geo-politics".

So the controversy surrounding the world cup being held in Qatar is far from unusual.  Holland noted that the issues about corruption, bribery, the lives lost in indentured labour and the cultural sensitivities of Qatar hosting the event are very much issues of the present day. "Every world cup holds up a mirror to the convulsions and turbulence in the broader world". The world cup is a story of nationalism and nation building in which often authoritarian regimes attempt to co-opt popular entertainment to their own ends.  It was held in Mussolini's Italy in 1934 and in Argentina at the height of repression there in 1978. Holland and Sandbrook noted that the younger countries, like Italy and Brazil, had not only been much more keen to have a world cup than the established political and football powers like England but had overtly used hosting the competition for nation building. For the 1950 finals Brazil constructed the massive Maracana stadium (capacity 150,000 though nearly 200,000 got in to watch Brazil lose in the final) as a statement of modernisation. It was the first large concrete structure in Brazil, rapidly followed by a splurge of construction at Brasilia that bankrupted the country. Qatar being awarded it was controversial and, from a corruption point of view, smelly. I was surprised there wasn't more fuss at the time but then the 2018 finals were awarded on the same day - to Russia. Four years on Putin grabbed Crimea, four years after that he swaggered around with the FIFA executives at the finals and four years further on he invaded the rest of Ukraine. 

Unlike Qatar, Russia was at least a traditional footballing country. Though FIFA has consistently tried to spread the game geographically, the finals had never been held in the middle east and few smaller countries can afford to host them. There are plenty of countries at least as repressive as Qatar. To my knowledge the human rights record of a country is not one of the selection criteria used by FIFA, even if perhaps it should be. (Good luck in getting FIFA representatives to back that).

There have been plenty of other controversies. In the aforementioned 1982 world cup, Paolo Rossi was included in the Italy squad despite being in poor shape, poor form and had only recently been playing after a two year ban for match fixing (which he denied). The rest was history. There was the Bobby Moore/bracelet arrest in Colombia just before the 1970 tournament in Mexico; Maradona's drug bust in the 1994 finals and the Brazilian Ronaldo's mysterious illness before the 1998 final. What next?

At last on Sunday we got to the tournament. Turning on BBC before the first match I found they weren't covering the opening ceremony, though Saint Gary has said since they never do. But what they also have never previously done is to open with a documentary style tirade against FIFA and the host nation. We know that people worked in poor conditions and far too many lost their lives building the stadia. But the standards in activities like construction would have been no different for the world cup than any other project in that part of the world. Why not campaign for higher standards across the board - what's so different about football, and why single out Qatar?

There is of course a worrying discrepancy between the death toll quoted by international organisations and Qatar's "official" total. I assume that, against all decency, the Qataris are not counting deaths from causes like heat stroke. I wonder if, in the years after Qatar was awarded the world cup in 2010, Britain offered to share expertise about how we achieved an unprecendented zero fatalities building the London 2012 Olympic park, with an injury rate less than a third of the normal rate for construction in the UK.  Surely we should be offering to help and advise, not just criticise once the lives have already been lost.

I accept that there are long standing concerns about human rights in Arabic countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and apartheid in South Africa (so a long time ago) I made it a theme of mine that the next big human rights issue to address was the treatment of women in Muslim countries. (I have since accepted that China is as big a problem). But at the same time why should we expect countries to suddenly change their laws and culture to catch up with a position we have only just reached ourselves, painfully slowly? I suppose if it made Lineker, Shearer and the programme's directors feel better about themselves the holier than thou BBC achieved something, though perhaps cynically I suspect it was actually to deflect attacks on them for doing their job and covering the competition. I feel we should be saying "we do things rather differently" rather than haranguing other countries to adapt our current practices. Practices which may themselves seem neolithic in a few years time and which, in many cases, we have only adopted ourselves in the last few decades. 

So while, like most, I found FIFA president Gianni Infantino's near hour long monologue at his press conference just before the competition started rather weird, I could understand the point he was making about countries with a chequered history (if you go back far enough) lecturing other countries. Politicians in western Europe in particular seem far too ready to expect football and other sports to do the heavy lifting on human rights while happily selling weapons to the same countries and buying their oil. Surely that's the wrong way round? Ah, but we need their gas...

After all, if we only played against countries with similar views, policies and legal structures we would be playing in the breakaway world cup, not FIFA's, as only 26 countries out of 195 independent sovereign states in the world recognise same sex marriage - a minority even in within Europe. 69 countries criminalise homosexuality, some with the death penalty. 36 of those countries are in the Commonwealth so maybe the vocal minority who think we shouldn't be in Qatar would care to take that up with King Charles. If we said our sports men and women shouldn't go to compete in those countries or against them it would be quite restrictive. For example, you could forget playing cricket against Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the West Indies. On England's last two tours of the Windies thay've played at Barbados, Antigua, Grenada, St Lucia and St Kitts all of which are on the BBC's list of countries where homosexuality is illegal. (To be fair that doesn't necessarily mean that the authorities would actively seek to prosecute LGBT persons; I accept there are degrees of intolerance).

I conclude that the politicians would rather the pressure was brought to bear by footballers so they don't have to do it and risk those gas supplies or lovely arms sales. I suppose one could argue there is evidence that it works - ostracising South Africa from international cricket did seem to put the pressure on apartheid, though I'm not clear whether it was actually any more effective than my personal ban on South African Granny Smith's and Barclays Bank which started when I was a student in the 1970s. (I remember Mrs H being very puzzled about the former when we got married).

For me the players of countries like Britain should have focussed their concern on proper compensation for the families of the deceased. Pushing hard on a single issue would surely have been more likely to achieve a breakthrough than the rather nebulous (and never to be seen?) "one love" armband.

Talking of which, the least surprising development in the run up to the England team kicking off was the decision not to wear said armband and attract a booking for their captain before kick off. The laws of the game preclude wearing political slogans or statements - law 4 section 5 says "Equipment must not have any political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images". It's not a new law: Robbie Fowler was fined back in 1997 for revealing a t-shirt supporting the striking Mersey dockers. A fine has been the usual sanction but a yellow card can be shown for "persistent infringement of the laws of the game" so it's not a leap to say refusing to remove an offending armband is a yellow card offence. If you think the "One Love" rainbow armband is not a political statement then just imagine Iran playing at Wembley and wearing an armband whose meaning is "respect the hijab".

Nevertheless the pundits seem to be doubling down on their criticism of teams for not standing up to FIFA over the armbands. Roy Keane had a good go at the Germans before their first match. Personally I think they are forgetting what their priorites would have been when they were players. I wonder if FIFA has briefed referees whether to allow a game to start if unapproved armbands are worn? Maybe we'll see a referee send four players off (you need at least seven for the game to be played). 

To be clear, I detest the lack of human rights in Arabic, middle-eastern and other Muslim countries but I'm finding the specific demonisation of Qatar a bit over the top. I feel we are more likely to reinforce and harden views rather than influence positive change. The biggest statement so far has come from the brave Iranian team - by keeping their mouths shut when their national anthem was played.

When at last the football started within four minutes we had the first VAR controversy, Ecuador's opening goal being disallowed for an offside that no-one but the VAR ref could see. Closely followed by the inconsistency in VAR thrown up in England's opening match by there being no VAR review when Maguire was pulled to the ground in the first half, while Iran got a penalty for a not terribly obvious or effective shirt pull by John Stones in the last minute of the match. Fortunately it didn't matter but it shows again that the issue is people not technology.

At least we had the luxury of England having a 4 goal cushion after a pretty decent display against the team ranked 20th in the world. (The FIFA rankings are clustered most tightly in England's group, with all the teams being in the top 20, so there is a case for considering it the hardest group). We can but hope that Gareth Southgate continues to make the England shirt feel significantly less heavy than any other manager since Robson and Venables after what was a very poor two decades of under performance in world cups and the euros.

Do I think England could win it? Well clearly they could after their strong showings in the last two major tournaments and that opening win. There will be harder challenges ahead, especially for the defence. If they play to form I fancy Brazil with their potent attack including Neymar, Vincius Jr and Richarlison, who has seven goals in his last six internationals. France also look strong, despite losing key players to injury. Argentina lost their opening game with Saudi Arabia - one of the big world cup upsets - but I expect they will still have enough to qualify from their group. However I don't expect them to go all the way as (and I have witnesses who will confirm I said this last week) Messi is aging and fading and anyway he never turns up for world cups. I know, I know he got four goals and a record five man of the match awards in 2014 and was also player of the tournament.  But I really don't know how. He didn't make the FIFA All Star team for the tournament and for me he was underwhelming. The award should surely have gone to one of the winning German team, who spectacularly demolished home country Brazil 7-1 in the semi-final.

But back to the Holland-Sandbrook podcast. I learned very many things from it about football and the history of a lot of footballing countries, plus a multitude of fascinating stories about the background to the competition, the personalities that have featured large in it and oodles of terrific trivia. Here are just a few examples:

• The 1954 world cup was branded as a "reconciliation" world cup after world war 2. Indeed the British FAs had campained for Germany to be readmitted (they and Japan had been excluded in 1950 for, as Sandbrook put it, "bad behaviour off the pitch"). But after Germany (West Germany strictly speaking) beat the fabulous Hungarian team of Puskas et al to win that competition, the president of the German FA Peco Bauwens held a celebration in Munich, in the rebuilt version of the very bier keller where Hitler had staged his attempted putsch in 1923. In his speech he suggested that the German team was a fine example of the Führerprinzip (Fuhrer principle) in action. A hoo-ha followed with the West German Chancellor Adenauer disowning the remarks and East Germany crowing that its western sibling was still fascist. You just can't keep politics and sport apart!
• The surprise package of the 1966 competition was North Korea, who beat Italy on the way to the quarter finals. This was the first world cup where we got to see much of the action, with live coverage and highlights. North Korea and their goal scoring hero Pak Doo-ik were the darlings of the tournament.  They played their group matches at Middlesbrough's long gone Ayresome Park. In 2002 a group of the 1966 North Korean players visited Middlesbrough, the housing estate where Ayresome Park stood and the new Riverside stadium. Subsequently teams from Middlesbrough have played in North Korea, including two matches by Middlesbrough Ladies FC. Middlesbrough is one of the few places in the world to have a cordial civic relationship with North Korea.
• We all chuckled along with commentator John Motson in 1974 when Zaire's Mwepu Ilunga ran out of a defensive wall at a free kick and hoofed the ball away upfield before Brazil's Rivelino could take it. He got a yellow card (they were new in 1970) and Motty conjectured that the naive Africans didn't know the rules. Which was quite presumptious seeing as they were the only African team to qualify and had won the African Cup of Nations in the same year. The truth is actually more sinister. Zaire's fierce dictator Mobutu Sese Seko had invested heavily in football, forcefully repatriating some players who had moved abroad. After the team qualified he rewarded them with houses and new VW cars . However, in the finals  they lost 2-0 to Scotland and then calamatously 9-0 to Yugolsavia. Mobutu ordered several of his security guards to go to Germany and threaten the team: if they lost the final game, which was only against Brazil, by more than three goals they wouldn't be allowed back into Zaire. (Sandbrook and Holland claimed they may have been told they would be killed on returning home). At the time of the "hilarious" free kick Zaire were losing 2-0 in the second half, looking rattled and doing everything they could to waste time. Which is why Ilunga took the yellow card for booting the ball away. It worked: they lost 3 nil, Mobutu lost interest in football and concentrated on boxing, bringing the Foreman-Ali "Rumble in the Jungle" to Zaire later that year.
• England, having boycotted the first three world cups, went to Brazil in 1950 and lost 1-0 to the United States in what is retrospectively regarded as one of the biggest shock results in world cup finals. But Holland and Sandbrook said that, at the time, it got practically zero press coverage. Only one USA journalist travelled to Brazil. His newspaper wouldn't pay for him to go so he went on holiday. Hardly any reports he filed got published and no-one would have paid any attention to the shock result. But in Britain also it hardly made a ripple. There were British reporters in Brazil but post war newsprint was expensive, newspapers were limited in size and there wasn't much space for sport. The shock defeat was effectively kept out of the papers by an even bigger shock result: the English cricket team lost in the Caribbean for the first time. Moreover, the English just didn't see the world cup as important: it was viewed a bit akin to a summer tour and not given any more status than a friendly. It took the first ever loss for England at home to a non-British or Irish side, the 6-3 defeat by Hungary at Wembley in 1953 to shake the home nations out of their complacency. Even though Hungary was the world number one ranked team at the time.

And it's USA next up for England. Ooh it's an interesting competition already!

The link for the Holland/Sandbrook podcast opening episode on the world cup is given below; it's well worth a listen.

PS despite being a football fan actually I think the Olympics is the greatest show on earth

PPS And here are some nostalgic photos of footballs. I remember the impact the hexagonal/pentagonal Adidas design had on us teenagers in 1970 (bottom, centre)

The Rest Is History podcast is on Amazon, Spotify and Apple podcasts (and probably elsewhere); The Amazon link to episode 252 is https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/c2be0e23-f4aa-44b5-af18-5464b0206ffd/episodes/046b1e7e-6dbf-48f5-aad0-8884533e87ce/the-rest-is-history-252-the-world-cup-british-imperialism-south-american-rivalries-and-mussolini

Remembering Robbie Fowler's support for the Mersey dockers, The Penny University 27 March 2021; https://ayewellhmm.wordpress.com/2021/03/27/remembering-robbie-fowlers-support-for-the-mersey-dockers/

Homeosexuality: the countries where it is illegal to be gay BBC 12 May 2021;  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43822234

The 1966 World Cup heroes and the origins of an unlikely international friendship. Koryo Tours blog (Koryo tours is your go to company if you want to go to Pyongyang). https://koryogroup.com/blog/the-1966-world-cup-heroes-and-the-origins-of-an-unlikely-international-friendship-part-ii

Exposing The Myth: Why Zaire’s Infamous 1974 World Cup Free-Kick Was Far From Comical The Sportsman 19 June 2019. https://www.thesportsman.com/articles/exposing-the-myth-why-zaire-s-infamous-1974-world-cup-free-kick-was-far-from-comical

Rod Liddle, Sunday Times 20 November 2022. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/it-felt-as-if-gianni-infantino-was-auditioning-for-the-latest-john-lewis-christmas-advert-mv3btfnv8 had the statistics for countries that allow same sex marriage and criminalise homosexuality

A full list of countries that criminalise homosexuality can be seen at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-43822234; Homosexuality: the countries where it is ilegal to be gay, BBC 12 May 2021