England manager Gareth Southgate and captain Harry Kane during a press conference at Al Wakrah SC stadium in Qatar on Nov. 20, 2022, as the FIFA World Cup kicks off.GARETH BUMSTEAD/Reuters
In order to avoid more critical splatter glancing off Qatar and onto them, England’s World Cup soccer players staged a photo-op with local migrant workers this week.
They all kicked the ball around. There was a shootout and awkward speeches praising “the supreme committee for delivery and legacy.” As for the players, they either didn’t have a clue or couldn’t articulate one.
“It is a chance to chat with the workers about how the last few months have been,” defender Conor Coady said.
Hot, I imagine.
“The important thing is to keep an open mind,” Coady said.
About what? Fatal heatstroke?
If you’re going to make a point of being seen rubbing shoulders with the downtrodden proletariat, shouldn’t you have something to say? But no. Nobody can come up with anything other than a modified take on thoughts and prayers.
At this point, one might wonder why we keep asking professional athletes, who have no idea what’s going on, about what’s going on, and then expecting them to have a better idea than qualified people.
But it’s more fun than asking politicians, who don’t drive traffic to your website in quite the same numbers. So people keep at it. Here in Qatar, this global sports trend has reached new heights with the English team.
No one seems that interested in whether England will win (Ed. note: It won’t. Don’t ask me why. That’s just how things work.). What they want to know is how bad England feels about being here.
“The World Cup was awarded to Qatar in 2010,” midfielder Eric Dier said. “I was 16 at the time. We have absolutely no say in where we play.”
Nice try, pal. Tell it to the Internet.
Every time someone from England talks, someone berates the country for being insufficiently sorry that a tournament it has no control over was put somewhere a lot of people dislike. No one is jumping on Japan or Mexico for showing up, but England gets it constantly.
Some of this is down to the English media’s war with FIFA. Reporters have never forgiven soccer’s ruling body for jobbing the country out of the 2018 World Cup, which went to Russia instead. The national team has become frequent friendly-fire victims of that high-level conflict.
On Sunday, England tried to avoid more trouble by scheduling its prematch news conference just as the tournament’s opening ceremony was reaching crescendo. Maybe it was hoping that everyone would be too busy being angry at the latest batch of Hollywood gold diggers to be cross at it. Fat chance.
After obligatory dissembling about team fitness, the probing for weakness began.
England captain Harry Kane was asked if he will wear a rainbow armband protesting LGBTQ+ exclusion in Qatar.
Yes, he will.
England manager Gareth Southgate was asked if the team will take a knee to acknowledge systemic racism.
Yes, the team will.
There was an interlude as an Iranian journalist gave Southgate the gears because English journalists keep pressing Iranian players to say something bad about Iran.
Southgate nodded sympathetically: “Believe me, I’ve been asked lots and lots of political questions.”
Then back to demands from local constituencies. Someone from the BBC asked if England plans to protest Monday’s opponent, Iran. It was suggested this should be done on behalf of Iranian activists “desperate for England to have a gesture of support to show that the world is hearing them.” Members of the Iranian team had been in the press room an hour earlier. No one asked them if they planned on any gestures of support for Iranian activists. And you’d think they might take a keener interest, because they are from there and all.
By this point, Southgate was goggle-eyed, though his delivery remained serene.
“Look, I don’t, um, feel informed enough to comment on what’s going on in Iran.”
That’s a dodge. Unless they are deeply informed about the issues, more sportsmen and women should try it.
The problem isn’t the ask. Everyone should know and care more about their neighbours. Everyone should want to help as best they can. The problem is the target of that ask.
This is a soccer team, not an NGO. The players and coaches are not elected representatives. Asking them is worse than asking the guy in the street, because the guy in the street probably works for a living. These guys live in gold-plated, private-jetted, I’ve-never-done-laundry-in-my-life la la land. They don’t know anything about anything. Now you want them undertaking unilateral diplomatic action on behalf of a whole country?
Because when you make a political statement at the World Cup, it can be like kicking over a table at the United Nations. You could start a war at something like this.
Given a choice, I’d rather have our worst government setting Canada’s policy on China than I would our best hockey players.
But this is where the England team finds itself, caught between a country in retreat and a media in bad humour. In the midst of their listening tour through the Middle East, the squad must also be hoping to find some time to play.
Should they do that wrong, too, it’s clear how things will go. The coach will be dismissed, the players ritually humiliated and everyone will be blamed for ruining the holidays.
This understanding added poignancy to Southgate’s clearly scripted attempt to sound Churchillian in the presser’s closing stages.
“Our country is going through a difficult spell,” he said. “We’re in the middle of an economic recession and life has been difficult for a lot of our people. We want them to enjoy their football.”
The throng in the seats stared up at him with a glazed expression. Enjoy? What’s joy got to do with the World Cup?
The next question was about how to approach the Iranian team tactically.
Suddenly released from his non-voluntary position as travelling foreign secretary, Southgate exhaled audibly.
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