Russia was frozen out in the name of “safety.” So why is FIFA pushing ahead with a tournament hosted by nations directly involved in war?
In 2018, on the day the 2026 FIFA World Cup was awarded to the US, Canada, and Mexico, I vowed that under no circumstances would I work at it in any capacity, from commentator to host, journalist to presenter.
The reason was simple: five years of non-stop lawfare against the sport’s global governing body (FIFA) and the bullying of delegates to vote against the preferred candidate, Morocco. I stayed true to the promise I made live on air with Capital Sports, by saying no to a match commentator and host contract in February this year. A couple of weeks after turning down the gig, the US and Israel unleashed an unprovoked war on Iran, with Canada giving active support. Using FIFA’s own logic that was applied to Russia and Belarus, this summer’s event has to be postponed.
Not all are equal
Having been party to the process of freezing Russian football clubs and teams from international competition in the days following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, I took zero pleasure from being the person to break the news that UEFA (Europe’s governing body) had ‘pulled the trigger’. At that moment, Capital Sports was live on air with the then CEO of the All-Russian Footballers Union. The deal, worked out between the Russian Football Union (RFU), UEFA, and FIFA, gave us all a sense of relief.
It was sensible, pragmatic, and based upon the safety of players, officials, and fans. That Russian troops had gone into a neighboring nation was, to football officials, a secondary concern. Were war ever an actual concern, then the nations of the Coalition of the Willing, part 1, who took part in the illegal and actual full-scale invasion of Iraq 23 years ago this March, would be all out in the cold. Italy and Spain would not have won their World Cups in 2006 and 2010 respectively, and the US would not have been awarded hosting rights for 2026. Yet the three aforementioned nations, plus another 48 including the UK, Latvia, Lithuania, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, have continued to be welcome in the football fraternity.
However, this is not 2003 and the idea of staging a mega-event in two nations up to their knees in blood is not just reprehensible from a moral standpoint, or appalling from a human one, it’s patently unsafe. Award-winning sportswriter Andrew Flint told Capital Sports in December: “It’s a fact that football grounds are too wide open for attack… safety cannot be guaranteed for players and fans alike.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: rt.com
