Basil Jarrett | Sports and politics don’t mix, but you can’t separate sports from politics

Exactly one month ago, I wrote that something felt off with this Qatar World Cup. I also predicted that in truly dramatic fashion, Argentina would lose their first game yet bumble and stumble their way to the final, England would once again disappoint, and Germany’s Teutonic efficiency will see them through. Seems I got two out of three right as that German efficiency failed them yet again. While Argentina didn’t quite stumble towards the most amazing football match my two eyes have ever witnessed, my Three Lions did themselves proud in shutting down Kylian Mbappe in what I think was the second best game of quite a tournament.

But this isn’t about football. It can’t be as our collective pulses and blood pressures need a break. It’s about some of the off-field debates surrounding this Qatar World Cup, and in particular, the discussion about politics, race and this uneasy relationship with the monochromatic South American champions.

THE NEXUS

FIFA has asked us to leave politics off the field and just focus on the game. One could be tempted to believe that the overwhelming success of this year’s competition justifies that position. But I tend to see this “best world cup ever” as more a testimony to the awesome power of this sport called football, rather than a validation of Qatar’s alleged human rights abuses and the attempts to sportswash their behaviour. Which brings me to this issue of where politics and sports intersect.

I’ve long believed that true sports fans should, as much as possible, focus on the sport. When we watch Michael Jordan shift hands, tongue and defenders from left to right while breaking every imaginable law of gravity, should it matter that he once retorted that Republicans buy sneakers too, when asked about his politics? Similarly, when Diego Maradona slalomed past five hapless English defenders en route to scoring the goal of the century, should it matter that black players still hadn’t been invented in Argentina? And as my Gleaner stablemate, Dr Alfred Dawes, noted last week, should it make you less a fan of Neymar, Beckenbauer or Baggio, given that Brazil was the last Western country to abolish slavery in 1888, and Germany and Italy still harbour pockets of Neo-Nazism and Fascism?

HE WITHOUT SIN

And that’s where I think we have to pull up the handbrake. Do we hold Argentina’s lack of racial diversity against them, when every other country has its own dusty bag of bones hidden deep inside its historical closet? How many of our favourite World Cup teams have human rights abuse and colonial skeletons neatly tucked away from our immediate consciousness? After World War 2, Europe’s imperial powers no longer had the financial, military or ideological capacity to retain their vast territories. Five years of bombs, bullets and bloodshed had made Europeans more concerned with rebuilding their cities and their lives, than with preserving empire. So Britain had to leave India in 1947. Burma, Sri Lanka and Malaysia soon followed. The Dutch were forced from Indonesia in 1949 and France’s débâcle in Indochina was a precursor to the war in Vietnam and the United States’ own ill-fated foray into that quagmire. Long before Mr Hitler’s Einsatzgruppe marched through Eastern and Western Europe and established the death camps of the final solution, Germany had already honed its genocidal tendencies from the early 1900s with the Herero and Nama people of Namibia. Even Japan, everyone’s favourite neutral horse, must be glancing nervously over its shoulder every time the name Nanking comes up. So at this rate, who do we have left to support? The Reggae Boys perhaps? Well, that’s assuming that the descendants of the Coral Gardens Rastas don’t raise an objection. So yes, let’s just focus on the football, right?

INSEPARABLE

Not so fast, sir. To think that sports can be separated from politics in such a matter-of-fact manner is as naïve as it is impossible. Colin Kaepernick’s right knee, Muhammad Ali’s insistence that he had no quarrel with the Viet Cong, Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ defiant gesture from the 1968 Olympics awards podium, are all part and parcel of why we watch and support athletes and sports teams. How do we forget the impact that our WI cricket team’s refusal to tour South Africa during apartheid had on ending that racist regime? Better yet, how do we forget the aftermath of the decisions of those 20 WI cricketers to play for apartheid blood money? No. Sports does not exist in a vacuum and is impossible to separate from politics – not even in its most sublime, most inspirational moments. When England and Argentina play, it’s as much about Messi and Kane, as it is about 1982 in the Falklands. Russia and the US is as much about hockey as it is about the Cold War, glasnost and the wall. Germany versus … well Germany versus anybody is bound to trigger memories of the War. Both of them.

Look, as much as I wish that we could all just shut up and dribble, and allow the purity of human sporting achievement to transcend all social, political and tribal divisions, the harsh reality is that sport cannot be detached from its social, political and tribal foundations. And do we honestly wish that it could? Think about it. When France and its largely African contingent sent England packing last week, it carried more meaning and impact for many Jamaicans still smarting from 300 years of colonialism and all the ills that it brought. Even I, a lifelong England fan since John Barnes’ delicate cross in 1986 made me fall in love with football, have had occasion to question my support for the Three Lions.

And that’s when I find my own meaning and justification for Enger-Lund being my side. You see, I grew up watching a Jamaican like me play for Liverpool FC and England, breaking every stereotype about Jamaicans being brukky-boo ballers who couldn’t hack it at the highest level. Barnes made me believe that Jamaicans could overcome anything – poverty, race, bad-mind – and be legitimate world beaters. And for a young kid with grand football dreams but zero football talent, that was enough for me.

Major Basil Jarrett is a communications strategist and CEO of Artemis Consulting, a communications consulting firm specialising in crisis communications and reputation management. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com