Sepp Blatter was wrong, of course. But he was only pointing to the general vileness of football. And to him, ethnic conflict means disagreement among speakers of the four Swiss languages, or between the Catholic and Protestant halves of Switzerland, or between fiercely distinct and distinctive Swiss cantons. The means of resolving such disputes have been very civilised indeed for a gloriously long time.
Like Karl Barth, who could not believe his eyes when ethnic Frenchmen, Germans and Italians went to war against each other in 1914, setting him on the road to an important (though insufficient) theological critique of the liberalism at the root of such nationalism, Blatter truly cannot see that anything more than a handshake at the end might be necessary, since he truly cannot conceive of any dispute in the resolution of which that gesture would not suffice.
From where have the high-octane complaints come? From the country where we all supposed to feel embittered at not having "won" the "opportunity" to "host" the World Cup. I don't know how much Sepp Blatter was bunged to "deny" us that, but the size of the bribe should be reflected inversely in whether he is awarded an Honorary MBE, OBE, CBE, KBE or GBE. How little he needed to be paid reflects how much of a friend of ours he is. But that he is such a friend is beyond dispute.
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I quite agree that a handshake should be the civilised way of resolving a dispute but the 'general vileness of football" does not lend itself to civilised behaviour - at least not in the upper echelons where boorish, ignorant, and downright vicious behaviour is commonplace. So, if one player is verbally abusing another player for 90 minutes about his colour, parentage, or ethnicity, in order to put him off his game, which one should proffer the hand of friendship at the end of the game? The one who has been doing all the abusing? Fat chance. Or the one who has been on the receiving end of a stream of abuse during the match? Fat chance.
ReplyDeleteShaking hands at the end of a hard bruising encounter is one thing; shaking hands at the end of a torrent of abuse is expecting too much.
The solution lies in the hands of people like Blatter. If they ordered (not instructed) the referees to send off immediately any player who behaved in such a manner, and closed down grounds where the crowds chanted such obscenities, or banned teams, league and national, from competition, then we just might start to see some improvement in behaviour. I am waiting, Mr Blatter (or should it be Mr Blather?)