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This Sepp Blatter racism row shows England's morals are better than its football

Despite England's outdated play, our attitudes on racism are progressive in comparison with fans of our footballing superiors

Marina Hyde Guardian


"I cannot resign," explained Fifa president Sepp Blatter. "When you are faced with a problem you have to face the problem. To leave would be totally unfair." Oh dear. Once again, the only solution to the problem of Sepp Blatter is Sepp Blatter. It's like an Escher drawing, this endless round of self-created disasters from which the plucky Swiss must extricate himself to increasingly sarcastic acclaim.

The first and most obvious point is that this latest controversy will not do for him. Herr Blatter may have claimed racism didn't exist and could be solved with a handshake. But Fifa is a supranational body that is so powerful, and before whom so many otherwise sovereign states genuflect, that it would take considerably more than a locally contained story about racism to see him off. I spent several depressing days in the specially branded "Fifa World Cup Courts" during last year's tournament in South Africa, watching people get 15 years for robberies they had committed less than 48 hours previously and being threatened with prison sentences for querying Fifa's marketing pitch. I suspect that an organisation which can slap branding on justice itself, and apparently override the constitutions of the countries it parasitically relieves of billions, will not be unduly troubled by criticism from Britain's rapidly oxidising prime minister.

Of course, it is no surprise to find David Cameron rushing to give a quote – the PM can be increasingly relied upon to be right on matters that are none of his concern, and wrong on all of those that are. It wasn't so long ago that he was expressing exasperation with "negative" stories about the World Cup bid process, thus patronising the millions of his citizens who understood precisely the nefarious way these things worked, and knew we were already dead ducks. You will recall England's bid garnered precisely two votes, one from our own representative on Fifa's executive committee, and one from a chap our "frustrating" free press had accused of corruption. The mind semi-boggles.

So it is fitting that this latest racism row leaves England in splendid isolation once again. If we were to go for a Fifa executive committee resolution condemning Blatter's remarks, we would not get even one other vote. The president's comments have been met with indifference or only the mildest interest anywhere but here.

Even so, there is a peculiar comfort to be taken from the fact our society has evolved in the opposite direction to our football. Whereas England's play can seem excruciatingly outdated, the attitudes of most of those who follow it seem progressive in comparison with the supporters of many of our footballing betters. This may seem an odd thing to say, given the England captain is currently under investigation by the Metropolitan police for alleged racism, but you can't help feeling the case against John Terry would not even have made it off the pitch in many other countries. When the Spanish manager called Thierry Henry a "black ****" a few years ago, the then Uefa chief executive suggested Henry should respond by hugging him. That would "surpass any anti-racist initiative we've held". Like that's hard.

But then, we know where racism ranks in Fifa's league table of sins. When racist chants rained down on England players in a friendly against Spain, the Spanish FA were fined £44,750. When Cameroon wore the wrong kit in the African Cup of Nations that same year, Fifa relieved them of £86,000.

As far as our own traditionally craven FA goes, news it has charged Luis Suarez with racially abusing Patrice Evra last month marks a historic change of tack. Four years ago, Joleon Lescott said it felt like he was on trial when he made an allegation of racism, while a host of professional lipreaders concurred that Peter Schmeichel called Ian Wright a "dirty black *******" back in 1997, only for the FA to bottle the chance to do anything about that (and so many other incidents before and since).

Make no mistake: the Suarez and Terry cases are there because players – and subsequently the press and supporters – put them there. It has finally become a political imperative for the FA to be seen to be doing something.

There are periods when a somewhat stagnated movement seems to take a sudden step forward, and the past month has been one of those for English football and racism. When Evra first made his allegations, many fans took sides along club lines, and the United player appeared to have been prejudged by large sections of the press. The wording of a Guardian poll ran: "Should Evra be banned if his claim proves false?"

But the Terry and Blatter stories coming in such quick succession have kept an educative debate in the headlines. Perhaps even a few of those geniuses who insist racist epithets are "no different to calling someone ginger" have found that line hard to stick to in the week where Duwayne Brooks described how his murdered friend Stephen Lawrence was allegedly set upon by a weapon-wielding gang calling him "******". Who knows. My suspicion is that a confluence of circumstances means that a bit more thought will be given by a range of parties next time an allegation is made within football.

Any shift in attitudes and understanding will be most timely, because next summer's European Championships in Poland and Ukraine represent a potentially explosive challenge to Fifa's quarter-arsed stance on racism. A recent report by the European anti-racism group FARE documented 195 racist incidents involving football in just 18 months in the host nations – which its authors described as "only the very tip of the iceberg", warning that far right groups will be active and visible during the Euros.

As for England, with our old-fashioned football and newfangled football politics – well, it's a funny old game. Nobody likes us, and we're learning not to care. It's an odd sort of cocoon to be in – but, given some of the alternatives, not the worst berth in international football's moral universe.

Why John Terry has done his 'fronting up' for the last time

It feels as if football is waging a war on our language, but at least the death knell for the phrase 'fronting up' has been sounded


Marina Hyde Guardian


Football makes logocidal maniacs of many of us. Blame it on media training, blame it on journalistic laziness, but players and press have a history of murdering language. Occasionally it is a mistimed challenge resulting in minor injury to a word, but every so often you get a horror tackle which basically results in a piece of vocabulary being forced to hang up its boots. I can't help feeling John Terry and the Football Association ended the career of "fronting up to it" this week.

Despite the fact he is being investigated by the Metropolitan police and the FA itself, Terry was the player fielded by the governing body for a press conference ahead of Tuesday's Sweden game. "It is about being captain and coming out and facing up to it," ran a mantra on which Terry appeared to have multiple variations as the week wore on. "I am here, fronting it up and dealing with it." And yet, given that the one thing Terry wasn't allowed to talk about was "it", and that extra security had been laid on at his press conferences as if to underscore that point, the spectacle merely served as a death knell for the phrase "fronting up".

The definition of "duty" may well be next. Terry believes all manner of things to be his "duty" as England captain. Yet, as frequently mentioned in this space, to be England captain is to occupy a position as important as that of a regimental goat. Within the confines of that role, Terry's duties include things like wearing the dress harness (an armband in his case), and not making unsightly deposits when on parade. There's really nothing in the rubric about not having a thing with someone who used to go out with someone who used to be your team-mate – not that you'd know it to hear some of the irrelevant indignation – and there certainly isn't anything about the noble business of having to "front up" in a series of parodically hamstrung press conferences, because if there were it would debase the notion of "duty" so far that it would implode.

Others have already gone. We lost "passion" yonks ago – or rather it suffered a seismic semantic upheaval, and now directly equates to long balls to so-called target men, and a tactical grasp bordering on the remedial. Look up "passion" in the Very Concise Indeed Football Dictionary and there is that picture of a wild-eyed, head-bandaged Terry Butcher, his shirt drenched in blood and sweat and bulldog spirit and guts and character, and all the other substitutes for technique that have mostly not powered England into the business end of tournaments.

"Trust" was the casualty after the last World Cup, when the FA issued a press release – apparently drafted by Relate – which declared: "We accept it is going to take time to rebuild the trust with the fans." A statement which so mischaracterised the nature of the relationship between any supporters and their national side that it threatened to subsume all legitimate definitions of trust into its black hole of idiocy. As for "respect", the sheer volume of senior players who appoint themselves unofficial fourth officials every week at the same time as larding their public statements with platitudes about "respect" suggests that one is officially six feet under.

Of course, sports hacks have killed off many more words than footballers in their time, a crime not excused by their half-arsed attempts to replenish the pot by making up witless new ones, like "wantaway" and "boo-boys". Indeed, thanks to the ministrations of Her Majesty's press, some words and phrases are now marginally less meaningful than a collection of random keystrokes made by a woodpecker. Someone being "set to" do something is as likely not to do it as to do it. See also "mind games", a phrase which might once have denoted the complex game theorising of the cold war, or that bit in The Twits where all their furniture is glued to the ceiling so that the couple believe themselves to be upside down. It is now deployed when Sir Alex Ferguson makes even passing reference to a match official.

Where will it end? Some argue that the rise of the Christian right in America has led to the secular definitions of words like "life" and "liberty" being replaced by new ones, and there are times when it feels as if football is waging a similar war on meaning. Perhaps ours is not to reason why – ours is merely to commemorate the fallen. So, RIP "fronting up". You left us too soon.

JOHN TERRY and Luis Suarez face each other tomorrow — and will wear anti-racism T-shirts. Sun