IF you’ve watched the World Cup over the last few weeks you may have come to an unoriginal conclusion: sport and politics don’t mix.
Me? I’m a slow learner; I should have spotted that when two teams took the field, one representing one country, the other another country, with the spectators booing not just national anthems but every referee decision they didn’t like, it did look a wee bit like politics. International politics, without diplomacy.
The English writer George Orwell, who believed in truth rather than going with the flow, said: "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence."
So maybe sport and politics are in fact Siamese twins, joined at the hip. When the strains of the Argentine national anthem struck up before their game against England, the Argentina team were like men possessed. Their shoulders went back, they opened their mouth wide enough for the warship Belgrano to have sailed in, and they bawled out their national anthem. These guys were getting ready for some serious engagement.
Within seconds of kick-off, the England team must have learnt very quickly that this was not going to be a a cake-walk. Every crunching tackle cried out that this was, to coin a phrase, senior hurling.
The game was played with a ferocity that made you wince. Argentina players confronted their opponents not just with their feet but with their arms, elbows, even head. These guys meant business.
Despite all this intimidation, the England team managed to survive and in fact were superior in the first half. And they continued as the superior team, up to and including Anthony Gordon’s goal for England – a sweet, clean and professional strike.
And then, as the clocked ticked down, the England team wilted. Messi began pulling the strings as wave after wave of attacks by Argentina’s forwards left England looking groggy. Then the Argentina player Enzo Fernandez got the ball some twenty yards from England’s goalmouth, drew back his boot just a bit and hit the ball hard and straight into the England net. After that, the England team knew the jig was up – it was only a matter of time. Two minutes into injury time, Messi sent in a cross that avoided all the straining England heads and found the firm forehead of Lautaro Martínez. Cue screams, tears, hugs, embraces in the ranks of the Argentina team; cue despair in the England camp.
Then, rubbing poison into England hearts, someone threw a banner on to the field and the rejoicing Argentina players seized it and held it up: “Las Malvinas son Argentinas” – “The Falkland Islands are Argentine”.
You’d be surprised how many tinfoil hats reject that claim. Despite the fact that the Malvinas/Falklands are three hundred miles from Argentina and almost 8,000 miles from Britain, Margaret Thatcher sent a British armada to reclaim it in 1982 and was successful: 255 British soldiers and 649 Argentinian military personnel were killed. Mission accomplished.
Thatcher was an arrogant woman who believed in maintaining even the scraps of empire. But the British armed forces were sent to retrieve the Falklands for a more pressing reason: Thatcher was deeply unpopular in Britain and her party were heading towards an electoral defeat. After the Falklands, everything was reversed. Thatcher’s popularity soared and the following June, the Tories won in a landslide election with a 144-seat majority.
Some of us are old enough to remember Thatcher declaring that "a crime is a crime is a crime". But a different rule surfaced when the polls were punishing Thatcher. If your popularity is tanking, grab an international crisis and make it camouflage what’s happening at home, even if it does involve a few hundred deaths
Donald Trump today is imitating Thatcher. Attack Iran and hope that will mask the messed-up domestic scene. Even if the US had won the World Cup, I’m confident that Donald J. would somehow have soiled it. Everything King Midas touched turned to gold. Everything King Donald touches turns sour and toxic.
