Tommy Martin: Respect? Time for Uefa to choose between inclusion and neutrality

It barely needs pointing out that the promotion of football is a key piece in Orban’s populist toolbox, alongside less happy-clappy items like the mistreatment of immigrants and the suppression of the media

Thu, 24 Jun, 2021 - 07:00

Tommy Martin

The Republic of Ireland might have seemed strange opposition for Hungary to round off their preparations for Euro 2020, but that game in Budapest two weeks ago turned out to be a perfect dress rehearsal.

Not that anything Ireland mustered on the pitch could replicate what lay in store against the likes of Ronaldo, Mbappe, and Muller.

Instead, it was the diplomatic incident over the Irish team taking the knee that foreshadowed Hungary’s tournament experience. That night’s exchange of condemnation and defiance set the tone for what was to come when the Hungarian parliament passed anti-LGBTQ legislation slap bang in the middle of Euro 2020.

Like the booing of the Irish players’ stance against racism, the law banning the “promotion” of homosexuality to minors was another case of the well-known terrace chant: We are Hungary, we’ll do what we want.

For Stephen Kenny’s description of the booing as “incomprehensible”, read the efforts by the Munich authorities to light up the Allianz Arena in the rainbow colours for last night’s game between Germany and Hungary.

On both occasions, Hungarian politicians decried “provocation” by their lily-livered Western antagonists. “I consider it very harmful and dangerous when anyone tries to mix politics and sports,” said foreign minister Peter Szijjarto, a representative of a government which funded new stadiums for every team in Hungary’s top two divisions via a controversial tax scheme.

Luckily for Orban and his goons, they have in Uefa a useful idiot to back up their belief that sport and politics should not mix, unless it suits their polling numbers. The governing body declined the request to light up the Munich stadium in colours associated with tolerance and equality, citing the move as a direct “political” response to the Hungarian legislation.

In the face of widespread derision, they kept digging. Yesterday’s statement, headlined ‘Uefa Respects the Rainbow’, displayed a multi-coloured version of the governing body’s logo, accompanied by a Jesuitical blurb explaining how the rainbow was not political, except when it was, and ooh, look over there, a rainbow!

Uefa’s problem is that, like a snake eating its own tail, they have followed the conflict within their guiding principles to its logical conclusion. They are at once committed to their ‘Respect’ initiative, which is against racism and prejudice of all kinds, and at the same time so determined to be apolitical that they will do business with any brutish, discriminatory regime that comes along.

As this week has demonstrated, these positions are not compatible.

Indeed, forgiving Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer for wearing a rainbow-coloured captain’s armband then stopping the Munich stadium being lit up in the self-same colour scheme was a moral backflip of Simone Biles proportions. The only difference between the two gestures was that the latter was construed as a direct pop at a government for whom Uefa has ended up appearing as a grovelling apologist.

This was, of course, coming. It was always a risk to award Euro 2020 games to Hungary, Russia, and Azerbaijan, all ruled by thuggish overlords for whom the Respect agenda would only be useful were it printed on toilet paper in their dachas. But instead of keeping such regimes at arm’s length, Uefa has instead wrapped itself in Orban’s strongman clench. Budapest’s Puskas Stadium was used on no fewer than six occasions when Uefa needed neutral venues with loosey-goosey quarantine restrictions to accommodate Champions League and Europa League ties. Sure Viktor Orban is a crypto-fascist, but he makes the games run on time.

Then came the tournament itself and the sight of those boisterous full houses in Budapest. So what if Hungary has one of the worst Covid-19 death rates in the world? That’s their business. We can work with these people.

No politics, see?

In many ways, Uefa has a point. It is a governing body whose remit covers an entire continent, for better or worse. Some of those member associations are from countries whose governments are not very nice, and some are even democratically elected, as is the case with Orban’s government (although electoral watchdogs have claimed widespread vote-rigging and fraud took place in Hungary’s 2018 elections).

Of course, if you were terribly cynical, you’d say it suits international sporting bodies to work with authoritarian regimes. Don’t take my word for it, listen to former Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke. “I will say something which is crazy,” he said in 2013, “but less democracy is sometimes better for organising a World Cup. When you have a very strong head of state who can decide, as maybe [Vladimir] Putin can do in 2018... that is easier for us organisers than a country such as Germany, where you have to negotiate at different levels.”

At this point you must be wondering how the likes of Uefa and Fifa can maintain the stance that they are non-political and not wonder why certain types of politicians are so nice to them.

If this week’s events suggest Uefa is struggling to be all things to all people, then there is a reason for that. As well as being a supra-national governing body for a sport, it is also a commercial entity, with customers and sponsors and all the modern corporate values that requires. Companies today promote inclusion not because they are good people, but because it’s good for business. For example, the banking app icon on my phone is currently displaying the rainbow colours for Pride Week, and we know Irish banks don’t have morals.

But the idea that equality and respect for all regardless of ethnicity, sexual preference or gender are universal values and therefore above politics is patently untrue. Not when so many right-wing politicians around the world have made questioning those values a key battleground. The lines in the sand have been drawn.

Therefore Uefa must choose. It can act like an ethical modern corporation and espouse its Respect agenda or it can simply be a non-partisan body organising club competitions and staging tournaments. It can choose inclusion or neutrality. If it goes with the latter, as it surely will, it must drop the pretence that it is committed to promoting equality and respect.

Trying to have it both ways really is incomprehensible.