Tommy Martin: Nowhere to turn for the ethical sports fan

Kylian Mbappe scored a stunning hat-trick in PSG’s 4-1 win at Barcelona.

As you look forward to another action-packed weekend of sport, spare a thought for the ethical sports fan.

Where some might see a pleasant escape from the pressures of life, they see only a moral minefield.

It has become impossible for the conscientious lover of top-class sport to savour a goal, a putt, or a knockout punch without wringing their hands about what terrible things are being done in the name of their fleeting entertainment.

Bloodthirsty regimes and greedy mega-corporations are the topics for post-match analysis, rather than tactical systems and refereeing blunders.

This is a classic symptom of liberal guilt, the same imperative that makes it impossible for a certain kind of person to relish the growl of a diesel engine without thinking of a lonely polar bear perched on a melting ice cap, or eat a bar of chocolate without wondering if he is indirectly impoverishing some distant cocoa bean farmer.

So it was last week when PSG dismantled Barcelona in the Champions League. The enduring image was of PSG’s Kylian Mbappe scampering away from Barcelona defender Gerard Pique, who grabbed a handful of the striker’s shirt in cartoonish desperation. The moment was endlessly retweeted and memed; a timeless, circular portrait of youth’s joyful abandon and the grim despair of ageing.

But no sooner had Mbappe completed the scoring with a glorious curling shot, the ethical sports fan began to think once again of Qatar and sportswashing and all that jazz. Concerns about human rights abuses and repressive practices in Qatar and Abu Dhabi have accompanied their investment in football every step of the way.

For the conscientious, this means man-marking every PSG and Manchester City success with corresponding finger-wagging admonishment.

What’s worse is that PSG streaking away from poor, wheezing, insolvent Barcelona means the whole, sinister plan is coming to fruition. Vast spending by the Gulf petrostates was a deliberate ploy to force the traditional club powers to bankrupt themselves in order to keep up. Covid-19 has sped up the beggaring of the old elite and left only those with bottomless coffers unscathed.

But it is tiring, all this moral turmoil. On a night like that, even the most right-on punter wishes they could join in wholeheartedly with the hosannas for the glorious Mbappe. Why couldn’t PSG be owned by a multi-national cuddly toy manufacturer? Wouldn’t we enjoy Manchester City’s sensational run of form a lot more if they were the plaything of wealthy marshmallow magnate?

On they stagger, the weary woke, knowing how few others are remotely concerned. The average Premier League fan is not bothered who owns their club as long as they bring a transfer warchest with them. Witness the reaction of Newcastle United fans at the prospect of a takeover backed by Saudi Arabian state funds.

Any uneasiness about a regime with a penchant for public beheadings was overriden by excitement at the prospect of signing Wilfried Zaha.

Things are different in Germany, where discussion of club ownership is not limited to how, say, this Genghis Khan-led consortium might take the team to the next level. Bayern Munich’s long-standing sponsorship relationship with Qatar is strongly criticised by the club’s fans.

Bayern CEO Karl Heinz Rummenigge was taken to task about the matter on German television at the weekend.

“Why won’t you speak up?” ZDF presenter Jochen Breyer asked. “Why doesn’t the wealthy Bayern Munich show some more morals?”

Rummenigge responded: “I think it’s being oversimplified. I think football is being forced into a situation where it’s expected to improve the whole world.”

Of course, this is the perfect get-out clause! Sport need not concern itself with grown-up talk! Go play with your toys!

Hang on. The Guardian revealed this week that at least 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since that country won the right to host the 2022 World Cup? Most of them working on stadiums and infrastructure built expressly for that tournament?

Karl-Heinz, you gotta help me here!

Beyond football, the moral maze is just as forbidding. Fancy a Sunday evening watching the golf?

There’s the PGA Tour, that MAGA roadshow where black lives matter only when it comes to mowing the greens and serving cocktails in the clubhouse.

What about the European Tour? Sorry, knee-deep in shady Sheikhs as well. Take the annual Saudi International in the fun-sounding surrounds of King Abdullah Economic City, showcasing a regime for whom the bonesaw used to chop up the body of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi might be described as the 15th club in the bag.

Rugby? A brutal killing field where the demands of professionalism are only now becoming shockingly apparent; where it seems that, a bit like the 1960s, if you remember the 2003 World Cup you weren’t there.

Meanwhile the team at BBC’s Panorama are flat out bringing us up to date on the activities of kingpins in the boxing and racing worlds. Suffice to say that Ring Magazine has been replaced by the Garda Press Office as the source of the latest news from the fight game, while the all-powerful Sheikh Mohammed of the Godolphin racing empire is giving a grim new meaning to the phrase ‘lock up your daughters’.

Thanks goodness for the GAA, you say. The epitome of sporting purity. Our great, native community movement. The lilting voice of Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh over the skirl of uilleann pipes.

But what’s this? GAA top brass making eyes at Amazon for broadcast rights? The same Amazon that subjects its employees to grim, low-paid drudgery without toilet breaks?

That aims to squeeze and choke the small retailers and businesses that have served the GAA so well, all so Jeff Bezos can live forever on Mars? Is nothing sacred?

I guess that’s the point. Nothing is sacred. The more that sport needs money, the worse the money it gets.

Like dissidents in one of those football-mad repressive regimes, there will be no escape for those sports fans imprisoned by their ethics.

Think of them this weekend, won’t you, straining like Mbappe to get away and enjoy the action, while grabbed from behind by a panting, wheezing conscience.