Colin Sheridan: Almost right on Israel, the FAI fail to stand its ground
POLITICAL FOOTBALL: The 2025 annual general meeting of the Football Association of Ireland at the Carlton Hotel in Blanchardstown. Pic: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
Of all the things I figured the FAI might be accused of, antisemitism and competence were not two of them. I am fairly certain they are neither. And yet, somehow, they stand on trial for both charges - one absurd, the other unlikely - as Ireland’s football administrators find themselves at the centre of a moral stand they almost accidentally took.
On Saturday the FAI voted to submit a motion to UEFA calling for the suspension of Israel from all European competitions - a move proposed by Bohemians FC, that obstinate, socially conscious Dublin club that has made decency fashionable again. It was, for once, the right kind of politics in sport: an act of moral consistency in a world where football’s leaders tend to mistake silence for neutrality.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought immediate sporting banishment. Russian clubs and national teams were thrown out of competition faster than you could say “neutral venue.” And rightly so. But Israel, which has flattened Gaza and killed tens of thousands of civilians, continues to play on - its flag flying proudly in UEFA competitions, its clubs still participating. This is not consistency; it’s cowardice masquerading as diplomacy. It’s a moral riddle UEFA has no interest in solving, because to do so would expose the entire edifice of hypocrisy that props up modern sport.
In voting for the motion, Irish football - that perennial seat of chaos and administrative bungling - looked brave. But barely had the ink dried before the FAI’s president, Paul Cooke, stumbled into a pit of his own making. Cooke, with all the deftness of a man trying to apologise for being correct, hastened to assure UEFA that if Ireland were drawn against Israel in any official competition, the Republic would, of course, play them. He stressed that Ireland would follow UEFA rules. The statement was bureaucratic in tone but political in effect - a desperate piece of damage control that threatened to turn courage into compliance.
Cooke’s remark stripped the FAI’s moral stance of its teeth. It was a way of saying, “We oppose this in theory, but not if it gets awkward.” And that, alas, is the way of the modern sporting bureaucrat: oppose atrocities until they interfere with the fixture list.
The backlash was preemptive and stupid. US Senator Lindsey Graham - who has never encountered an Israeli talking point he didn’t want to take to dinner - accused Ireland of seeking to “punish Jewish people,” as if the FAI board had suddenly become a cabal of antisemites rather than a collection of weary football administrators with an overdue sense of conscience. It was an ignorant, ugly statement - and, sadly, an utterly predictable one. Because this is what happens when anyone dares to hold Israel to account. The same tired trope is dusted off: that criticism of Israel equals antisemitism. It’s a slur designed to silence, and it works depressingly often. It ignores that opposing a government’s crimes is not opposing a people’s faith, and that condemning mass murder is not an act of prejudice.
But it goes further than that. In Israel, the army and the sporting establishment are almost inseparable. The Israel Defense Forces and the nation’s football teams operate in lockstep as instruments of nationalism. Players proudly serve; clubs celebrate the IDF; stadiums become stages for state propaganda. The flag, the gun, and the jersey all merge into one seamless symbol of Israeli identity.
FIFA, the global parent of hypocrisy, has already awarded World Cups to the United States and Saudi Arabia - two nations that can teach post-graduate courses on how to violate human rights with a straight face. America’s carceral empire remains the largest in history. Saudi Arabia’s regime, meanwhile, has been lubricated with migrant blood: reports suggest over 22,000 workers have died building the gleaming Neom project in the desert. Twenty-two thousand lives lost to vanity architecture and propaganda futurism. Imagine how many more will die before the 2034 World Cup?
This is the football family, remember. The same family that tells us “football unites the world.” And it’s not only the administrators. Journalists are part of it too - the willing courtiers of the game’s great moral collapse. For decades, we’ve travelled to Tel Aviv, clutching press passes and expense accounts, eager to write dispatches about cosmopolitan vibes. We marvel at how modern it all feels, like a little Miami by the Med. Spare me.
Few ever mention that, just beyond that same glittering skyline, stolen land breaks into checkpoints, rubble, and the open-air prison of Gaza. That the same state which charms with rooftop bars also razes apartment blocks and schools by day. The apartheid sits just over the wall - literally - no longer hidden behind the comforting vocabulary of “complexity” and “security concerns.” That wilful blindness is not accidental; it’s cultivated. It’s how complicity gets dressed up as curiosity. And it’s why the moral rot runs so deep - from the press box to the executive suite.
So when UEFA is asked to suspend Israel, we already know how the story ends. There will be hand-wringing, perhaps a working group, a declaration that “sport should not be political.” Then silence. Business resumes. Israeli clubs keep playing, Palestinian footballers continue to be murdered, stadiums keep getting bombed, and Europe keeps pretending it can separate ethics from entertainment. That’s why Bohemians’ motion mattered. It was inconvenient, necessary, and brave. It was Ireland’s reminder that the powerless can, occasionally, speak truth to the powerful.
But the FAI’s hasty reassurance to UEFA revealed something darker - that even when Ireland gets it right, it fears being seen to do so. That’s the Irish condition, really: brave in the vote, timid in the aftermath. The FAI deserves credit for passing the motion. But until Irish football’s leadership learns to stand firm in its convictions - to resist the instinct to genuflect before power - courage will remain the exception, not the rule.
In the end, sport cannot stay neutral on genocide. And if the FAI truly meant what it voted for, it will not simply play the next fixture and call it progress.
There is a certain inevitability to David Clifford being crowned Footballer of the Year again. The Kerry talisman now occupies that rarefied air reserved for the truly generational - a player so transcendent that even brilliance has become routine. He doesn’t so much dominate games as dictate them, bending moments to his will, making the impossible look inevitable. Clifford is 26, but already feels eternal.
On the same stage last Friday night stood Tipperary’s John McGrath, the newly minted Hurler of the Year. His 2025 season was a resurrection story: precision, poise, and nerve, all laced with the understated genius that defines Tipp hurling at its best.
In any other era, McGrath would be the national headline. That he now shares oxygen with Clifford says plenty about the current golden age of Gaelic Games talent. But as both men were rightly honoured, one couldn’t help feeling the GAA and RTÉ are still missing the point with their annual celebration - and the moment.
Reports that a raft of so-called “GAA influencers” were invited to the awards underline where the priorities have drifted: towards reach over respect and clicks over culture. The night threatens to be less about celebrating the craft of Clifford and McGrath, and more about capturing content for timelines.
Gaelic Games remain one of the last great expressions of community and identity on this island. Yet the spectacle risks being swallowed by the very marketing it never needed. The brilliance of Clifford and McGrath deserves reverence, not reels. The GAA doesn’t need influencers to tell its story. It already has them - they just happen to play football and hurling better than anyone alive.
It’s fun to watch Manchester United again - and that alone feels like progress. They’re not great, not yet, maybe not soon. But after years of chaos, complaint and existential misery, United have rediscovered something arguably more valuable than dominance: joy. There’s movement, invention, even smiles. Players who once looked haunted now look human again. For too long, “great” has been the unreachable standard by which every decent moment was dismissed. But sometimes good is good enough - especially when good has been missing for a decade. United aren’t terrifying anyone yet, but they’re entertaining again. And after what came before, that’s not failure. It’s healing. Let great wait. For now, it’s just nice to feel something other than dread again.
When the Indian women's cricket team defeated South Africa to win the World Cup last week, they didn’t just become undisputed world champions - they captured the hearts of a billion people. For once, a cricket-mad nation turned its full gaze not toward the men’s game, but to a group of women who played with incredible courage, skill and joy. Their victory felt bigger than a trophy; it was vindication and history and possibility rolled into one. Streets stopped, televisions flickered, and a country saw its daughters as champions. This could be the watershed moment women’s sport in India has long deserved - the day little girls stopped dreaming of being Virat Kohli and started dreaming of being Shafali Verma. In a nation rich with heroes, India has found new heroines.
