FIFA boss Infantino’s so tone deaf it makes you yearn for Blatter
Propaganda kicking in on eve of World Cup
JOHN Carpenter’s scifi classic They Live was released 34 years ago last Friday – which is the sort of trivia we are all going to miss when we have to leave Twitter. It’s a marvellous movie that has much to tell us in this age of fake news and populism.
Roddy Piper stars as an out-ofwork construction worker who comes across a special pair of sunglasses that allow him to see the world as it really is.
‘They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it, they control our lives without us realising it. They live,’ happens to be the movie’s catchline.
It felt like the film deserved another spin at the weekend, especially when it emerged that football fans were getting allexpenses-paid trips to the World Cup in exchange for bombarding the wider public with positive messaging about Qatar. We doubt that their flights into Doha will be showing They Live.
The World Cup is 13 days away now, so the coverage is cranking up. RTÉ’s launch was on Thursday and, on that evening news bulletin, Richie Sadlier promised that they wouldn’t shy away from the issues, such as the dead migrant workers and the discrimination against the LGTBQ+ community, that has surrounded the Greatest Show on Earth.
Gary Lineker made a similar vow on behalf of the Beeb on the News Agents podcast.
However, this was the same day that Gianni Infantino and the FIFA executive wrote to the Associations of all 32 competing nations, basically telling them to ‘focus on the football.’ It was like that scene in They Live when Piper’s character sees a billboard that says ‘Submit to Authority.’
It has been suggested that Infantino is morphing into Sepp Blatter but, such was the tonedeaf nature of that letter, he is actually making everyone yearn for the Swiss buffoon.
Interestingly, we came across an interview with Blatter on Friday morning where he blamed his downfall not on the corruption of the organisation he oversaw, but rather that his successor ‘hated him.’ And, rewriting history with a wonderful flourish, the disgraced former FIFA chief insisted that he always wanted the US to host the 2022 tournament.
Blatter’s exclusive interview was on TRT World, one of a number of news outlets that illustrate the different ways of looking at this World Cup. While Sky News rightly went to town on Infantino’s absurd letter to the competing nations, Al Jazeera – which of course is based in Qatar – is coming at the Arab world hosting the greatest show on earth from a completely different angle.
In the corner of the television screen was a countdown to the kick-off, while they told the story of Yaqoub Habshan, an artist from Yemen who is celebrating the world’s biggest sporting event coming to the Arab world by making a replica trophy out of tree bark. The artist spoke of his own war-torn nation and of the healing power of sport, particularly football.
For a moment, watching this report on Al Jazeera, it was possible to believe that this was going to be a normal World Cup. But you don’t have to search too far to know that this will be World Cup like no other.
Interestingly, there was a far more revealing show about football on Al Jazeera later that evening. Eric Cantona developed a series for the channel called Football Rebels, a number of short documentaries on players who used their platform to try and change the world, including the legendary Socrates.
‘Football is not just the opium of the people, it is about good intentions and noble hearts,’ Cantona said into the camera on Thursday night before he told the inspirational story of Predrag Pasic, a former Yugoslav player who was part of the World Cup squad in 1982.
‘In Sarajevo, during the war in former Yugoslavia, one man, a champion, risked his life to make children happy. Remember his name: Predrag Pasic,’ Cantona said. And we should. It was Blatter who felt he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize because football brings people together, but it is the likes of Pasic who used the game for the greater good.
In Football Rebels, Pasic remembered that Bosnia was a place of peace and diversity when he was growing up. But when Yugoslavia broke up, that world was ripped apart. As Sarajevo was besieged for more than three and a half years, Pasic – who had an offer to go and play in the Bundesliga – decided to stay in his native city and risked his own life to start a football academy for young children.
‘I will never forget the day that the school opened,’ Pasic recalled. ‘Sitting on the benches were 200 children from every part of this city, but outside people were spreading hatred and firing shells at each other.
‘People were killing each other but in here, the heads were filled with dreams. The dreams were in the heads of these boys, whose fathers hated each other,’
Despite the ethnic war being waged outside the walls of the sport hall, Pasic was determined that the kids came from every community in Sarajevo.
‘It was important to us that the school welcomed kids from every community, just like it was before the war. The kids played football together, wore the same jerseys.
‘Outside, there was hatred but in here we were all together through football,’ he said.
Pasic once played for FK Sarajevo and worked under Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who was later tried as a war criminal.
‘His change was something which completely shocked me,’ he said. ‘I knew him as a completely different person before the war began. Our team had 24 players, all of different religions and regions within Yugoslavia.’
Even though Pasic played for Yugoslavia and won league titles with Sarajevo, he insists that the football school was the highlight of his career. ‘Everyone knows me as a football star, most people don’t know of my work in the school, but that is what I am most proud of in my career.’
Towards the end of the documentary, as he comes to where he used to play football as a child, which became a cemetery to bury the dead from the war, Pasic reflects on the life lessons he had been taught by the game.
‘A long time ago, when I was a child, football taught me a set of values and I was happy because I understood them. I want to pass those values on to a younger generation.
‘As a football player, you must always maintain a thirst for truth. Fairness and justice, all those emotions that we hold so dear. The most important thing is to live together and play together.’
That the football school started during the Siege of Sarajevo illustrates the power of sport. And what football means to so many. Shame that it has been hijacked by those in charge of the game, and we are now facing into a World Cup where the good intentions and noble hearts of those involved can’t be trusted. Nor, as we discovered, can the messages be either.
Maybe things will change when Leo Messi weaves his first piece of magic, but it is hard to get excited about the World Cup.
At the moment, we would rather just watch They Live.
“The boys had dreams as their fathers hated each other”