Last weekend, the players who put Liverpool on course for English football’s top-flight title were a Colombian, an Argentine, and an Egyptian. The team was captained by a Dutch native and coached by another Dutchman.
Last year, a German manager bode farewell to the same Liverpool team, making much of England stop to listen.
If it had been up to politics, the Falklands War would have come into play to prevent Alexis Mac Allister from playing for Liverpool and the Palestine issue would have kept Mohamed Salah out of the team. Jürgen Klopp making much of England standing still would never have happened.
One of the most passionate football club owners, Roman Abramovich, however, did not survive politics. Diplomatic problems caused and amplified by politicians meant the man with strong Russian connections had to leave England and the team he loved. But that was after he had made Chelsea Football Club a superpower, through money that western politicians criticised.
Arsenal are coached by a Spanish man, succeeding another Spanish boss who had been preceded by a legendary French manager. One of the club’s greatest players of all time is French. A Portuguese captains Manchester United. Manchester City’s prolific striker is a Norwegian. Before the arrival of Erling Haaland, Manchester City’s front line was led by Sergio Agüero, an Argentine.
What is the point of all these?
We give politicians more powers than they deserve to determine or enforce what we should love, what we should fear, what we should denounce and what we should accept. Moral authority has been given to the very last people who should have it.
Reports said that Mohamed Salah's presence at the Liverpool Football Club has contributed to a decrease in Islamophobia and hate crimes against Muslims in the UK neighbourhood where he is adored. Researchers found a significant drop in hate crimes and a decrease in anti-Muslim tweets by Liverpool fans.
No similar drop was found for other types of crime, and the anti-Muslim sentiments of Liverpool fans has halved relative to fans of other English clubs. Call it a Salah effect if you will.
What do we get when we give politics too much powers? Olympics boycotts, that is. When there are no Olympic boycotts, political importance is strongly attached to medal counts.
Sporting supremacy has to be politicised, as if fan rivalry alone is not enough to drive big wedges. The last scene of The Queen’s Gambit tells the hard truth about diplomacy and sports nowadays, with the heroine shrugging off a suggestion that her chess triumph over a Russian world champion was some political significance.
In another scene, a White House official who follows her around in Russia asked her to tell the Russian press how “lucky” she is to be an American.
So, when football clubs are truly globalised, without anyone really saying the word “globalisation”, politicians preached peculiar globalization in which the White House is strictly American and the 10 Downing Street is UK exclusive.
And every other political office is the same. How can we achieve genuine “globalization” with that kind of a virtually hypocritical mindset?
In football, globalisation means one nationality wholeheartedly embraces the excellence of another nationality as well as its cultural preferences or obligations. Many Muslim players in England kiss the ground, observe Ramadan and have their wives go around in close, full-body garments whereas teammates’ wives or girlfriends stroll in sexy and revealing dresses nearby.
Politics will say “Look how they treat the women! We must liberate them.”
Football is inclusive without saying so, while politics is exclusive pretending to be inclusive. The only thing genuinely inclusive that is generated by politics is when money and investment is concerned, like stock trading in which basically everyone is invited to participate.
Make no mistake, political messages are common in football and other major sports. Tennis struggled after Russia invaded Ukraine, for example, with much of the problems starting from players, not authorities. But it’s safe to say that politics makes everything worse.
Tennis is an individual sport whereas football is a team sport, which is more comparable to politics. If a football club can exist constructively with everyone with a different race or religion trying to understand the other, why can’t a government be the same?
What makes a football club different from a government anyway? They both have the ultimate duty of making their followers happy. They both should be able to sustain themselves. They both should sympathise with the minorities.
Back to Liverpool, they once played with a line-up consisting of 11 different nationalities. Imagine 11 races working for each other toward the same goal.
Can politics do that?
