What began as a peaceful protest against one deeply corrupt President’s reign – no, I don’t mean some weird country in tropical climes, but rather Ukraine’s Yanukovich – rapidly degenerated into snipers murdering friend and foe alike and paid thugs creating havoc on Kiev’s Maidan Square. What followed were scenes that are reminiscent of a revolution, and subsequently bore the hallmark of a well orchestrated coup d’état.
The phone conversation between one Victoria Nuland, Assistant US Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and the U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, shed some light on what NATO and “the West” wanted: Nuland qualified Europe as “the fucking EU” (see/hear on Youtube), and urged her Ambassador to make sure that Arsenyi Yatsenyuk would head a new Ukrainian “interim government”. Which he does and fascism rules.
Cold War broke out as a result of the subsequent display of geopolitical testosterone – which, unsurprisingly, also affected Germany’s Merkel in Act Three of this sordid Neanderthal tale when Crimea decided to vote for independence from Ukraine’s central government instead of listening to the well-meaning West (funny thing that the Kosovars were not only allowed to do the very same – without a vote – while Serbia was bombed into the stone age by well-meaning and so very democratic NATO bombers).
But enough of this already. What do geo-politics have to do with football?
A lot.
Two Members of the Russian parliament – the Duma – Aleksandr Sidyakin and Mikhail Markelov wrote an official letter to world football’s governing body, FIFA, asking for the US men’s football team to be disqualified from the 2014 World Cup and for the USFF’s membership in FIFA to be terminated (probably full well knowing that only the FIFA Congress, with a 2/3 majority can do that. If at all.)
The letter – as reported by this publication’s Russia correspondent last week – cites the USA’s “aggressive actions against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya as well as their attempts to encroach on Syria”, were the reasons for asking for the US to be banned.
Aleksandr Sidyakin, as quoted by INSIDE World Football, said that his letter was a reaction to the letter sent by Republican senators, Mark Kirk of Illinois and Dan Coates of Indiana, who had already asked FIFA to ban Russia from the 2014 World Cup.
“It’s an eye for an eye, a ball for a ball. Don’t let the USA take part in the 2014 World Cup! End their membership of FIFA”, Sidyakin tweeted.
Earlier, the two US Senators, Mark Kirk and Dan Coates, had written to FiFA to request that Russia be banned from the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and stripped of the right to host the 2018 tournament, over its invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Invasion? Really? OK, on Fox News, it was one.
Tit for tat, that, isn’t it?
Both groups were seeking publicity, possibly for themselves, and certainly for their cause. One has to assume that this will be the end of it though: FIFA cannot act nor would it take the 2018 World Cup away from Russia because it simply can’t. Besides the fact that FIFA’s Board, the Executive Committee or ExCo, cannot decide about an expulsion of a Member (only the FIFA Congress can), this writer would bet that the very ExCo that awarded to 2018 World Cup to Russia (much to the chagrin of many an Anglo-Saxon Don Quijote) would certainly not review its decision. No matter what. And not for such sordidly political reasons.
So what’s the fuss about then?
Frankly, nothing. Nothing other than dragging the world’s favourite game into a conflict that has nothing to do with football but a lot to do with NATO expansion and Russian geopolitical interests (and of course “protecting their ethnic minority” as they say).
One cannot fail to see that politicians frequently revert to sport when they think that it gives them some leverage. And when it suits their agenda (witness the financial doping row in the UK over their Olympic medal-fest). It was lovely to see how the Ukrainian national team beat the World Cup participants USA by 2:0 a couple of weeks ago in Cyprus (frankly, a few peculiar ideas came to mind in that context), but it is quite a different matter when two world powers want to see each other sanctioned because of a geopolitical spat and the fight over strategic superiority in a volatile region of the world (hang in there to soon witness Chinese officials demanding the expulsion of Japan and the Philippines – and vice versa …).
What was a legitimate decision by FIFA, namely to suspend Apartheid ruled South Africa at the time, cannot be a legitimate move today: what we are witnessing here, is the rebirth of Cold War, orchestrated by a bunch of idiotic old men and a handful of fascists, and not a revolting manifestation of Dutch-Anglo-Saxon bestiality disguised as a “raison d’être” and a “raison d’état”, as was South Africa under the white man’s rule.
What was right during the times of the most vile and disgusting system of government – apartheid – is not right today when a nation – Ukraine – is misused and abused by world powers to be the useful idiot in their respective attempt to gain world domination.
With the Ukrainian crisis further escalating after the Crimean vote for independence last Sunday, urgent solutions, appeasement and de-escalation are the primary order of the day.
Not the exclusion of footballers from world tournaments.
Football must not be used and misused (again) by some disingenuous politicians. Unfortunately, it is misused far too often. It cannot, must not be this time.