England manager Gareth Southgate insists his players should not be “embarrassed” of being excited about playing in a World Cup that has been caught in a hurricane of controversies.
A row over captain’s armbands is the latest issue to hit the England camp, with Fifa thought to be threatening to issue Harry Kane with a yellow card if he wears the One Love design against Iran.
The Football Association was seeking clarification from the world governing body on Sunday, having written to Fifa in September outlining the intention to wear the One Love design but never receiving a reply.
The captains of nine countries, including England and Wales, had planned to wear the rainbow-coloured armband to promote diversity and inclusion.
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England captain Kane confirmed he would continue to wear his One Love design proudly and the FA was understood to be willing to pay any fine from Fifa. England also decided that they would take the knee, against racism and inequality, before kick-off.
Southgate has impressed upon his players that it is OK to enjoy the moment and feel proud to be part of only the 16th England side to play in world football’s marquee tournament.
Yet such has been the toxicity surrounding the occasion that Fifa president Gianni Infantino used the majority of his bizarre pre-World Cup speech to attack the western nations for daring to criticise hosts Qatar and the governing body’s decision to stage the tournament for the first time in the Arab world.
Criticism of Qatar’s treatment of LGBT+ people and migrant workers, many of whom suffered horrific abuses and even died while helping to build the country’s World Cup infrastructure, has long trailed this tournament but was brought into sharper focus as teams began arriving last week.
On Saturday, i shared the experiences of Anish Adsikari, a Nepalese construction worker who suffered inhumane treatment working on the Lusail Stadium for almost three years. Adsikari and his co-workers had their £200 monthly wages reduced by a third on arrival, were made to work long hours in intense heat and saw on-site deaths and injuries covered up.
Adding to the list of issues around the tournament, shockwaves crashed through football when, only a few days away from the opening game, the Qatari government told Budweiser — a main Fifa sponsor who pays tens of millions of dollars to be part of the World Cup — it had to move its beer tents from outside all eight World Cup stadiums and that alcohol would only be available at games to VIP guests in boxes.
“I have to say, the brief time I’m looking at what the headlines are in the mornings I’m generally burying it anyway because it’s not going to help me but even more than ever because everything understandably has a slight negative feel about the tournament in general,” Southgate said.
“And so that’s not a space I want to be in personally because I can’t afford to be. I’ve got to be thinking about how we win this for our country and that starts with how you are mentally influenced by all the information or messaging you are taking in.
“I genuinely don’t know what the reality of that back home is. I know how everything seems to be being steered but I don’t know if that’s how the public feel and without being in the pubs and bars and working man’s clubs I don’t know. I would imagine a lot of them are just hoping to get on with the football — ‘Let’s crack on, lads’.
“It would be wrong to say that is definite and I daren’t say things like that at the moment because I get something from somewhere else. We are looking forward to it, the players are hugely motivated for it and excited by it for the right reasons.
“They recognise everything else and are conscious of it but they should not be embarrassed about being excited. This is what they have worked for all their lives and it’s not their decision that we are playing here. So I feel they should now focus on what they can control and what they can affect and that’s our training and our performances.”
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How 'awkward so-and-so' Jordan Pickford battled abuse and boredom to become England's No 119 November, 2022Southgate, meanwhile, hopes England can create some kind of dynasty to match rivals Germany in the years ahead. Even though recent results have been poor, at major tournaments Southgate has laid the groundwork, reaching the semi-finals of the last World Cup and finishing runner-up of Euro 2020.
“It is hard to talk about form because you are always six weeks, two months between games in international football so what actually is form? What there is, is pedigree,” Southgate said. “We want to be a Germany, who when I was looking at their Wikipedia page: four golds, four silvers, four bronzes, European Championships three golds, three silvers, three bronzes. Yeah, our page didn’t quite look like that but we’d love it if it did in 40 years’ time and that should be our aim, to be consistently challenging.”
He added: “Maybe we’ve made the impossible just look possible, would be the analogy. Yeah, look, maybe we’ve made it look possible and its exciting for other people and I can understand that.
“We want England to be competitive for years to come and I believe that our academy system has got that. I think there are challenges within that because we’re back to 31 per cent of the league being eligible for England and only four or five exports of a high level so there are still some challenges for us in terms of development of players and opportunity for players. But we have also got some good players and we should be competitive for the next six, eight years with this group.”
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