More than half of England supporters would support the national team or individual players boycotting the Qatar World Cup, i can reveal.
The poll, conducted by YouGov and shared exclusively with i, has found there would have been widespread support had England or any of the team’s stars made the difficult decision not to play in world football’s marquee tournament.
The English Football Association has been criticised by human rights campaigners for a failure to speak out about the various controversies surrounding the Qatar World Cup, including the country’s treatment of the LGBT+ community and the abuses of migrant workers building the tournament’s infrastructure.
The FA would point out that Mark Bullingham, the chief executive, has been a part of Uefa’s Working Group On Workers’ Rights in Qatar, set up in 2021 to discuss concerns around human rights and labour abuses.
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Boycotting the tournament has never been discussed publicly, however. But YouGov’s poll found that 55 per cent of England fans and 56 per cent of the English general public would have backed the national team had the decision been made to withdraw from the tournament after qualifying.
And the support was higher for individual players, with 59 per cent of fans indicating they would have backed any of England’s stars had they decided to turn down a place in England’s World Cup squad in protest.
England manager Gareth Southgate defended the country’s stance on the human rights issues as he announced the 26 players he would be taking to the tournament at St George’s Park on Thursday.
“We have always spoken about issues we think should be talked about, particularly the ones we feel we can affect,” Southgate said. “Contrary to one or two observations in the last few weeks, we have spoken in the same way other nations have spoken about this tournament, the human rights challenges. We’ve been very clear on our standpoint on that.
“So, look I think we would like to focus primarily on the football. For every player, every coach and everybody travelling to a World Cup, this is a carnival of football. It is the thing you work for this your whole life and you don’t want that to be diminished by everything else that is going on around it currently. But we recognise we are going to be in that situation, we’ve got to accept and deal with it.”
Moreover, there was similar support for England players speaking out about Qatar’s human rights issues during the tournament. Fifa president Gianni Infantino recently wrote to all 32 countries taking part urging them to “stick to football” and ignore political issues.
But two-thirds of England fans polled would support players raising awareness of the issues.
Indeed, Southgate made clear on Thursday that he would not be gagged by the governing body. “Frankly, I’ll choose if I’m going to speak or not and I’m pretty sure the players will as well,” Southgate said. “So I don’t think we’re necessarily going to be swayed by that communication.”
YouGov polled 1,411 members of the England public and 471 fans in England.
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