IT IS INCREASINGLY rare nowadays for a Premier League weekend to pass without either a minute’s silence or the pre-game promotion of some campaign or another; English football has become a crucible for solemn respect and formal thought.
Why? Football grounds are among the very few places in which the country can be said to physically and emotionally come together around a shared belief, and so in a country so socially and politically frayed as England, the football ground offers a rare theatre in which it can claim to speak with unanimity.
But English football has spent the last few weeks nervously navigating exactly what and what should not be said in respect of the Israel/Hamas conflict.
It wasn’t until five days after the 7 October Hamas attacks in Israel that the Premier League issued a statement on the horror, saying they were “shocked and saddened by the escalating crisis in Israel and Gaza, and strongly condemns the horrific and brutal acts of violence against innocent civilians.”
A minute’s silence was held before the next round of games in memory of all innocent victims in both Israel and Gaza, but that’s pretty much all that has been done and said on their end. Otherwise, English football has done its best to stay away from the situation.
The FA decided not to discipline Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury for tweeting, ‘from the river to the sea’, instead writing to clubs to say they would take police guidance in the event any other player repeats the phrase.
Premier League clubs, meanwhile, have banned Israeli and Palestinian flags from their grounds, which has led to a Chelsea Israeli Supporters Club being told their banner at Stamford Bridge would have to be removed, as it featured the Star of David. Elsewhere, a Liverpool supporter claimed Anfield stewards forced him to remove a hoodie bearing the phrase ‘Free Palestine’ at a Europa League game against Toulouse.
“All I did was show solidarity to my people who have and are being killed every day for many decades now, in no way does the Palestine flag represent what Hamas did the other week neither do I commend it,” he tweeted.
There is no reason to doubt him, but all political symbols are fraught and significant as the interpretation of those bearing them can greatly vary from those seeing them.
English football has calculated its best option amid the Israel-Hamas conflict is to remove political symbols entirely, lest it be accused of supporting one side over another.
But that’s not to say it has spurned all political symbols. Last weekend’s games were scored to the sound of buglers and the Last Post, as grounds and broadcasts were festooned in poppies ahead of Remembrance Sunday.
For the poppy is one political symbol which English football has wholeheartedly embraced. But why has the game in England not treated the poppy with anything like the same level of nuance? Why not acknowledge its ambiguity?
The poppy commemorates the military dead across all conflicts involving the British Army, which gives the symbol a different meaning for some international footballers whose ancestors, families and communities saw the other end of the gun.
These people have been failed by English football for years, with James McClean’s plight the most high-profile and most egregious. McClean decided not to wear the poppy from 2012 and suffered abuse as a result, to which he responded with an open letter on Wigan’s website in 2014 explaining why he doesn’t wear it.
“For me to wear a poppy would be as much a gesture of disrespect for the innocent people who lost their lives in the Troubles – and Bloody Sunday especially – as I have in the past been accused of disrespecting the victims of WWI and WWI”, he explained. “It would be seen as an act of disrespect to those people; to my people.”
McClean has spent more than a decade dealing with abusive chanting in grounds across the country and death threats online. His wife revealed in 2021 the family have security at their home.
He was at least given the dignity of expressing his views in a Sky Sports interview in September of this year, in which he said he knew of other players who didn’t want to wear a poppy as they “don’t want the hassle.”
Irish U21 international Killian Phillips stood apart during the playing of the Last Post at Wycombe’s game last season, for which he received social media abuse but was fully supported by the club’s chairman, who publicly defended Phillips’ right to hold his own beliefs. McClean deserved that level of public support from all of his clubs, but it’s too late now.
But it’s not too late for English football to ask itself why it is putting players in these positions, requesting they stand to attention for the poppy, and what is undoubtedly a political symbol.
