The Football Association's chief executive officer Mark Bullingham has slammed FIFA for their "outrageous" behaviour after England captain Harry Kane did not to wear a rainbow armband in support of LGBTQ+ rights over the threat of sanctions.
Gareth Southgate's side had a near-perfect start to their World Cup campaign during their 6-2 win over Iran on Monday. Although England would have been frustrated to concede the two goals in the manner that they did, it was a thoroughly impressive performance overall.
However, much of the build-up to the match and subsequent discussion centred around FIFA's refusal to allow any captain of their national side to wear a rainbow armband in support of LGBTQ+ rights. The FA's CEO has now revealed what was said during the discussions that were held surrounding the decision, as he criticised the organisation's handling of the incident.
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Speaking to ITV, Bullingham said: "It’s very important to understand what happened here. We [the FA/England] have been clear that we wanted to wear it and we were committed. We announced that we would do that in September, we had a lot of meetings with FIFA over that period and on Saturday before the game we felt we’d reached an understanding where we would wear it. We hadn’t got permission but we would face a fine for it.
“Unfortunately then on the day of the game they gave us ten minutes' notice - two hours before we were due to go to the game… they came here with five officials and they ran us through a scenario where at a minimum anyone wearing the armband would be booked and face disciplinary action on top of that.
“It [the disciplinary action] was unlimited. They would take disciplinary action against any player that was wearing the armband on top of having a yellow card. It’s not clear though, they just said they would take disciplinary action and obviously there’s unlimited liability effectively in that action.”
When asked to describe the behaviour of FIFA on the day of the game, Bullingham replied: “Again, it’s lots of different words we could use and, all I can say, the level of feeling is very high. We are frustrated, we’re angry, we thought it was outrageous the way this was handled. That doesn’t move us anywhere we wanted to go. We wanted to show our support to the community and were not able to do so.”
Bullingham was then pressed to respond further, as it was put to the CEO that the nature of protests is that they come with risks.
He said: “I understand that and, look, it’s a valid point of view people have. We felt that we couldn’t put the players in that position - the World Cup which many of them had dreamt of playing in since they were young - suddenly they may not be able to play a part in it. Suddenly they’re maybe facing a ban and that’s not just not a scenario we could put them in.
“I do think that as any bidding criteria you do have to have a basic level of human rights and that’s absolutely part of the discussion that has to be had. And that has to be had at the point that countries bid for the World Cup not a discussion that happens in the build up to it.
“I agree with the principle that any country bidding for the World Cup should have a basic level of human rights and we have to talk about that. I understand the hurt the [LGBTQ+] communities are feeling and that’s the last thing we wanted to do. We want to show support for these communities and it’s incredibly frustrating to us that we haven’t been able to do so.”
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