"WON LOVE" said a headline by the British tabloid The Sun after Bukayo Saka led the national team to a 2:6 victory against Iran, in a clever play on words of the One Love armbands in support of Qatar's queer community that were banned at the World Cup.
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But The Sun, in a rare show of journalistic wisdom, also remembered that there was no need to look as far as Qatar when it comes to rights abuses.
You see, Saka was subjected to horrific racist attacks on social media when he missed the opponent's penalty kick at the 2020 European Championship in a game against Italy and has since had to deal with chants of "You let your country down" from the stands.
Three more black players scored goals that day: Marcus Rashford, whom the public loves thanks to his campaign for hungry children during the coronavirus pandemic and Jude Bellingham, who might lead the team to victory one day, on the one hand, and Raheem Sterling, who is often disliked in the press for criticizing the gap in the coverage between black and white stars, on the other.
Compare this to France, where football fans adore Kylian Mbappé, who did not disappoint when scored the most spectacular goal against Australia and utterly destroyed the team's defense. When Viv Anderson became Britan's first black player in November 1978, it happened a few months after Guadeloupe-born Marius Trésorbecame France's first black captain at the World Cup. There have been blacks in the French national team since 1938 when "Black Pearl" Larbi Benbarek joined.
Football is very measurable. Within the past four decades, when England was just beginning to integrate black players, for France, it was commonplace – it won two tournaments and the European championships. Its football stars have always been the symbol of French integration – Just Fontaine and Raymond Kopa in the 50s, and since then Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Karim Benzema – and the list goes on and on. And now Mbappé, whose parents are from Guadeloupe and Martinique. Meanwhile, during the same period of time, England reached one European final, last year, and lost.
Although this reasoning does not necessarily translate to life, as Britain is headed by a prime minister with a Hindu-African background, while France is about to be led by a far-Right anti-immigration party.
I am watching the Britain-Iran match at a bar in West Finchley. Iranians, Brits, blacks, whites, Indians – we are all watching it together, and everyone agrees on one thing: that FIFA, Qatar, the Iranian government, the referee, and the VAR can all go to hell.
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