I don’t give a damn what the FA thinks about Israel – sport needs to drop politics

This weekend, Premier League football resumes after the international break with the Merseyside derby at lunchtime. There will be a minute’s silence before all matches and players will wear black armbands as a mark of respect for those who have died in Israel and Gaza.

I was reading a piece this week about my own football team – Tottenham Hotspur. Ahead of our match against Fulham on Monday night, there has been discussion about the divisions over how events in the Middle East should be marked and whether Israeli flags or Palestinian flags would be allowed. Tottenham is a club with a strong Jewish heritage. For full disclosure, I’m a season ticket holder and a Jew.

And to be honest, I just don’t really give much of a damn what either the FA thinks or the club. I will be going to the game to get away from this nightmare and shout myself hoarse for my football team – and probably swear at the referee when a decision goes against us. I don’t go to the theatre and stand, head bowed for whatever the passing cause is. I don’t go to see the Barbie movie to remember victims of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. So why has football got to have an opinion and a stance on any and every passing cause they choose to embrace?

Let’s for a second imagine that Tottenham decided just to commemorate the Israeli victims from the awful events of 7 October. And, say, the team we’re up against is Newcastle United, which is owned by the Saudis, and they want to mark the death of all those who’ve died inside Gaza. What then? Is it Israelis versus the Palestinians by proxy at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium? That’s nuts. Let it just be about the football.

This all started with taking a knee and Black Lives Matter. Why? Because it was simple and uncomplicated. Racism is bad. Fine. I was the BBC’s North America editor when George Floyd was suffocated by that evil, racist policeman who kneeled on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes. I reported on the unrest that followed and the protests across the US. The light it shone on the problems of racism in the US was unsparing.

Rightly, this episode forced other countries to look at their own record. And so it became de rigueur for every football match to begin with players taking a knee. Except it then sort of became embarrassing and slightly awkward. When do you stop taking a knee? And how much difference was it really making?

Also, it all looked a bit ritualised. Protest has force when it arises spontaneously. That moment came when the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaepernick, and a couple of other Black players took a knee during the playing of the national anthem in 2016. A month later in the Deep South, Donald Trump addressed an almost entirely white crowd asking “why people like us have to pay to watch people like them” take a knee. This as racism goes was less a dog whistle than a howling wolf. Trump said they should all be fired. And Kaepernick was. He hasn’t played in the NFL since.

At least though – as an issue – this was black and white (so to speak).

But politics is rarely black and white, as the FA would discover with the controversy over how to light the Wembley arch last week. Issues are rarely simple. It sometimes feels that the footballing authorities want everything reduced to a happy or sad face emoji – players round the centre circle clapping if it’s good; looking sombre and silent if it’s sad.

Take the World Cup in Qatar last year. The FA wanted to show its disapproval of the Gulf state’s stance on gay rights. So the players would wear OneLove rainbow armbands. Except the association folded when Fifa said they couldn’t. But what was the FA doing making gestures like that, as though English football was this paragon of liberal, tolerant, gay inclusion? There is not a single openly gay footballer playing in the Premier League. Not one.

Life is complicated. I really do want to know what Rishi Sunak thinks about the situation in the Middle East (though couldn’t give a monkey’s whether he thinks we should be 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1); Starmer too – but our centre forward, Son Heung-min? Not so much. I don’t even care what our manager Ange Postecoglou thinks – and I love him to bits. Why not just swim in your lane?

Soccer is a big part of our cultural life, and it is no bad thing that footballers should be aware of the role that they play – and that to many they are role models. Players like Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford have done wonderful work off the field. But they are footballers. Not politicians. And the FA is the body that represents football.

It doesn’t need to take a stance on bond markets, the inflation rate, and hospital waiting lists. Or Gaza.

It is totally laudable that our players and clubs work hard to support projects in their local communities. Terrific that we mark Remembrance Sunday to honour those who gave their lives in service of this country. I thought it lovely when we sang “God Save the King” at Spurs on the day of the coronation. But go to football and it seems there’s hardly a game goes by when we’re not standing in silence to mark this or that. We don’t do it anywhere else. Why football?

There is too much sanctimonious posturing. How about instead of taking a knee, the FA and the clubs resolve not to take a stand? Physiologically, it’s much the same thing.