It's so cowardly for England to believe avoiding a yellow card trumps gay rights

Just less than they value avoiding a yellow card which could lead to a captain missing a game in a dirty football tournament taken to a god forsaken country by corrupt FIFA officials.

The ‘One Love’ armband to promote gay rights in a country where homosexuality is illegal always seemed a trivial gesture by footballers anyway.

But if you’re going to bother bragging about support for a persecuted group at least have the guts to follow through rather than wilt under the gentlest of pressure from the Qataris and their useful idiots within the FIFA hierarchy.

What an image it would have been to see England skipper Harry Kane receive a yellow card before a game had started. Our country and our captain would have been viewed as heroic by many while a severe spotlight shone down on a suspect nation.

There were simple ways around FIFA’s ruling.

Even Gary Neville, a man not renowned for intellectual brilliance or for his ability to be anything other than a complete and utter hypocrite re this World Cup, tweeted something praiseworthy by suggesting the armband was worn by a different member of the England backroom staff in every game.

Predictably ITV pundit Roy Keane, not a man known for shirking a challenge, went straight to the point saying Kane and Welsh captain Gareth Bale should have worn the armband for the first game at least and taken whatever medicine was thrown at them.

The statement would have been made. FIFA would have looked even more foolish than they did during lickspittle president Gianni Infantino’s bizarre pre-tournament anti-Western rant.

But no England and the other FAs that seemed intent on LGBTQ support buckled at the first sign of pressure in the most cowardly fashion.

At least BBC pundit Alex Scot had the courage to don the armband during a live television pitchside interview and all credit to her.

It almost made up completely for her weak justification in actually travelling to Qatar to do a job that could comfortably have been done from a studio in Salford, or if she really wanted to protest strongly she could have turned the gig down altogether.

Scott’s part in the BBC’s woeful prelude to the tournament opener was a big one. She apparently thought ‘long and hard’ about travelling, but she ‘loved her job’ too much not to go. I’m sure that was comforting to any homosexuals serving prison sentances for following their heart.

Sat next to Scott on the BBC sofa to issue belated condemnation of a country where thousands died getting the tournament ready for action were the sanctimonious Gary Lineker, a man who fears for the planet’s future inbetween jetting around the world, and Alan Shearer, a man who spends weekends lauding a Newcastle United side awash with Saudi Arabian blood money.

They’re all insufferable hypocrites.