Harry Kane has been my favourite footballer of the last few years, and I have defended him against most unfair, and occasionally fair, criticism.
He played golf with Donald Trump.
Harry Kane scored six goals in this World Cup, but none since the world found out he played golf with Donald Trump.
I'm disappointed England were agonisingly defeated in the semi-final of the World Cup, but a tiny bit relieved. For over a year, the slightly sickening thought had occurred to me that he year that football finally came home our splendid team would have to share the winning stage with Donald Trump, and look happy and say nice things about him.
Well, that happened and we didn't even get the large pay-off of winning the World Cup.
What was the precise sequence of events which meant Harry Kane played golf with Donald Trump? Who sought out who? It doesn't really matter. We know Donald Trump has spent his life getting his claws into famous people. There's many an American sports star who counts Trump as a "friend". I was similarly grossed out when Rory McIlroy, a smart thoughtful Northern Irish sporting superstar I've always liked, spoke out postively about not just Trump but Elon Musk. But Trump is so intrinsic to golf, so unavoidable, and, well, golfers are golfers, there's not a left-wing bone in their whole body, and they're individuals who play for themselves.
Harry Kane is the captain of the England men's football team, and he played golf with Donald Trump around 18 months ago, made a sufficiently good impression that Trump called him a really nice guy, and when somewhat sheepishly, but not very sheepishly, reminded of it last week, said it was surreal, a great honour, and complimented Trump's golf game.
I know what sportspeople are like. I know that it conforms with the sportsperson's mindset to trend to the right, or to be entirely indifferent to politics. I have always liked Harry Kane, not just because he has been a tenaciously excellent striker, far exceeding any reasonable expectation of him, for my club Tottenham Hotspur and for England, but because he really seems like a nice man, who treats people with respect, is universally liked by people that play with him, doesn't show off, and is smarter than he seems. I still think that about him. But he's the captain of the England football team and he played golf with Donald Trump.
Actually, in this increasingly awful world and country of open racism, prejudice, violence, repression, lies, corruption, and division, the England football team does, or can, mean something. Gareth Southgate understood that and his team represented that. The England men's football team represents (as does the women's team, in similar but different ways), more than most things, an England to believe in. A team made up of young men born in England whose parents and grandparents were not born in England. Of smart, likeable men who have had to fight for everything they're achieving since they were small children. Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, Jude Bellingham, Declan Rice, Harry Kane.
Sport is not left-wing, but, of all sports, football, indeed western European football, football may be the most left-wing. Many of the greatest western European football managers - Ferguson, Shankly, Guardiola, Clough, Klopp, Cruyff, Dalglish - have been outspoken left-wingers.
I do not like the fact that, in that context, the England captain Harry Kane just went and played golf with Donald Trump, who is, my sources suggest, a murderous racist gangster rapist, one of the worst human beings that has ever existed, and Harry Kane said it was surreal and an honour.
He doesn't have to be glued to Bluesky and have read Das Kapital, but he should, having been England captain for almost a decade, having worn a rainbow armband and knelt before games, always said the right things when required to, understand the context of not finding a way not to play golf with Donald Trump.
This isn't the most disappointed I've been in an England football leader.
This was,
when the loveable, erudite manager Roy Hodgson, faced with the choice of taking to Euro 2012 either the world-class defender Rio Ferdinand, whose brother Anton had been racially abused by John Terry, or the world-class defender John Terry, who had racially abused Rio Ferdinand's brother Anton, chose John Terry.
I'd been wondering to myself recently why I hardly watched hardly any of Euro 2012, and it was that. I'd simply had enough of England at that point. It wasn't an England I cared for. Once Terry was gone, I tentatively returned, and Southgate brought the sense that actually the England football team could be a force for good to the fore in a way it had never been before.
So, at the World Cup where John Terry, who, surprise surprise, has recently come out in support of far-right party Restore Britain, is England's official representative in the FIFA box, shown on TV pretty much every game to an unheard-by-the-powers-that-be right-on Bluesky response of "Fuck off John Terry!", we find out that England's likeable, good egg captain Harry Kane played golf with straightforward evil gangster tyrant Donald Trump, and we want England to win the World Cup a little bit less, and, for all the good he's done, we feel it's time Harry Kane wasn't England captain anymore.
Although we don't know their politics and we don't know that they wouldn't play golf with Donald Trump, we feel it's time the England captain was Jude Bellingham, or Declan Rice, or, why not, Bukayo Saka or Marcus Rashford. [I'd say Marc Guehi, who has clear leadership potential, but he's already had a bit of a https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/clyj2e3dg14o hmmmm moment ...]
So thank you Harry Kane, for all the magnificent goals, may you win the Ballon d'Or you almost but don't quite deserve, may you win the Champions League you won't quite be able to seize, but I'm afraid I can't help but feel that England didn't win the World Cup because you played golf with Donald Trump, because, for all your qualities, maybe if you'd been sharp and brave enough not to play golf with Donald Trump, you'd have been able to seize all those little moments you didn't quite seize in your magnificent career, sadly forever defined by the fact that you didn't win the World Cup or the Euros, and you played golf with Donald Trump.
No comments:
Post a Comment