England's OneLove armband U-turn is a weak and humiliating start to the World Cup

Southgate could still have persisted with the planned protest – but those higher up decided against it (Photo: Reuters/AFP)

So Fifa called England’s bluff and they crumpled like a house of cards in a desert sandstorm.

The first sign of any real, meaningful inconvenience to the England player who would wear the OneLove armband — supposedly the big gesture to promote diversity and inclusion — and the Football Association backed down.

Everyone knows fines are meaningless in football, it was clear enough in the joint statement put out by the six nations who backed down with them.

“As national federations, we can’t put our players in a position where they could face sporting sanctions including bookings, so we have asked the captains not to attempt to wear the armbands in Fifa World Cup games,” the statement said. “We were prepared to pay fines that would normally apply to breaches of kit regulations and had a strong commitment to wearing the armband.”

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A strong commitment to wearing the armband? That’s like saying the bride had a strong commitment to the marriage until she ran off leaving the groom at the altar.

The FA were prepared to take those fines on the chin, one for each time Harry Kane wore the armband on his sleeve during the World Cup. But a yellow card? That was a step too far for them.

Campaigners in history have been killed, imprisoned for years, had their lives ruined by standing up for what they believed in. The FA saw a flash of yellow and legged it.

Wasn’t this, in fact, the moment to show the values they truly stood for? To stand firm in the face of the monstrous institution which told them they couldn’t show support LGBT+ people at a World Cup in a country where same-sex relationships are forbidden, and can be punishable with death.

Let’s face it, if Fifa had granted them permission and the seven nations wore the armband, it would barely have been noticed anyway. I mean, look at it: it was a sort of multicoloured striped symbol thing that wasn’t actually the rainbow flag that has come to symbolise gay pride. The gesture had been so watered down it was rendered almost translucent.

How humiliating this is, for the English FA and the others, to have already so meekly fought for their cause, only to be told that wasn’t happening either. And that if you wanted to die on that hill at the 2022 World Cup there’s up to seven yellow cards coming your way. Nooooo… not seven! We couldn’t possibly take seven yellow cards!

Five substitutes can be made at this tournament. What a gesture — what a wonderful two-fingered salute to Fifa — it would’ve been had Southgate made one of his fringe players wear the armband then substituted them straight away. Think of the farce it would’ve created, and the images and videos that would’ve zipped around the world on social media.

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And this shouldn’t be on the England manager, or captain Kane who was intending to wear it. Who knows, given his choice he may well have gone ahead and worn it anyway. But the powers-that-be, sensing a shitstorm, took that decision away from him.

Fifa has played a blinder on them all, really, in a grotesque sense. Refused to engage with the Associations who wrote to them back in September asking for permission to wear the armbands (and, by the way, the idea of asking permission to protest is absolutely LOL).

Invented their own armbands with socially-conscious messages at the last hour. Invented a yellow card sanction for wearing a OneLove armband.

If you spend any time trawling through governing body rulebooks — these tombs 100s of pages long — they leave so many sanctions open it practically grants them the ability to make things up as they go along. Which, incidentally, it often feels like, a lot of the time, when covering football.

Fifa then waited until the day of England’s opening game against Iran to confirm that those yellow cards would be flying if Kane had the audacity to wear a completely made up symbol that is sort of like a rainbow but isn’t a rainbow. With the minutes ticking down to kick-off, it gave them no time to come up with a clever solution, other than to fold.

“We are very frustrated by the Fifa decision,” the joint statement said. So frustrated that you’re going to… do exactly what they say? There are other words for that, which aren’t “frustrated”.

And I know, of course, this isn’t only on England. They made the decision alongside the FAs of Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. But they didn’t have to follow everyone else. They didn’t have to see which way the wind was blowing then leap onto a hand glider and let their morals be swept away.