When Fifa say they want to stop political messaging in football, it’s like political parties seeking to kick out lying. No-one can question their sincerity of purpose, but the public knows it will never happen.

You might as well ban the singing of national anthems prior to kick-off. Many of these old dirges are soaked in the blood of old regional rammies, while others wallow in imperialist triumphalism that lean into outright xenophobia.

This is the second half of the third verse of America’s Star-Spangled Banner: “No refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

This is a reference to the War of 1812 between the US and Britain, which lasted nearly three years and was sparked largely by the Royal Navy’s violations of America’s maritime rights.

The slave reference was a nod to Britain’s offer of refuge to enslaved black people seeking to escape their southern US slave owners.

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The lyrics were written by a vile, racist lawyer named Francis Scott Key, who came from a slave-owning plantation family and who described black people as “a distinct and inferior race”.

If an African nation refused to take to the field in protest at this anthem being played, you’d be inclined to sympathise with them.

Fifa would then have a problem a little more serious than England’s perennial losers getting upset about Argentinian players displaying a bedsheet with a slogan about the Malvinas (the Falkland Islands) belonging to them.

World football’s governing body claims that politics doesn’t belong in the sport. Yet the game is steeped in an endless swirl of........

© Herald Scotland