World Cup 2022: England, Wales and European countries drop LGBTQ armband
England and Wales – who open their World Cup campaigns today – along with European nations will no longer wear the OneLove armband during the World Cup because of the threat to players being booked.
The team captains including England’s Harry Kane and Wales’s Gareth Bale had planned to wear the armband during matches to promote diversity and inclusion.
A joint statement from seven football associations said they could not put their players “in a position where they could face sporting sanctions”.
“We are very frustrated by the Fifa decision, which we believe is unprecedented,” the statement read.
The governing bodies – England, Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland – said they had written to Fifa in September informing them about the OneLove armband but not received a response.
“Fifa has been very clear that it will impose sporting sanctions if our captains wear the armbands on the field of play,” the statement added.
“We were prepared to pay fines that would normally apply to breaches of kit regulations and had a strong commitment to wearing the armband.
“However, we cannot put our players in the situation where they might be booked, or even forced to leave the field of play.”
Fifa has, in response brought forward its own “No Discrimination” campaign which had been due to start from the quarter-finals. Captains will now be permitted to wear a No Discrimination armband for the entire tournament.
Kane will wear the Fifa armband when England play Iran in their first game of the 2022 world cup and Wales take on USA later this evening.
