Regardless of what happens at the World Cup tonight and who takes home football’s biggest prize and the most revered crown, the real winner once the curtain comes down on the showpiece event would undoubtedly be Russia. Stanislav Cherchesov’s Russia may have lost the plot halfway through the competition — though it did surpass expectations of fans and pundits alike — but Vladimir Putin’s Russia will surely be the winner. And that makes it a wonderful case study for those who doubt sports’ potential to change a country’s image on a global scale.
We, in Pakistan, have often talked of walking the path, but have thus far ended up merely talking the path and tend to stutter when it comes to walking it. With the World Cup in Russia, we have an opportunity to sit down and study the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of it. After all, we have ourselves been hosts — co-hosts, if you insist on being precise — to two cricket World Cups; the 1987 and 1996 editions.
Before the World Cup started, there was a bit of negativity surrounding Russia’s level of infrastructural preparedness and there were issues that apparently had nothing to do with football but everything to do with Russia’s perception in the eyes of the world. Even though the Iron Curtain went down with the dissolution of the erstwhile Soviet Union back in the late 1980s, for the common people, a trip to Russia had never been high on the list of ‘things to do before you die.’ So the World Cup was their first chance to have a peek behind the iron curtain that was not there politically but was there in their perceptions.
There are major lessons to be learnt from the football World Cup by countries such as Pakistan that are struggling with an international image problem
Complicating things were governments and media reports that warned people to be careful and to expect trouble if they were planning to be there at the World Cup. Two examples would suffice.
The Australian government first issued a travel advisory for those planning to be in Russia, and then issued a formal notification upgrading the level of initial warning, asking the fans to “think three times” before flying across the world to cheer their own team in Russia.
In England, the media took the initiative before the government jumped into the fray. Reports were published and aired prominently of what was called “shocking footage” of “women brawling in the snow in a secluded forest, ahead of the tournament.” Russian Ultras, they were called.
“They are apparently organising themselves on Russian social network VKontakte (VK) and pledge to “unleash hell” during this year’s tournament, it was said in one report. See this headline: ‘Russian thugs prepare to unleash HELL’ followed by the sub-headline, ‘Russian football hooligans have pledged a “death sentence” against all England fans ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.’
One politician found there was ground enough for him to jump in. He said the World Cup “should be postponed until 2019 and moved out of Russia.” Then the government came on board, warning England fans that there was “a high risk of clashes with Russian gangs” if they travelled to the World Cup. “The behaviour of Russian fans needs to be a factor in deciding whether to go there or not,” said a senior official of the National Police Chiefs’ Council.
Finally, it was the turn of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to pitch in with its own two cents, advising “all England fans travelling to Russia to prepare for hostility.”
The final warning by the Australian government asked those travelling to be ready to face “anti-Western sentiment” because of the tense political situation.
The situation was so negative — or it was made to appear so — that FIFA was forced to release a statement saying it was confident in Russia’s security arrangements following a violent clash between Russian Ultras in Spain and Spanish football fans. It reiterated its “complete trust in the security arrangements and the comprehensive security concept developed by the Russian authorities and the Local Organising Committee.” Even then it assured everyone that FIFA was “also in constant contact with all stakeholders regarding the on-going risk assessment.”
A rough timeline of events might put it in a better perspective. In mid-March, Putin had won a fourth term in office amid fraud accusations. He — and indeed the Russian government — was already facing charges — though not of the legal variety — of having had a hand in US elections. So he was not a particularly popular figure in the West.
In mid-April, came the episode revolving around former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England, which led to accusations being traded like free samples across international borders. In early June, Trump head-butted his colleagues in Europe with a call to bring back Russia into the G7 fold but, just when he was doing that, Putin preferred to be in China receiving the latter country’s first-ever Friendship Medal. The very next day, Putin brushed off any chance of return to G7.
It was tense all around, as you can see.
And then began the World Cup on June 14. And what a wonderful World Cup it turned out to be. The Iron Curtain stood shattered for the man on the street. All media and government warnings were proved nothing but hoax calls. The fans enjoyed their stay like they never imagined they would. Brazilian fans even took out a mini-carnival on the streets, joined by hundreds of locals and visitors from various countries. The FIFA football fest was a massive success. England fans had a roaring time and posted it on their social media accounts.
The fun on the field was good enough on its own, but what was happening off it was even more exciting and worth keeping an eye on.
The fans had a ball of a time. And for Russia, the country and the government, it was a massive and massively successful exercise in public relations.
Less than two weeks into the four-week gala, Trump invited and Putin agreed to hold a summit meeting in the Finnish capital of Helsinki. It is scheduled for July 16, the day after the World Cup final tonight.
And what it means can be seen in these lines from a political commentary by journalist Joe Macaron for Al-Jazeera: “On July 16, US President Donald Trump will meet in the Finnish capital Helsinki a triumphant Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has just secured another victory in the Syrian war and obtained the international recognition he wanted from hosting the World Cup.”
So, then, what is it that we can learn from the World Cup that can help us handle our own image problem? Two things basically. One, sports alone is not and will never be enough to do that. You need some more bargaining chips on the table rather than inviting third-grade teams to make an impression. And, two, the massive security operation in place had one striking feature: invisibility. We do just the opposite and people make money coming here and feeling safe, but those empty roads, law-enforcers in uniform and helicopters on the ready add to the negative perception. Somehow we have not been able to understand these two simple elements. Perhaps they are too simple to understand for us.
TAILPIECE: With all that negativity going on ahead of the World Cup, one Russian lawmaker found something of her own to worry about. She advised Russian women to avoid getting too intimate with “non-white foreign men … because they could become single mothers to mixed race children.” She recalled the so-called ‘Children of the Olympics’: a term used after the 1980 Moscow Games to describe non-white children conceived at international events after relationships between Russian women and men from Africa, Latin America and Asia. “We must give birth to our children,” the lawmaker insisted, indicating apparently that children born out of interaction with whites — Americans, Europeans, Australians and the like — were pretty much what she called “our children.” At least this is not what Pakistan, or anyone for that matter, needs to learn from this World Cup!
Published in Dawn, EOS, July 15th, 2018
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