Never mind him being an Ambassador for our club? Our country could do with people like Digger representing us on the world stage.
We have Boris and Blair and whoever rocks up at No.10 this week.
I wonder why we are so fucked up as a cuntry(sic) at the moment.
Lancashire?
Don’t you just hate it when someone brings common sense to the party?
Personally even when I disagree with him I can respect his views because he is so passionate eloqouant intelligent and a True Red.
He certainly makes me think twice about these types of things.
How does he do that?
Reasonable debate Rulez
Oops,
No spin and being far more knowledgeable than I am on the matter.
Barnes is engaging in sportwashing and we are supposed to cheer him because he used to play for us?
‘Respect their laws and culture’ - its illegal to be gay and women are second class citizens, John. Fuck their laws and culture.
‘This World Cup is open to everyone’ - so was the 1936 Olympics but as soon as it ended the government of that country went straight back to enforcing laws against people they didnt like.
‘Football can’t change opinions’ - absolute nonsense. We wouldnt be in Qatar right now, Man City wouldn’t be owned by Abu Dhabi etc if you couldn’t use sports to change opinions, PSG and Newcastle wouldn’t be the richest clubs in the world right now. Unfortunately the opinion that changes is “these billionaires who exploit poor people paid a lot of money for things I like, maybe theyre decent afterall”.
Oh and the wet sponge conducting the interview saying “FIFA have banned the OneLove armband, Qatar are just enforcing their rules” - think about WHY FIFA banned the armband for a second you fucking moron.
Qatar paid for this World Cup through under-the-table methods, used hundreds of thousands of migrants in slave labour conditions (seven thousand of whom died) to build stadiums that have to be air conditioned at great expense and damage to the atmosphere and they did it all for the purpose of using sports to clean their image with the public of the rest of the world.
Call out Boris Johnson, hes a wanker. Call out FIFA, they’re a bunch of authoritarian loving, cash grabbing, moraless wankers. Call out the British public, we are full of racists, homophobes and everyone type of -ism. But dont defend the Qatar government to do it. Its pure whataboutism. Something Barnes is very skilled at.
Fuck Qatar, fuck FIFA, fuck this World Cup and fuck everybody who defends authoritarian regimes that treat people as second class citizens, or in the case of migrants, not even human at all.
Barnes often takes a very pragmatic stance in his takes on prejudice. If there is a debate over whether someone’s actions were racist he’ll often dodge that and instead focus on the systemic issues that exist around it. That often makes him a bit of a contrarian. Sometimes people like that lose sight of their core argument and begin centering themselves as being the opposite of what the people they disagree with think, and end up falling into a series of bad takes. This feels like one of those.
You should post this in the World cup thread for all those watching the games and giving their support to Qatar FIFA etc.
Watching the games on free to view TV is not supporting either FIFA or Qatar
In your opinion.
Viewing figures
They’ll lie about them anyway, just like stadium attendances.
What else can we do when they turn off the opium of the Premier League. Need the fix, man!
Yes it is. It is eyeballs on tvs that is what makes everything associated with organizing the world cup valuable to FIFA, and what makes it an attractive sports washing opportunity.
The best way to protect this same exercise being followed in 2030 in Saudi Arabia is to not watch this time around and criticise it when the opportunity arises.
So Have 2 options.
Player of The Match for when we win, and Cunt of The Match for when the ref screws us/we play Everton
How about I criticise it and watch it?