The top football leagues’ fear of the political has now reached the point at which players have to deny supporting freedom of speech. Salomon Kalou, who scored both goals for Chelsea in their 2-0 win over Middlesbrough on Wednesday, celebrated both by crossing his arms at the wrist and running toward the crowd. This was interpreted by many as a “handcuffs” gesture meant to show support for the Ivorian activist Antoine Assalé Tiémoko, who was recently released after spending a year in an Ivory Coast prison for writing an opinion piece.
Tiémoko, who heads an NGO that works against social injustice and unemployment, published the piece on December 14, 2007 in the newspaper Le Nouveau Réveil. Titled “Justice, criminals and corruption,” it told the story of a fictional African country called the Mastodon Coast, and used elements of parable, anagrams, and innuendo to accuse the Ivorian minister of justice, the state prosecutor, and a number of judges of corruption.
This wasn’t a reckless accusation. Not long before Tiémoko’s piece was published, the UN mission in Ivory Coast said in a report that judicial corruption had become so widespread in the country that “people have come to believe, even though fortunately it’s not always the case, that it is impossible to get a favourable decision without handing over money.” An entire class of illicit intermediaries, known as the “margouillat,” has arisen to pass money between citizens, lawyers, and judges.
Regardless, Tiémoko was arrested on December 28, charged with “libeling the prosecutor’s office” and “contempt of court,” and sentenced to a year in prison on January 4. The conviction provoked outrage from human rights groups as well as from writers’ organizations and free-speech advocates such as PEN and Reporters Without Borders.
The FA, has different standards, however, and has launched an investigation of Salomon Kalou (as well as his fellow Ivorian Didier Drogba, who joined him in the crossed-arms celebration) to determine whether the gesture was indeed a sign of support for Tiémoko. If they find that it was—if Kalou and Drogba were caught openly endorsing free speech during a football game—the two players will face fines and possible suspensions.
Is this not a little draconian in its own right? I understand that a football league is a private entity that can establish its own rules about political expression and require its players to follow them. I understand why a league would want to keep politics out of its games: it wants fans to be entertained, not made to squirm through fascist salutes and inflammatory theatrics. I could even partially sympathize with the RFEF when they fined Fredi Kanouté for revealing an utterly non-violent Palestine t-shirt during a match earlier this month. Messages like that can be explosive even if they aren’t meant to be, and football lives on a thin enough line as it is.
But supporting a man who was imprisoned for writing an article? From here, that just seems uncontroversially admirable. I certainly can’t imagine it would have provoked mass outrage in Stamford Bridge from Chelsea fans who knew what was happening. The whole investigation has a bizarro quality, actually: Kalou and Drogba are frantically denying doing something morally impressive; football, which wants to sell itself as a force for good in the world (just read Sepp Blatter’s interviews!), is reflexively protecting the Ivorian justice minister over a wrongfully imprisoned writer. And Chelsea, which would love to be seen as a positive influence in the community, is desperately hoping that the FA will believe the two players were flashing the symbol of Konvict Muzik, Akon’s record label.
Worst of all, the press, which is constantly blaring on about wanting players to be more virtuous, and which you might expect to have some sense of the stakes involved in, you know, throwing people in jail for writing in newspapers, has been either silent on the issue or has openly criticized the players. The Daily Mail actually bundled the story in with a special feature on “The most SHOCKING goal celebrations” (capitalization theirs, believe me).
But was this really, in any way, shocking? I can’t help but think that some of the discomfiture is actually residual outrage from the hysteria over David Norris’s handcuffs celebration in November: the simple act of signifying “handcuffs” is now so intrinsically offensive that the context ceases to matter. Which makes no sense, of course.
The more important question, I guess, is whether we think the “no politics” rule ought to be applied so universally and indiscriminately that there’s no room to assess the values actually reflected in a gesture. But how can football claim not to distinguish among political values, when it’s constantly inundating us with anti-racism and anti-violence messages? If John Terry had lifted up his shirt after scoring a goal to reveal an anti-apartheid t-shirt, would he be punished or celebrated?
by Brian Phillips · January 30, 2009
It’s profoundly depressing, and your “bizarro” paragraph does an excellent job of summarising just why that is so.
I will never forget Giovanni Elber’s “dove of peace” celebration after he scored for Bayern in one of the first matches played after 9/11; it perfectly captured the sense of solidarity and shared pain that was so prevalent in Europe in the week following the attacks.
Has it really reached the point where players who are constantly being used to promote an endless array of commercial products and services and “officially approved” causes are to be barred from expressing even a hint of their own point of view?
The views expressed in this goal celebration are not the views of Chelsea football club or its supporting companies.
Its the same thing 20th century fox says before all its “edgy” indy movies, like JUNO. The Prem league and Chelsea are corporations, and no corporations want to be associated with anything political.
I note that today’s Fiver is quite convinced of the veracity of the Akon explanation.
Sometimes I despair.
At least Robbie Fowler was not snorting the end line …
Excellent article. Sums up the situation perfectly. Not really much more I can add, except that it is typical of the FA to involve itself more with these trivialities than with more important matters.
Would that the FA come down as hard on leg breaking tackles and footballer pub argy-bargy …
Hi Brian. Great article. I’ve been admiring your work from afar for quite a while. This piece in particular makes such a valid point that appears to have been missed by many.
Here’s a good piece on the general subject of journalists being silenced with libel laws, which is an ongoing problem in Africa.
Also, Russell Brand in the Guardian today comes close to some of the points I tried to make in this post. At first, I thought that was depressing, but then I realized that it actually made my case about the press reaction to the incident. This is a Russell Brand argument to them.
Also, apparently Kalou’s own explanation for the gesture was that it was an homage to WWE wrestler John Cena. I kind of believe him, which may be the most depressing thing of all.
This has no doubt already occurred to you, but if either (or both) of the Akon/Cena stories are accurate, it would be very interesting to determine just how the Tiémoko meme took hold.
Perhaps I’m being uncharitable, but I tend to doubt that the many of the usual suspects who fill Premier League press boxes are active supporters of PEN or otherwise up to date with the latest in West African press censorship.
Whatever the underlying reality, it’s quite obvious that Tiémoko’s plight (and that of Ivorian dissidents in general) has gotten infinitely more coverage in the non-specialist media than it would have otherwise.
And that is an infinitely more valuable use of “viral marketing” techniques than anything T-Mobile is doing in railway stations.
Great post, as usual.
Just on the Kanoute-Palestine shirt point, it was interesting to note the general reaction in Spain to his celebration, which was fairly supportive, and quite a few players/coaches (Barca’s Guardiola being one of the most vocal) criticised his 3000 euro fine. I thought Kanoute handled the whole thing admirably, but the RFEF really didn’t cover themselves in glory.
If, as you say, you understand that a private organization has the desire – and the right! – to remain an entertainment industry in which external political speech is best left in the locker room, then the rest of your article becomes moot. If an athlete feels called upon to exercise political free speech then he should do so outside the confines of the sports arena. There are plenty of outlets for him: demonstrations, letters to the editor, etc. Grandstanding gestures of which you speak are getting tiresome. The only purpose they serve is for the perpetrators to feel morally superior to the rest of us.
They’ve “perpetrated” nothing, other than a few disturbed molecules of oxygen. Those who actually *do* wrong things — riots in Millwall and Manchester, beatings by players in pubs, leg breaking tackles, harassment of referees, a special category for Joey Barton, etc. — go by with barely a tut-tut. *They* are those who ought be heaped with scorn, not larger piles of pounds.
If, as you say, you understand that a private organization has the desire – and the right! – to remain an entertainment industry in which external political speech is best left in the locker room, then the rest of your article becomes moot.
Does not. Because:
1) Just because an entity has the right to do something in a libertarian sense doesn’t mean that they’re morally justified in doing it or that it’s their best course of action. A person has the right in a libertarian sense not to save a drowning child, but it doesn’t follow that the exercise of that right is good in a moral sense. I think it’s arguable that the FA’s decision not to allow any political expression from players falls into that “they have the right, but they’d be better off not exercising it” category. Hence, the argument.
It’s like, they own the house, and they can make it look however they want, but I can still drive by the house and say, “Woah. Ugly house.”
2) There’s a pretty good case to be made that “grandstanding gestures” of this sort can do more than demonstrations or letters to the editor to make people aware of oppression. I hadn’t heard of Tiémoko before, or known about some of the specific ways in which the free press was being stifled in Africa, and now I do. That seems like a win, in a way that has nothing to do with Kalou’s “moral superiority.”
I’m not saying that the FA should let players roll out Khmer Rouge parade floats every time they score a goal. Just that there should be some minimal exemption to avoid the absurd situation of a player being allowed to show his support for a professional wrestler but not for a journalist who was thrown in jail for speaking out against a corrupt government.
I know in Brasil the gesture is considered to be a symbol of a barbarian/warrior. It is the unofficial symbol of players/supporters of Cruziero.
If it was a “political statement” it was almost unnoticeable. I mean really, its not as if he displayed a shirt declaring his love for Palestine or Obama.