Given the crisis engulfing Uefa, it seems hard to imagine how it has the time to investigate Manchester City fans booing the Champions League music
With Uefa’s president, Michel Platini, suspended and his deputy under investigation by Fifa’s newly emboldened ethics committee, it is a wonder European football’s governing body found the time. But amid the chaos at its Nyon HQ, Uefa’s bureaucrats swung from crisis to farce on Thursday as disciplinary proceedings were launched against Manchester City – because their fans booed the Champions League anthem.
In the pantheon of ludicrous decisions by the game’s increasingly rudderless governing bodies, it must rank up there with the most bizarre.
City fans, who like their club have a strangely vexed relationship with the Champions League, have long nursed a grievance against Uefa, stemming from their treatment at the hands of its financial fair play rules. As such, booing theChampions League anthem as they did against Sevilla is virtually a tradition at the Etihad Stadium on European matchdays but it now turns out that such an instance of mundane rebellion on the terraces is a breach of Uefa rules.
Once reported by its match assessor, Uefa said it had no choice but to investigate – and immediately heap ridicule on the indignity that has followed Platini’s provisional suspension as president.
The regulation in question – article 16 (2) as it happens – forbids “the disruption of national or competition anthems”. While the first part of that rule appears entirely rational, the second is more akin to something out of North Korea.
We should not be too surprised. This, after all, is the organisation that fined Nicklas Bendtner £80,000 for wearing Paddy Power underpants during Euro 2012 and has levied much lesser sums on clubs for a string of racist incidents across Europe before and since. When Porto fans subjected Mario Balotelli, then at Manchester City, to prolonged racist abuse during a Europa League tie in 2012 the Portuguese club was fined £16,600. Later that year, City were fined more than that for entering the field a minute late after half-time. And when City complained about the hundreds of CSKA Moscow fans inside the stadium when they played in the Russian capital last year, despite a supposed stadium ban, Uefa said procedures had been followed. Just because City fans are paranoid, perhaps it does not mean Uefa is not out to get them.
There is a wider lesson here too. It says much about the pomposity and self-aggrandisement of sport’s self-proclaimed masters of the universe that they hold their anthems in such high regard. Given that these supranational organisations generally behave as though they are beyond national laws (a fact of which they have recently been rudely disabused), it is perhaps unsurprising they obsess about flags and anthems.
It is also telling that Uefa takes such a petty interest in policing its own nonsensical rules when Platini can argue with a wave of his hand that a “man to man” agreement to be paid £1.35m by Sepp Blatter nine years after it was dueneed not be put in writing.
Before each Olympic Games, the Olympic hymn plays (“In the race and in the strife/Create in our breasts, hearts of steel” etc) as the Olympic flag is raised.Fifa’s “anthem”, a jaunty number that was played before every match at last summer’s World Cup while the preposterous “handshake for peace” protocol was carried out, demands similar levels of respect. Raising the stakes still further, those in Beijing (naturally) for the world athletics championships in the summer were requested to stand for the IAAF hymn.
For Uefa, the Champions League anthem was an important part of the rebranding of the European Cup. To succeed, the creation of a seamless brand across Europe – against which a portfolio of sponsorship opportunities could be sold – was key. The easily recognisable anthem, adapted from Handel’s Zadok the Priest with new lyrics by the English composer Tony Britten, soon became a key factor in creating instant recognition alongside the familiar visual branding. So successful it was, in fact, that Uefa sought to repeat the trick with the Europa League. That in turn led to accusations of nepotism when Platini turned to his then son-in-law to compose it.
Which brings us full circle. Altogether now: Boooooooo.
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