Fifa 1 – England 0

England have backed down in the ludicrous standoff with Fifa over the plan for captain Harry Kane to wear a ‘One Love’ armband – to show solidarity with gay community of Qatar – in today’s opening fixture against Iran. The move would have defied the governing body’s rules on acceptable on field attire. Faced with the threat of an instant yellow card for Kane, which, if repeated in the second game would have kept him out of the third, England blinked. 

This absurd little episode ought not to detain us for long, except that it is revealing as it gives us a fairly accurate gauge of the true force of Gareth Southgate and his squad of itinerant social justice warriors’ principles. England weren’t being threatened with expulsion from the tournament, but the inconvenience of potentially losing their star striker in the third game was enough to provoke a hasty retreat. England care about the LBGT community, oh yes.