Fifa should hang its head in shame over shirt poppy ban

FIFA have ruled that England will not be allowed to have a poppy emblem, to mark this year’s Remembrance Day, sewn on to their shirts for today’s friendly football game with Spain (Tom Richmond, Yorkshire Post, November 9).

Instead, the poppy will be stitched into the black armband of players.

From different reports I have heard, if their instructions are not obeyed, the players could be fined around £100,000 each and/or the referee given orders to abandon the match.

The poppy is a symbol of remembrance to the millions of people who gave the ultimate sacrifice by forfeiting their lives in two world wars.

It is a small token to show our immense gratitude for the freedoms we enjoy today and which too many now seem to take for granted; freedoms, I am certain, members of Fifa are very grateful for and have no objection to.

The Fifa officials responsible for such crass rulings should hang their heads in shame and reflect on their behaviour when tucking themselves up in their nice warm comfortable beds tonight.

From: Stephen Nichols, Leyburn Avenue, Lightcliffe, Halifax.

SO, Fifa is refusing to allow the teams from the British Isles to wear the poppy on the football shirts this weekend.

I say the Football Associations of England and Wales should send out their teams with the poppy on. What is Fifa going to do about it? Invade us?

From: Jim Beck, Lindrick Grove, Tickhill, Doncaster.

SINCE the Armistice commemorative poppy is demonstrably neither political, religious nor commercial, why on earth did the FA even think of asking Fifa for permission for the England soccer team to wear it on their strip?

From: Dai Woosnam, Woodrow Park, Scartho, Grimsby.

THE poppy fascists have won the day in Britain. I lost two favourite uncles to German bullets. What did they die for?

I suggest that they did not die so that that the poppy could be used as a kind of reverse “white feather”: that the sheer absence of one, would somehow denote a lack of patriotism. And before readers write in and suggest a lack of empathy with the Fallen on my part, let me ask them if they have done what I have done: driven 200 miles each way to Wootton Bassett to pay my personal respects to “repatriated” soldiers.

I buy a poppy every year (because the cause is a fine one), but keep it firmly in my pocket.

I blame some of our TV companies for forcing it on staff and guests, but above all I blame our professional politicians.

They are all trying to outdo Horatio Bottomley in their bogus patriotism, and every year are trying to create a record by being the first MP to be seen on TV wearing one. Before long they will be donning them before September is out.