Quintin Jardine's blog

Sepp Blatter promised change when he slithered back into the presidency of FIFA. He led us to believe that he would clear corruption out of football’s global body, that he would improve its administration and  that he would reconnect it with the real world. He has just demonstrated the depth of his sincerity and his grasp on reality by banning British international football teams from wearing the poppy emblem on their shirts in the friendly games that will be played this Remembrance weekend. An arcane FIFA regulation has been produced to justify this, backed by the threat that referees will call off a match in which Blatter’s Ban is defied.

Is that so?

Am I alone in hoping that the Home Nations’ governing bodies summon up the courage to tell the twisted Swiss idiot and his lackeys what they can do with their prohibition? Does anyone seriously imagine that if England remove their tracksuits on Saturday to reveal poppies on their white shirts, in honour of our war dead, any referee in his right mind would refuse to blow his whistle for the kick-off? I’ll go further; if our football authorities bow down to this their cowardice will be insult the memory of those whose courage and sacrifice the poppy celebrates.