Home countries’ FAs seeing red over poppies could have been avoided | David Conn
The British set the principle of keeping politics and religion out of sport and Sir Stanley Rous was absolute in his interpretation of itWhisper it – you have to, beneath the barrage of furious indignation, bad temper, even declarations of “war”, from the prime minister down, over our gentle symbol of peace – but Fifa has a point about poppies. World football’s governing body, which Fifa still is, tried to articulate this as it unveiled the fines levelled at the football associations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for framing their November World Cup qualifiers as Armistice Day events.“It is not our intention to judge or question specific commemorations as we fully respect the significance of such moments in...