FIFA World Cup: John Fashanu decries attacks on Qatar over ‘One Love’ armband ban

Former England international, John Fashanu has criticized some football nations, especially in Europe and America championing the LGBTQ cause at the ongoing FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

Fashanu, who is born of Nigerian parents but played for the Three Lions argued that the protest to allow some member Football Associations whose countries favoured LGBTQ+ people to use the World Cup to promote the cause was disrespect to the law and regulation of the host nation, Qatar.

Fashanu whose elder brother, Justin was the first footballer to publicly declared himself as gay noted that FIFA and Qatar took the right path by not allowing the use of ‘one love’ armband by countries in the Arab nation.

“The ‘one love’ armband, what has that got to do with football, how did that merged into the world of football in the first place?,” Fashanu said on English television, ITV.

“We should try to keep politics away from football, because if we keep both of them together which is what is happening now (in Qatar) the politics goes up and its suppress football and eventually they would win.

“I don’t think they (the FAs) should even threatened because I don’t just think it got anything to do with the football.

Fashanu expected that the participating FAs should be aware of the culture in Qatar once they’ve won the bid to host the World Cup and called on them to abide the rules laid by the country for the duration of the competition adding that its culturally inappropriate to protest about the ban on the armband.

“We’ve said it time and time that if they are going to award Qatar the opportunity to host the World Cup, you will have to think that everybody will have to adhere to rules and regulations of the country,” he continued.

“I think that whatever the rules of that country might be, they should be adhere to, some of them might be good or bad, but they should respect the host country,” he said.