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I must admit to slightly mixed feelings about Argentina’s current libertarian President Javier Milei. On the one hand, he is a mentally disturbed chainsaw-wielding nutcase who has established a private kennel-cabinet of cloned psychic dogs who he thinks give him legitimate financial advice (see my article here). On the other hand, for a certified lunatic apparently being advised by puppies, he does have some highly sensible policy platforms (see my other, counterbalancing, article here).

I felt further ambivalence recently when hearing Milei had sacked his Undersecretary for Sports, Julio Garro, after Garro had demanded a public apology from Argentina’s all-conquering national football (as in “soccer,” if you’re American) team, who had just celebrated winning the Copa America tournament by singing a derogatory chant about their defeated “European” (or otherwise) opponents in the previous 2022 World Cup Final, France. According to Buenos Aires’ finest, “They all play in France, but they’re all from Angola…. Their mom is Nigerian/Their dad, Cameroonian/But in the [passport] document [it says] ‘Nationality: French.’”

The players only spoke the truth here. As such, President Milei didn’t think Garro was justified in demanding an apology of the team, arguing that “No government can tell what to comment, what to think, or what to do, to the World Champion Argentine National Team, or to any other citizen. For this reason, Garro is no longer Sports undersecretary.”

Quite right! It isn’t the job of politicians to place restrictions upon people’s free speech. But, by sacking Garro, wasn’t Milei sort of placing restrictions upon Garro’s free speech too?

Political Pitch
I suppose the problem comes when persons in positions of official power begin abusing their right to free speech to restrict the free speech of other, far less powerful, individuals, like Milei thought Garro was doing. Sticking with football/soccer, consider the case of Gareth Southgate, who has just stepped down from his role as manager of the England football team following their rather pleasing loss to Spain in the final of Euro 2024 on 14 July.

Unusually for a football manager, Southgate was not judged a success primarily on sporting grounds—because, although reaching two successive Euros finals, he never actually won any trophies at all, his immensely boring side continually benefiting from freakishly fortunate draws before then immediately losing to the first decent opposition they met.

But this didn’t matter, as his relentless obsession with abusing his position to promote DEI crap, from BLM to “mental health,” made him the ideal England manager for our times: useless at his job in a sporting sense, excellent at it in a propagandistic political sense.

Under the fashionably waistcoated Southgate, the entire team became transformed into a living platform for promoting equally fashionable new cults like Critical Race Theory and Rainbow Laces gay worship, all whilst England’s Football Association said sweet FA—because they themselves were in on the whole thing too, as were the vast majority of the adoring woke British media.

Seriously Foul Play
The most egregious Establishment embrace of Southgate came in the shape of playwright James Graham, author of the 2023 drama Dear England, named after an emetic 2021 “Open Letter to the Nation” penned by St. Gareth back in 2021. The play told the fascinating story of England’s progress to the final of Euro 2020, where they lost on penalties in the final to Italy after various black players missed their spot kicks, causing them to receive banana emojis online.

According to the BBC, the play addressed not only the vital issue of race but also how Gayboy Gareth “helped change notions of masculinity for today’s team” by forcing them to engage in collective homosexual acts with one another in the dressing room, at least metaphorically. A review in The Guardian informed us of how Southgate wheeled a psychologist named Pippa Grange into the team’s training area, where she made them all keep little girly diaries about their feelings, “to talk about their fear, to face it.” Fortunately Wayne Rooney had already retired from international football at this point, otherwise Gareth and Pippa would have had to have taught him how to hold a pen with his feet and write first.

In Graham’s own testimony, England’s loss to Germany in the semifinal of Euro ’96, when Southgate, then still a player, missed the penalty, which put his side out, was “the first time I cried over a football match.” It should have been the last time, too, James, you’re not a bloody baby, but instead it seems he has associated Southgate with his own subjective inner thoughts and feelings ever since.

Southgate was appointed to the England job in 2016, just after the Brexit referendum, and as such “The first story-beat of the play” is that “The country is in the grip of the Brexit referendum aftermath, and in comes Gareth” to sew up all the new political wounds and bring the nation back together. “There’s something Shakespearean about it, isn’t there?” Graham asked, evidently hoping a “healing” England victory would mean it was very much All’s Well That Ends Well.

In light of England’s recent Euro 2024 efforts, Graham’s opus is now being revived, both on stage and for BBC TV, with a brand-new climax. As such, Graham has been hitting the friendly media, promising to add further scenes about how, by making the team more gay, girly, and black, Southgate had allegedly performed “an institutional reset in our public life.” In a sense, I suppose he did. In Graham’s view, Southgate’s multiyear project “worked on all the measurable instruments except for the tiny thing about them winning the trophy.” That’s DEI for you in a nutshell. Maybe the England team’s next manager should be Kamala Harris?

Wokeness, to the Letter
What precisely was Gareth’s Southgate’s Letter to the Nation that formed the basis for Graham’s play? It was written in 2021, ahead of that summer’s Euro 2020 tournament (delayed from the previous year due to Covid-19; it wasn’t named by someone with dyscalculia) and addressed then-pressing issues like the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, mental hygiene, and social media abuse. The actual football came across very much as an afterthought.

In the spirit of Match of the Day, here are the edited highlights:

Dear England,

It has been an extremely difficult year…. And what I want to speak about today is much bigger than football…. [Everyone] has a different idea of what it actually means to be English…. This [multiracial England team] is a special group. Humble, proud and liberated in being their true selves. Our players are role models. And, beyond the confines of the pitch, we must recognise the impact they can have on society…. I have never believed that we should just stick to football…. I have a responsibility to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players. It’s their duty to continue to interact with the public on matters such as equality, inclusivity and racial injustice, while using the power of their voices to help put debates on the table, raise awareness and educate…. Why would you choose to insult somebody for something as ridiculous as the color of their skin? Why? Unfortunately for those people that engage in that kind of behaviour, I have some bad news. You’re on the losing side. It’s clear to me that we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society, and I know our lads will be a big part of that…. I am confident that young kids of today will grow up baffled by old attitudes and ways of thinking. For many of that younger generation, your notion of Englishness is quite different [e.g., for all the African and Arab ones imported over here and given free passports, like the Argies just sang about]…. I understand that on this island, we have a desire to protect our values and traditions…but that shouldn’t come at the expense of introspection and progress…. If we can do that, it will be a summer to be proud of.

Yours,
Gareth Southgate

Usually, footballers pay PR people to write their public communications for them, even illiterate tweets grunting “The boys done good.” In this particular instance, I have the horrible feeling Southgate may actually have written every last sanctimonious line.

Graham’s Crackers
You can see why someone like James Graham gets such a moral hard-on over the man. This is an actual word-wank the playwright had over him: “As much as the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the England manager looks after the soul of the nation.”

How so? For James “Euro ’96 Made Me Cry and So Did Brexit” Graham, writing in his cherished powder-pink Hello Kitty My Special Important Big Girl Emotions Diary 2024, which his mum bought him the day after he had his first period aged 39, Mr. Southgate “was everything we didn’t have in our politics at that time [the post-Brexit era]: a long-term plan, a genuine desire to unite people around a particular project, rather than divide people and cause upset and pain and toxicity,” like evil Tory PMs Boris Johnson, Teresa May, and Liz Truss, all of whom have cameos in his play, did.

What mendacious toss. Graham is best known as a political playwright, who, despite producing works with titles like Brexit: The Uncivil War, is clearly unable to conceive that culture wars, like football matches, take two sides to fight.

Apparently, Southgate is a “unifying” figure. If so, why did fans throw cups at him? Why did they boo when he needlessly encouraged his players to take the knee for BLM? Why did he pointlessly alienate others by telling TV he thought the Brexit vote had “racial undertones”? And if, as his Open Letter claimed, you should never “choose to insult somebody for something as ridiculous as the color of their skin,” why did he demand an “end to white privilege in football” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s completely sports-irrelevant death?

The more fans jeered, the more Southgate doubled down on his determination to “educate” them into thinking like he did. He could have just kept quiet and let his team’s football do the talking. Sadly, his team’s football was shit, so evidently this was no longer an option. To speak out in such a context is to do the actual dividing, to lace your mouth shut being by far the more productive course for not actually estranging people. “Togetherness” here is really just a ruling-class euphemism for “enforced conformity.”

Gareth Southgate made me hate the England team. Because I’m English.

He Shoots Himself, He Scores!
Now that he’s been told all this, how will James Graham’s forthcoming final-act rewrite of Dear England now conclude? Hopefully, with a highly dramatic suicide. I suggest that, the very morning after his resignation, Gareth sits down at his desk for the final time in his FA office, opens his morning mail, reads the first letter he finds, and places his head in his hands in pure Samuel Beckett-like existential despair, before going out onto the training pitch and immediately hanging himself from the nearest goalpost.

Why? Upon a big screen above the stage, the contents of the following Open Letter Reply From the Nation appear blown up in big, foot-high letters for all to read:

Dear Gareth,

Fuck off, and shut up.

Yours,
England