The Michaelmas vac was not the finest time to be a sports fan. Whilst, as a Spurs fan, I can take some small succour from the fact that my team has avoided plummeting quite as far down the Premier League table this year, this minor boon can’t compensate for what has been an otherwise humiliating time for English sports. Yet even if you look abroad, the sporting world has little to offer but the sort of headlines that leave a foul taste in the mouth. Not all of these failings and embarrassments are of the same magnitude but, cumulatively, their burdens mean 2025 could definitely be a late contender for the title of sports’ annus horribilis.
Possibly the most infamous incident to occur in the sporting world this year was FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s extraordinary awarding of the inaugural ‘FIFA Peace Prize’ to Donald Trump. Whilst FIFA are no strangers to corruption – Sepp Blatter’s tenure was a particularly debauched period for the organisation, with widespread allegations of vote-buying and blatant cronyism – Infantino’s decision was astounding for a few reasons.
Firstly, it was a plain and obvious attempt to lobby favour with an administration whose principal made much of his failed hopes to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He ultimately settled for borrowing the medal from the genuine winner of the award, Marina Corina Machado, having abducted Nicolas Maduro to vent his frustrations. Secondly, said-President had done little to merit such an award, even one as demonstrably facetious as this, given he had repeatedly threatened the security and sovereignty of World Cup co-hosts Canada and Mexico and proclaimed he ‘didn’t need international law’.
Few hold FIFA to be an ethical, just organisation. But at least under Sep Blatter there was a tacit acceptance that yes, they were ludicrously corrupt – but what about it? The football wasn’t half bad. Under Infantino, football’s governing body has instead taken another step down the path to complete moral bankruptcy in its slavish and obscene obsequience to a completely disinterested President.
Infantino’s figurative orange elephant was not the only humiliating event in the sporting calendar over the vac, however. The ‘Battle of the Sexes’ between Nick Kyrgios and Aryna Sabalenka sought to evoke the memory of Billie Jean King’s victory in the previous, much-memorialised match of the same name against Bobby Riggs. The women’s number 1 against the men’s no. 673 played in a flat atmosphere despite all the attempts to manufacture hype, with Kyrgios’ victory failing to make a statement. Rather, it demonstrates the dearth of creativity in sports media. Rather than genuinely advance women’s sports, they sought to reheat the leftovers of contests from decades prior. Neither Kyrgios nor Sabalenka come out of this well: Sabalenka’s loss to Kyrgios does little for her name, and Kyrgios’ foul-mouthed reputation endures.
In the ongoing struggle between Britain and our Antipodean cousins on the cricket field, another humiliation swiftly reared its unpleasant, sun-burnt head. England entered the contest with a great deal of buzz in the papers about how Bazball would lead them to a nirvana of limitless runs and a swift, glorious resolution to the Ashes. Their arrival in the Land Down Under, unfortunately, failed to meet these lofty expectations. Each day brought a new humiliation, from disappointing performances on the field to reports that a significant number of the team were drunk off and during it. Of course, congratulations must go to the Australians for their excellent form – but England have serious questions to answer once they return home, nursing a metaphorical (and, for some of the players, literal) battering.
Wherever you look, sport in all its myriad forms appears to have stumbled into a great mess over the Michaelmas vac. Whatever small positives there have been, such as Lando Norris winning his inaugural F1 World Driver’s Championship, they were outweighed by grievous humiliations and embarrassments. Perhaps worst of all, demonstrative of the current state of English and British sport, was the crowd’s response to Luke Littler’s – England’s latest darts prodigy – second PDC world championship win.
It’s easy to forget but, under his prodigious beard, Littler is only a teen, and one who has achieved phenomenal success. But still he was booed, with the English fans unhappy that Luke ‘the Nuke’ was no longer a plucky underdog, now the dominant figure in English darts whom rooting for was not brave, but gauche. England seems trapped in a sporting slump, one which not even the fans want to clamber out of.
