If FIFA 22 Wants To Represent Modern Football, It Should Include Taking The Knee
Wherever you stand on it, it’s part of modern football.
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When England play Croatia later on today, the England players will take the knee before kick-off as a form of protest against racism, particularly racism towards Black players in football. We know this is the reason the England team will do it, because manager Gareth Southgate and several of the England squad have explained this motivation several times. Unfortunately, it’s likely that this ten-second, peaceful gesture in defiance of racism will be greeted by boos – although if you ask the people booing, they will swear that they’re not racist at all.
They’re not booing because they support racism, but because they see taking the knee as a gateway to Marxism – kneeling before playing football being one of the key messages on Das Kapital. It’s not about racism, even though everyone doing it has explained very patiently that it is. It’s about cultural Marxism and Communism and Corbynism and facism and BLM and ‘Go back to your own country!’. Wait, no. Not that last one. They’re not racist, remember.
Undoubtedly, taking the knee is contentious. But it’s also a huge part of modern football, having been a regular part of the Premier League this past season and now being incorporated into the Euros. If it’s such a significant part of the modern game, shouldn’t it be included in FIFA 22?
FIFA is still the pinnacle of the footballing sim, but it has failed to keep up with certain developments in the modern game. Another contentious issue – contentious for a completely different reason – is VAR. Not a weekend passes by without some sort of VAR story popping up, and yet FIFA has completely ignored it. As unpopular as VAR is, it’s hard to claim FIFA fully captures the drama of the game when VAR isn’t there.
Of course, this is a much smaller issue. You include VAR systems or you don’t. Taking the knee is not just a single action – regardless of your feelings on it, we all seem to agree that it’s about more than putting one knee to the turf for ten seconds and then standing back up again. The “no politics in video games” argument has changed rapidly in the last year or so, with several games including messages in support of the Black Lives Matter or Stop Asian Hate movement. Meanwhile, where Ubisoft has previously pushed back on the suggestion that its games about a post-Brexit dystopia, the economies of dictatorship, or geopolitical warfare are political by nature, it recently released a statement confirming that Far Cry 6 is indeed political – just not about Cuba specifically, despite it being based in part of the stories of Cuban guerrilla fighters and with antagonist Giancarlo Esposito claiming he based his performance of Anton Castillo on Fidel Castro.
The separation of politics and gaming is no longer clear cut, and if games want the kudos of supporting popular social justice trends, they have to be prepared to take the boos that go along with them. You might argue FIFA is a very different game. It’s not a narrative experience like Far Cry 6, and it doesn’t exist within a political sphere. Except that it does. Football is an inherently political sport, a game that belongs to the working class that has been slowly but surely shifted away from us under the guise of a ‘family friendly’ rebrand aimed at (rightfully) pushing out hooliganism, at the cost of pricing local fans out. When Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock called out footballers wages, only to repeatedly ignore calls for free school meals by Marcus Rashford, this was not football’s first foray into politics. It was simply part of a pattern that has existed for generations.
If I start going down this route I’ll never stop, but the reason we see much more technical play today and far less jack-of-all-trades James Milner-style players is because collective governments around the world have closed parks and forced kids to learn to play on concrete, leading to a different development path. That’s probably a story for another day though.
The point is football is a very political sport. It always has been. And sporting games have previous here. NBA 2K21, made by 2K Sports rather than FIFA devs EA, explicitly referenced the player shutdown last season, and included the Black Lives Matter court markings many WNBA teams used.
There are reasons to have issues with taking the knee. When Colin Kaepernick first did it, it was a protest, and it cost him his career as an NFL quarterback. Now, it’s corporate and pre-approved, which isn’t exactly how protests work. There also needs to be more work going on behind the scenes – sanctions on fans who boo, more action against racism from players, and greater education instead of gestures should all be the next steps. To be unsatisfied with its effect is one thing. To see it as a backdoor entrance for cultural Marxism is another thing entirely.
If FIFA 22 wants to become a football sim that represents the modern game in all its forms, it needs to acknowledge the way it’s changed. Taking the knee is a way to do that. Will virtual players kneeling down in a skippable animation change anything? No, it will likely do even less than the real players doing it – after all, it’s those next steps that actually make the difference. But racism is rampant in our society, and if nothing else, the England football team is at least trying to acknowledge that. This is one of the youngest and most diverse squads England has ever taken to a major tournament, which suggests the world is changing – if only a little bit. If FIFA wants to be part of that change, the small gestures are a start. If it’s not even willing to do that, I’m not sure where it goes from here.
Next: What Could FIFA 22’s Rumoured Online Career Mode Mean?
Stacey Henley is the Editor-in-Chief at TheGamer, and can often be found journeying to the edge of the Earth, but only in video games. Find her on Twitter @FiveTacey
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