OUTRAGED FA bosses have revealed Fifa threatened England with “unlimited disciplinary action” if players wear rainbow armbands at the World Cup.
And that could even have included a points deduction.
FA chief executive Mark Bullingham is also angry Fifa only told the Three Lions just before they set off for Monday’s World Cup opener with Iran.
England skipper Harry Kane was upset he was unable to wear the band against Iran or the USA on Friday after hearing the punishment could be worse than a yellow card or a fine.
And Bullingham says the FA are “frustrated, angry” at the manner of Fifa’s “outrageous” intervention.
He told ITV Sport: “We have been clear that we wanted to wear it and we were committed.
“We announced that we would do that in September, we had a lot of meetings with Fifa over that period and on Saturday before the game we felt we’d reached an understanding where we would wear it.
“We hadn’t got permission but we would face a fine for it.
“Unfortunately then on the day of the game they gave us ten minutes notice – two hours before we were due to go to the game… they came here with five officials and they ran us through a scenario where at a minimum anyone wearing the armband would be booked and face disciplinary action on top of that.
“It was unlimited. They would take disciplinary action against any player that was wearing the armband on top of having a yellow card.”
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He confirmed that could mean a ban for future games.
Asked to describe Fifa’s behaviour, he said: “The level of feeling is very high. We are frustrated, we’re angry, we thought it was outrageous the way this was handled.
“That doesn’t move us anywhere we wanted to go. We wanted to show our support to the community and were not able to do so.”
Bullingham stressed the FA are sympathetic to the view that England should have defiantly donned rainbow armbands anyway.
But he added: “We felt that we couldn’t put the players in that position – the World Cup which many of them had dreamt of playing in since they were young – suddenly they may not be able to play a part in it.”
