As expected, the determination of western teams to promote our view of the world at a football tournament is reducing the opportunity sport offers for building bridges and binding people together in friendship. That's a valuable thing to cast aside.
For myself, I think if you wish to improve your own culture, fair enough. But we don't all have to believe the same things or pursue an identical sense of morality. Nor, if we think there's a correct, culturally-inclusive destination are we all in the same place in our trajectory.
If sports people from western countries wish to promote LGBT rights without at the same time seeming to think ourselves culturally superior, then here's a suggestion. Set aside virtue signalling abroad. It's the sort of imperial view that many of the same people excoriate in our forebears. Instead, have western players acknowledge their own inclinations domestically. Because right now, they don't - at least not in men's football. In the women's game, sexuality is widely acknowledged. And the issues of trans competitors in women's sports are not invisible, where it is obvious that declarations of trans rights and the realities of biology conflict with one another. But where are the gay male footballers? They don't appear to exist. Anywhere.
I propose we might humbly admit we ourselves are in want of a mirror. At least according to the standards we presume to set for the world.
Maybe if we led by example, rather than by wearing armbands...
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