The FAI officials responsible for the decision to play seemed keen to avoid the spotlight and left the team’s Icelandic head coach, Heimir Hallgrímson, to bear the brunt of public scrutiny. The Israel Football Association launched an extraordinary attack on Hallgrímson after he made the following statement in the run-up to the game: “We’re not playing with genocide, we’re playing against genocide. We are playing against Israel; we are not playing with Israel.”
There can be few if any precedents in modern sporting history for the Israel FA’s official response:
We have contributed to the world and humanity in countless fields, earning an impressive number of Nobel Prizes along the way. Unfortunately, we have not yet found a cure for stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy displayed by the Republic of Ireland team coach. We’re not playing with ignorance, hypocrisy and stupidity, we’re playing against the coach who embodies them.
This put paid to any notion that it was possible to keep politics out of sport in this situation. However, the FAI did not see it as an opportunity to revisit their decision to play the games.
Nor did they see any need to publicly defend Hallgrímson. The Irish taoiseach, Micheál Martin, did intervene on his behalf, branding the Israeli remarks “unacceptable” and calling for them to be withdrawn: “Israel can’t keep denying what the world knows, and what the world understands.” But there was no statement from the FAI, although it was reported to have complained to UEFA privately.
The FAI officials responsible for the decision to play seemed keen to avoid the spotlight.
The FAI could easily have stated that Hallgrímson was using the word “genocide” because this is the official position of the Irish government, which has decided to join the South African case at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of violating the Genocide Convention through its actions in Gaza. It could also have briefed Hallgrímson to make the same point in his defense. There appears to have been no effort to do so.
Ill-equipped to handle the political weight of the situation, the former dentist wilted in the line of fire at the pre-match press conference. Hallgrímson fielded questions from combative Israeli journalists, hounding him over a past coaching position in Qatar as well as Ireland’s decision to play against Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Under pressure, he apologized for using the word “genocide” in his previous statement: “It is a strong word and the wrong word for me to use.”
Hallgrímson’s capitulation seemed only to embolden the Israel FA, which flippantly declared, after Ireland agreed to play, that “football had won.” Israel FA Head of Communications Shlomi Barzel was asked if he was responsible for the statement that charged Hallgrímson with “stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy.” His response was defiant: “I am responsible for that, and I am not going to apologize. After hearing him today, I will take back the word ‘stupidity.’” In other words, he stood by his description of the Ireland manager as an ignorant hypocrite.