The tournament is at risk after Indonesia’s refusal to host the Israeli national team.
The Under-20 World Cup will be held in Indonesia from 20 May to 11 June this year, returning after four years and the edition canceled due to the pandemic. 24 teams will take part in the competition, including Italy, who qualified thanks to the semi-final they reached at the last Under-19 European Championship. Together with the Azzurri, the European expedition to Indonesia is made up of France, England and, for the first time ever, Slovakia and Israel. Everything would be fine except that, less than two months after the start, there is still no date for the group draw.
But why isn’t there? There isn’t because the group draw – which should have taken place on Friday 31 March – was postponed to a later date by FIFA. This decision came following the announcement of the governor of Bali, I Wayan Koster, of not wanting to welcome the Israeli delegation. Indeed, Bali should have been the venue for the draw and is the only island in the Indonesian archipelago not with a Muslim majority. For this reason, the hypothesis had circulated of having the Israeli national team play group stage matches right on the small tourist island.
FIFA’s decision comes in a climate of growing tension regarding Israel’s participation in the Under-20 World Cup. Indeed, as the draw approaches, there have been more and more frequent episodes of protests by the Indonesian population, who the boycott of the Middle Eastern country, and Indonesia and Iraq have made it clear that they do not want to be included in the same group as Israel. The Indonesian football federation, in the name of the success of the event, is trying to throw water on the fire but the tensions between Indonesia and Israel and the sporting boycott of the latter are issues with very deep roots.
Relations between Indonesia and Israel
Indonesia and Israel do not currently have official diplomatic ties. This situation has been going on since the end of the Second World War, when the state of Israel was just born and the president of Indonesia was Sukarno. The anti-colonialist and non-aligned vision of the Indonesian leader had given the country a strongly pro-Arab perspective, leading him to exclude any possible opening towards the new Middle Eastern state. This approach met with the favor of the Indonesian population also because the latter has a strong Muslim majority. Nowadays, even Indonesia is the state with the largest number of inhabitants of the Muslim religion in the world.
In the continuation of the last century, especially after the death of Sukarno, numerous unofficial channels of communication were opened between the two countries but, despite Israel’s attempts, Indonesia has always remained firm in not wanting to establish official relations until the Middle Eastern state had not recognized the independence of Palestine. For Indonesia, normalizing relations with Israel would also mean violating its own constitution, as well as meeting the disfavor of public opinion. Indeed, the preamble of the Indonesian basic charter states that Indonesia believes that “liberty is the right of every nation“and yes”opposes colonialism in the world“.
Such a tense political situation inevitably has consequences for sport, as we have been able to observe in recent days. However, there are much older similar precedents, of which the most famous dates back to 1962. In that year, Sukarno’s Indonesia was preparing to host the Asian Games in the capital Jakarta, in which the Israeli delegation was also supposed to participate. However, the host country refused to allow Israeli representatives to enter its territory, as a sign of solidarity with the Arab nations – the same happened with the Taiwanese delegation in the name of relations with the People’s Republic of China. The Games were held anyway, but Indonesia was excluded from the Tokyo Olympic Games the following year.
Boycott Israel with football
As almost everyone knows, the Israel national football team is part of UEFA, its national team plays against European national teams, and Israeli teams take part in the Champions League, as well as the Europa League and the Conference League. Understanding why is quite easy. However, Israel was a member of the Asian confederation, the AFC, from its inception until the mid-1970s, despite the fact that the political climate in the Middle East was far from relaxed even in those years. Israel’s presence in the AFC lasted until 1974, when one of the consequences of the previous year’s Yom Kippur War was the decision to expel Israel from the confederation, passed by 17 to 13 votes.
In any case, Israel’s stay in Asian football had been far from smooth. On the occasion of the 1958 World Cup qualifiers, the first with an Afro-Asian path not connected to the European one, all teams that were supposed to face Israel withdrew. Turkey, Indonesia, Egypt and Sudan all refused to challenge the Israelis, who would have gone on to the World Cup without touching a ball. FIFA then intervened, who invented a playoff with one of the European eliminated to save face. Belgium also declined and in the end it was Wales who traveled to Ramat Gan and eliminated Israel from the competition.
In 1964, however, Israel hosted its first Asian Cup. Of the 17 teams entered in the qualifiers, 11 withdrew, leaving the way open for Hong Kong, South Korea and India, and in the end it was Israel who won. In the next edition the Israeli team found itself qualified again without playing any games due to the boycotts of Kuwait and Afghanistan. Two years later they qualified for their first and so far only World Cup and FIFA decided to change the rules of the draw, so as to be sure to avoid the Israeli national team finishing in the same group as Morocco.
After being expelled from the AFC, Israel was left without a confederation for twenty years, not playing any continental competition and being hosted alternately in the qualifying paths for the Europe and Oceania World Cup. Just by beating Australia and New Zealand, Israel came one step away from Italia ’90, being defeated in the Interzone play-off by Colombia. Only since 1994, Israel is officially a member of UEFA.
Israel’s present
Although the chances of a meeting between the Israeli team and the national team of a country that supports the boycott of Israel are now reduced to a minimum, the cases of teams that have refused to play on Israeli soil in recent years are not uncommon. Always remaining in football: in 2018 it was Argentina that canceled the friendly match that would have played in Israel before the World Cup, also due to strong pressure from public opinion. The same thing happened in 2022 with Uruguay and, at club level, in 2019 it was Barcelona who gave up a friendly match against Beitar Jerusalem, an expression team of theextreme right Jewish.
Football, of course, isn’t the only sport embroiled in tensions. At the last Olympic Games, Algerian judoka Fethi Nourine withdrew from the competition in order not to meet an Israeli opponent. Especially in individual sports, there are many precedents and many date back to just a few years ago.
Israel’s unexpected qualification for the finals of the Under-20 World Cup has brought to the fore, even in football, a problem that FIFA did not expect to have to face and which in fact caught it unprepared. In addition to postponing the draw, FIFA has not yet taken other measures or expressed an opinion in this regard, even if there is already talk of the possibility of moving the tournament to Argentina or even (once again) to Qatar. What is certain is that it is impossible to separate politics and sport, regardless of what FIFA and national federations may say.
