Uefa has dropped the ball over the Baku final

Azerbaijan’s shortcomings over civil rights go much deeper and broader than the safety concerns of one soccer player

Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, is a long way to go for a London derby. Hence the many complaints from football fans about the cost in time and money of travelling 2,900 miles to the steppes of central Asia to watch Arsenal play Chelsea in the Europa League final.

Valid, or at least understandable, as some of the objections about the venue may be, they fail to take account of the fact that this isn’t any old FA Cup tie or Premier League game, but the final of a European tournament. It is unusual for both finalists to come from one country, let alone the same city.

Baku may not be ideally placed, in any sense, to host this significant sporting event, but unless such finals are confined to stadia in traditional west European venues, supporters will find themselves from time to time travelling long-haul. One day, perhaps, the game in Azerbaijan will have become sufficiently developed for its countryfolk to complain about having to schlep all the way to Wembley or the Johan Cruyff Arena to see their beloved Neftchi FC battle it out with unfancied Qarabag.

A far more significant problem with Uefa’s decision to persevere with Baku is the organisation’s apparent indifference to the plight of Arsenal player Henrikh Mkhitaryan, who is Armenian. Since both nations fell out of the Soviet Union in 1991, Azerbaijan’s long-running dispute, including spells of warfare with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, makes it difficult for Mr Mkhitaryan to travel to the Azerbaijan capital with any great confidence.

The Azerbaijan government has offered guarantees for his safety; but, after consulting his family, Mr Mkhitaryan decided some time ago that he could not attend. Thus Arsenal will, though no fault of their own, be deprived of one of their most talented players; and, more to the point, Mr Mkhitaryan will miss the opportunity to appear in a prestigious high-profile game for his club. This is, to say the least, deeply disquieting.

But Azerbaijan’s shortcomings over civil rights go much deeper and broader than the safety concerns of one soccer player. Human Rights Watch summarises Azerbaijan’s human rights record as “appalling”, and the litany of abuses is so extensive that it merely adds to the evidence that Uefa doesn’t much care about such matters.

Uefa, like every other such international authority, has to balance the requirements of its sport with political and ethical considerations. In balancing the needs of a peripheral member of the European football “club”, Azerbaijan, against its human rights record, Uefa has surely erred, and done little for the cause of the game.

Indeed, everything that has emerged in this story has merely tarnished again the image of international football, not yet recovered from multiple Fifa scandals under the rule of Sepp Blatter. It is worth adding that Uefa showed itself remarkably feeble in punishing Montenegro for the racist abuse levelled at the England team during the Euro 2020 qualifier in April.

There are other challenging decisions in international sport that are worth reviewing – not least the 2022 Football World Cup scheduled for Qatar. It may, practically and legally, be too late to abandon the troubled Gulf state as a venue, but international football can at least still use the profile of the tournament, and its huge propaganda value to the authorities in Doha, as a way of leveraging some sort of progress in human rights.

If Baku is regarded as a less than satisfactory destination for major international football events, then Qatar must surely raise even more awkward questions. Human Rights Watch reports that “Qatari laws continue to discriminate against migrants, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals”. It is also in a state of cold war with Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Designed to boost the game in the oil-rich region, by 2022, the Qatar World Cup may not look like such a clever idea after all.