There was a curious irony in the lovely Thatcher popping her clogs at the tail-end of a weekend which had been largely dominated by discussions of Paolo Di Canio’s fascist leanings. Foul Play spent Sunday afternoon engrossed in Munster’s heart-warming victory at the Stoop, but I couldn’t help turning my head every few minutes to inspect events at Chelsea-Sunderland, where in spite of the fact that a pretty good football game was unfolding on the field, most attention was of course focused on the touchline.

The man himself did not exactly live down to his reputation as a raving lunatic, frantically hopping around and gesticulating wildly, and at one point raising his right arm to communicate some tactical point or other, giving rise to a golden photo-opportunity which was gleefully seized upon by the assembled snappers. 
Initial impressions are that, putting the political furore to one side and judging the issue entirely on its footballing merits, Sunderland’s owner, Ellis Short, needs his head examined. To describe the decision as ‘high-risk’ would be a savage understatement: to get rid of a highly accomplished manager (Martin O’Neill) with two decades’ worth of experience and a proven track record, at a point in the season where they lie a nose-hair above the relegation zone with a handful of games left, and replace him with a wholly inexperienced loose cannon who quite clearly isn’t the full shilling, is the sort of hasty decision that tends to backfire in the long term, if not much sooner. It is true that Di Canio’s record at Swindon was highly impressive, judged purely on the results, but they were also spending money at a rate unmatched by any other club in the lower two divisions.
It might also be politely pointed out that the eccentric Roman brings plenty of baggage with him that the club could have done without; Paolo’s political leanings are a matter of record, and the controversy that has erupted since his appointment ought to have been entirely foreseeable. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, whatever one personally makes of Di Canio’s political outlook, it is entirely his business and has zero relevance to his suitability as a football manager. If he were an attested racist whose prejudices were being brought to bear in areas of team selection and player recruitment, that would be one thing and there ought to be legal consequences – but we have no evidence at all that this is the case. 
The jury seems to be split on whether Di Canio is merely an idiot who got a little too carried away playing to the galleries among Lazio’s notoriously hard-right ‘Irriducibili’ on the Curva Nord, or a genuinely committed fascist ideologue whose devotion to the cause is absolute. The presence of a very large tattoo on his back extolling Benito Mussolini, and the look on his face during some of those right-armed salutes, leads me to suspect the latter. Certainly there was hardly any mileage in him pretending to be a fascist when he uttered the offending quotes, so we have to assume they were entirely genuine, and his belated disavowal of fascism last week appeared to be done through gritted teeth and with some reluctance. 
Anyone who knows me will scarcely need it pointed out that as a raging Trotskyite republican, I don’t exactly see eye to eye with the Lazio ultras’ world-view or share their veneration of Il Duce. But I’m a little disturbed by the apparent assumption in the UK’s liberal press that only people with conventionally ‘acceptable’ opinions ought to be eligible to hold senior positions in the world of sport. It opens up a real can of worms and potentially leads down a very slippery slope to a different, insidious sort of fascism: namely, do we really want a situation where prospective football managers are vetted in advance to make sure their political beliefs are the right ones? How exactly is this supposed to work? Do we subject them to a questionnaire live in front of the Sky Sports cameras? There is no way of deciding where exactly to draw the line, and it would be wrong of anyone to do so in any event. Otherwise, the logical conclusion is a sporting universe where those who are deemed too right-wing, or too left-wing, or have been unable to keep daft opinions to themselves, get discarded the minute they deviate from orthodoxy and take their ‘freedom of speech’ a little too far. 
The Glenn Hoddle case of 1999 set a worrying precedent whereby managers can be hounded out of their jobs purely for silly comments made in the public arena which have absolutely nothing to do with football. For those of you too young to recall, the essential gist of the then-England manager’s comments was that disabled people are paying for sins committed in a previous life. A ridiculously stupid observation, for sure. But in the extent of its stupidity, is it all that different from the belief that Jesus Christ was physically resurrected after being crucified on the cross, having been born to a virgin as the son of God? Or that the free market is best left to its own devices to ensure maximum economic prosperity for all? Or that the Poppy is an appropriate way to honour the senseless slaughter of millions by various imperialist powers in the First World War? And would anyone seriously attempt to advocate that people who believe in the propositions I’ve just mentioned are automatically unfit to manage football clubs?
The point is that people are free to agree or disagree about all these issues, and until such time as everybody is on the exact same page and has nothing left to argue about, dissenting opinions and beliefs are entirely natural. This certainly isn’t to imply that there is anything healthy or harmless about fascism as expressed by the Mussolini regime, whose virulent racism was expressed violently in the slaughter of thousands in Ethiopia. But the wider point is that, for instance, nobody bothers to howl in protest when the Star-Spangled Banner is blared out on Super Bowl night with gushing eulogies to the ‘brave servicemen and women risking their lives for liberty’ in other people’s countries, although future generations might justifiably wonder what exactly renders this any less offensive than endorsement of old Benito. 
If we rewind a few years, ‘Big Phil’ Scolari was largely left to get on with the job of managing Chelsea without the Guardian howling for his head, despite his aggressive homophobia and overt appreciation of the late Chilean tyrant Augusto Pinochet. Among top present-day managers, Fabio Capello and Jose Mourinho are understood to be strongly right-wing. By and large they have had the sense to keep quiet about this, and nobody gets on their case about it. Our own glorious leader, Giovanni Trapattoni, is known to be a devout Catholic and Opus Dei ‘co-operator’; of the many perfectly good reasons to remove him from his post, this wouldn’t seriously figure among the top twenty. The erstwhile Rangers manager Jock Wallace, a man who made Alex Ferguson look soft as shite, was prone to brag about his record of military service in disobedient corners of the Empire, northern Ireland included, and whole-heartedly embraced what might be gently referred to as the club’s ‘traditions and values’: these days, he is fondly recalled and spoken of warmly as a colourful character who made the footballing landscape a livelier place.
People aren’t perfect, and their politics will vary wildly from one individual to another. Sunderland may well live to regret the Di Canio appointment, if they don’t already. There are ample grounds for thinking that he is perhaps not all that well qualified for the task he has taken on. But his political views aren’t among them.