A century ago on Christmas Day 1914, while a savage war was taking place, football emerged as a universal power to bring people together on the western front in Flanders fields.
Recently, schools in Britain rescheduled their timetable to view an impressive video of famous players reading letters from soldiers who had participated in that football match when British and German troops emerged spontaneously from their trenches to declare an unofficial truce.
That moment was, most of all, a human yearning for a sense of normality, however momentary, that pushed them out of their trenches unarmed in order to play a football match in No Man’s Land on the wind-swept frozen mud in Flanders fields on Christmas Day 1914.
It was a memorable moment as soldiers, after burying their dead, played a football match which was the prelude for the exchange of photographs and presents.
In the stillness of that holy night, the Germans sang Stille Nacht with the British echoing Silent Night.
A monument depicting a steel football placed on a shattered shell half buried in the mud was recently unveiled in Flanders by Michel Platini, president of Uefa. Platini, in a moving address said: “I pay tribute to the soldiers who 100 years ago showed their humanity by playing football together, opening an important chapter in European unity and providing a lasting example to young people”.
Platini also announced the start of an Under-12 Football Tournament on Flanders fields with the participation of British, German, French, Belgian and Austrian teams.
The power of sport as a conveyor of peace and international understanding is not yet fully utilised. Sport can even save the world from a nuclear holocaust: just as in the 1970s ‘ping-pong’ diplomacy eased tensions between China and the US, sport can heal the wound in the dangerous flash-points like North Korea, Iran and Palestine.