Casting an eye over a summer of sports and riots, Mickey Ambrose looks at current affairs and sporting challenges

While mindless, brainless morons rioted in our towns and cities across the UK this summer, elsewhere decent folk of all cultures met both locally and internationally, embracing each other in a spectacular show of UNITY, a summer of sport we all enjoyed from the Euros to the Paris Olympics.

Question: what makes a dad, husband, a wife, a mum a son, a daughter get up one morning and decide to riot, throw objects, set vehicles on fire, loot shops, shout racial obscenities and attack our police officers and members of a community and think they are going to get away with it, with CCTV everywhere?

It’s a question to ponder but the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer wasted no time in giving his answer. The people responsible are now behind bars, for up to six years in some cases, so they won’t be going to their local shopping centre for a while.

Why do some MPs choose to incite racial hatred both in television interviews, online and in general, trying to divide communities because of someone’s skin colour?

Their false narratives have consequences. Some people use it as an excuse to riot while the conspirators sit back rubbing their hands saying ‘Job Done’.

I was brought up in Poplar and my best mate Tony Doyle from Northern Ireland lived in Bow. When we were about eight, he used to knock on my door on a Sunday after The Big Match, the equivalent to Match of The Day now. He said let’s play football, you can be Pele and I will be Bobby Moore. I said to him why can’t I be Bobby Moore. He pondered for a while and said, actually, you can be whoever you want to be.

Some years later I was fortunate to meet both Bobby Moore, the best defender in the world, in 1993 at Tottenham Hotspurs stadium and Pele, the best player in the world, in 2008.

The fact that we don’t hear anything from these loudmouthed MPs about the 4.3 million of our children living in poverty in the UK, or about the social inequalities in Newham and London, despite the London 2012 Olympics that cost £8.77 billion (more than three times the original budget of £2.4 billion) says everything about the sort of people they are.

Talking of the Olympics, I had the privilege to receive invitations from the Mayor of Berlin and the French Olympic Government Committee to watch England during the Euros where we reached the finals for the second time under Gareth Southgate and Steve Holland, and to the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Paris.

Even though we had some disruption on Eurostar en route due to saboteurs, that didn’t derail our spirits. It was a wonderful spectacle on the world stage, so well done the French National Olympic Committee, and in particular to Gwendoline Cazenave, CEO of Eurostar and her public facing staff who were calm throughout our arduous journey, brilliantly managed passengers during what turned out to be nearly a four-hour trip to Paris.

At the Games, Kelly Hodgkinson in the 800 meters final was the pick for me and it was the most watched event on the BBC at the Olympics. The 22-year-old runner attracted the biggest audience of any sport during the games with an incredible 9.1 million people. Hodgkinson ran 1:56.72 to claim the title.

Finally, it’s that time of year when the Premier League is back and West Ham have made a mixed start in their opening games. Taking on Aston Villa at the London stadium for the opener, they fell foul of Villa’s Jhon Duran, a summer transfer target who came off the bench to score the winner in a 1-2 defeat for the Hammers. But they got the ship back on course with a convincing 2-0 win at Crystal Palace on 24 August. Altogether, a measured start for the new Spanish manager Julen Lopetegui.

In next month’s edition I will share my new extended role which includes working at the House of Lords and my invitation from the government to attend the first Prime Minister’s Questions for the start of the new Parliament on Wednesday 4 September 2024 and also meetings with government Cabinet members in which I’ll be raising issues about football reform, including Secretary State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy, and Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner.

Mickey Ambrose is a former Chelsea and Charlton player who lives in Stratford.

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