In 2008, the then Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni gave the FAI some advice when discussions about moving an Ireland fixture against Georgia to neutral territory became necessary. In August 2008, South Ossetia was the battleground for a brief war between Georgia and Russia when Russian forces invaded to drive the Georgian army out of the region.

The game, which was due to be played 150km away in Tbilisi a month later, was considered by many to be too risky to play in Georgia’s capital.

“Be careful how you stroke the cat,” Trapattoni advised as the FAI looked to have the game moved to a neutral venue.

Georgia were keen to play in Tbilisi, feeling that they would be punished for something beyond their control, but the game was moved – as Trapattoni hoped, believing it would give Ireland an advantage – on security grounds.

Georgia’s players were left to talk in powerful terms about how they would use football to make a forlorn statement about their country’s struggles with a more powerful neighbour.

“We dedicated that win to the Georgian people. We played and won for them,” Irakli Klimiashvili, one of the country’s players said of a victory in Wales ahead of the Ireland game. “It was also a very clear message to the Russians, to say to them that while Georgia was suffering so much and enduring very difficult days, we could still make such an effort to win.”

I can’t recall too many shows of solidarity on the day of the game in Mainz where the match was ultimately played. Those of us who were there were simply relieved not to be near a warzone while Ireland took the entirely pragmatic view that they had started a World Cup campaign with three points.

*****

In 2010, there was a sense of mounting excitement in England that their bid to host the 2018 World Cup would be successful ahead of the vote in Zurich that December.

When it was announced that Vladimir Putin would not be travelling to Zurich for the last day of lobbying, the British press reported breathlessly that it may be because he didn’t want to be associated with Russia’s impending humiliation. FIFA delegates had been charmed by David Beckham, Prince William and, er, David Cameron.

But England was eliminated in the first round. They won two votes – one of them their own – while Russia triumphed. Putin had managed to convince FIFA with something beyond charm. “Russia loves football,” he said when he travelled to Zurich to thank the football family.

And what a family FIFA have been to Vladimir Putin. The leadership has been overhauled since that week in Zurich when Russia and Qatar were awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, but FIFA still managed – despite the annexation of the Crimea (which began days after Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in 2014) the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the interference in the Brexit referendum and in the 2016 US presidential election – to hold firm and allow Russia to host the 2018 tournament.

The following year, FIFA president Gianni Infantino was presented with Russia’s Order of Friendship medal by Putin. “You welcomed the world as friends and those bonds of friendship will never be broken,” Infantino gushed.

Infantino did manage to condemn the invasion of Ukraine by his forever friend last week. FIFA “condemns the use of force by Russia in Ukraine, and any type of violence to resolve conflicts,” the statement said using a formulation familiar to those of us on this island who are used to hearing equivocations when it comes to condemning specific acts of violence.

*****

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you,” is a line attributed to Trotsky even if he might not have said it. Sport has attempted to show a lack of interest in war and politics, a position which may have been viable once, but it was before regimes from Argentina to Russia saw sport as a way of altering their reputation and compromising those they are dealing with.

With the rise of sportswashing projects, it has become harder to hold the standard defence that sport and politics shouldn’t mix even if it usually meant that sport and a certain type of politics (say anti-apartheid protests) shouldn’t mix.

The power of sport could be seen on Saturday evening when Manchester City emerged for their match against Everton at Goodison Park wearing t-shirts in Ukraine’s colours and Everton appeared with Ukraine flags draped around their shoulders.

These gestures and the response of the crowd moved Manchester City’s Ukrainian international Oleksandr Zinchenko to tears and his compatriot Vitaliy Mykolenko on Everton’s bench looked overwhelmed.

It was an emotional show of unity. Across the world, people were making these simple gestures and sport was demonstrating that there was no better way of making a powerful and profound statement of solidarity than on a football field. This was a gesture that was about our shared humanity and the despair the world feels watching what is happening in Ukraine.

But just as many were angered when the UK Home office tweets that they’re flying the Ukraine flag or the EU lights its parliament in Ukraine’s colours when they have the power to do much more than a gesture, football can’t pretend that gestures are its only course of action anymore.

Manchester City’s owner Sheikh Mansour is the deputy prime minister of the UAE which abstained, along with China and India, when the UN security council voted to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

When City and Everton’s managers Pep Guardiola and Frank Lampard were interviewed about the subject after Saturday’s game they did so in front of a sponsors’ board which included the name of MegaFon, a company owned by Alisher Usmanov, the Russian oligarch, which sponsors Everton’s women’s team.

Usmanov is not a shareholder in Everton but his company USM Holdings is the sponsor of Everton’s Finch Farm training ground. In 2010, Usmanov said “I am proud that I know Putin, and the fact that everybody does not like him is not Putin’s problem” which sounds like the kind of praise Gianni Infantino could get on board with.

In the House of Commons last week, Usmanov was named, along with Roman Abramovich and others, by Margaret Hodge MP as “kleptocrats who have stolen from the Russian people”.

*****

Football struggles with all of this which again makes it a useful platform. Why should Micah Richards and Karen Carney – Sky’s pundits on Saturday – be expected to comment authoritatively when Chelsea announce as they did during the game that Roman Abramovich would be handing the “stewardship and care” of the club over to the Chelsea foundation? Football pundits struggle at time to be perceptive about football, so why should they be asked about geopolitics?

But someone has to face up to it. Thanks to the World Cup in Russia and another in Qatar, as well as the ownership of clubs like Newcastle United and Manchester City, it is impossible to “stick to football”. This, for better or worse, (and it isn’t for better) is football.

Football – and sport more generally – can no longer pretend that it hasn’t been used.

Sport might insist it is not interested in politics, but politics and war have always been interested in what sport can do for it.

On Sunday, the new stewards of Chelsea issued a statement about the Russian invasion of Ukraine which read more like a Eurovision entry, albeit written by the official Russian entrant.

“The situation in Ukraine is horrific and devastating. Chelsea FC’s thoughts are with everyone in Ukraine. Everyone at the club is praying for peace.” There was no mention of Russia. No mention of invasion. There was nothing in it that would upset a Russian oligarch. Abramovich’s daughter managed to be more strident on social media.

On Saturday, Poland announced they would not play Russia in their World Cup play-off in March. Sweden and the Czech Republic, who could potentially face Russia in a play-off final five days later, also said they would not play them. As it stands, Russia could get a bye to the World Cup unless FIFA decide to thrown them out. So far FIFA have done nothing.

*****

Ireland were due to play in Ukraine in June and maybe more could be done than a gesture of solidarity. On Thursday night, the FAI’s CEO Jonathan Hill tweeted a statement which he probably felt landed in that sweet spot of bland generalities that once was all that was expected from a football man.

“Never mind matches to be played or not, all our thoughts at the moment are with our football friends in the Ukraine, Russia and across Europe and the wider UEFA family. Be safe please.”

Hill deleted it minutes later, perhaps because he’d referred to ‘the Ukraine”, or he might have just reread it and realised it was banal to the point of meaninglessness. But no reworked version appeared. Maybe he felt it was simply better that sport and politics don’t mix.