Football Association will challenge FIFA over any fine for wearing poppies

Football Association chief executive Martin Glenn has told FIFA he will fight any attempt to fine England for wearing poppies in Friday’s World Cup qualifier against Scotland at Wembley.

Both teams are set to defy FIFA’s ban on messages it considers to be commercial, personal, political or religious by wearing black armbands with embroidered poppies to mark Armistice Day.

The FA and the Scottish FA had hoped to do this without punishment — as they and the Football Association of Wales had done in three November friendlies in 2011 — but the new regime at world football’s governing body has refused to sanction an exception to the game’s laws.

FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura reiterated law four, paragraph four, which states that players’ equipment must be free from such messages.

Samoura pointed out that the law was brought in by the International Football Association Board, comprised of the four British home nations and FIFA, and said it must be “applied uniformly” for it to have authority.

But speaking to journalists at a Sport Industry Breakfast Club event in London, Glenn said: “If they [FIFA] fine us, we’ll contest it. They have much bigger problems they should be concentrating on. “I’m confident our legal position is right and our moral position is right. Our case is absolutely rock solid.”

Glenn, FA chairman Greg Clarke and their counterparts at the SFA have previously said they do not think wearing a poppy to commemorate those who have died in armed conflicts is a political message.

They said the 2011 compromise agreed with the previous leadership at FIFA should apply.

England midfielder Jordan Henderson told a news conference he believed it was “very important for the country, for the players, to remember what those people have done for this country.”