The national team has qualified for the World Cup. The team said it was due to itself that there was no cheering, just a shrug of the shoulders stern– Voice of Philipp Köster.
We have seen greater cheers than the one that broke out in the Skopje stadium on Monday evening after the final whistle. The national players hugged and were hugged by the visibly relieved national coach Hansi Flick. But that was it, the 4-0 win against North Macedonia and the associated qualification for the World Cup next year was not even celebrated with a beer-loving celebration in the exhaustion pool. Tabloid reporters later found banana chips and half-squeezed gel drinks in the cabin.
The staid party of the national team mirrored the mood in the football people pretty exactly, who would also be very happy to look forward to the World Cup. The mood, however, is bad for a variety of reasons. First of all, there is the permanently broken relationship between the audience and the national team. Long gone are the days when international matches drew the masses in front of the television. Last year, a well-hung episode “Bares for Rares” even hit the national team in terms of TV ratings.
Qatar: World Cup hosts create a bad mood
Which is not only due to the miserable performance at the tournaments, but rather to the staging as an aseptic troop without heart and character, symbolically condensed in the PR name “The team”, which is based on an invented quote and is not used by anyone in the world – except for manager Oliver Bierhoff, who gave her the sticky label after winning the 2014 World Cup. Although some national players are now trying to get closer to the base, how irritable the mood is, was shown by the excitement about a few taped windows in the hotel of the national team in Hamburg. Everything is currently seen as arrogance and isolation. You trust the troops to do everything.
The host of the World Cup, the emirate of Qatar, puts people in at least as bad a mood. The country got the bid for the tournament through bribery of the general staff in dizzying financial dimensions. The flow of money to the accounts of relevant Fifa officials are well documented through various legal proceedings. The conditions in the emirate are even worse than the baksheesh, which is almost common when awarding such events, where women are treated as second-class citizens, homosexuals are persecuted and, for its neat stadiums, innumerable guest workers are treated like slaves and, if necessary, even let die on poorly secured construction sites.
Football in stadiums that people had to die for
If you want to see football in stadiums for which many people had to die, many fans ask themselves and cannot believe that so many celebrities are still harnessed to the emir’s PR cart. Jürgen Klinsmann, for example, who is looking forward to “perhaps the best World Cup of all time” and prophesied that “the entire region” will want to show what it can do in terms of football and tourism. Bearing in mind that the tiny sheikdom has been isolated in the entire Gulf region for years, it was a crazy excursion into geopolitical fantasy land and a foretaste of what awaits us in the coming year and a half, namely the whitewashing of Qatar as a cosmopolitan and peaceful country.
Many football fans have made the decision not to attend this PR event. A majority of the population also considers a boycott to be desirable. Such an absence is not even rudimentarily discussed in the sporting leadership of the national team. That is understandable too. For many national players, such a tournament is a highlight of their footballing life.
Do racism campaigns only apply in terms of content, DFB?
What is less understandable, however, is that the national team does not even attempt to develop an attitude towards the tournament in Qatar based on morality, decency and empathy. That does not have to mean fundamental opposition, but first and foremost the obligation to obtain thorough information about the conditions in the host country. And to use your own influence effectively from this level of information in order to improve the situation on site.
To put it another way: Why don’t the national players demand quick and effective improvements on the World Cup construction sites in a joint resolution? Why don’t national players from all countries join forces to speak out for homosexual rights in? And why is there nothing to be heard from a powerful association like the DFB? Do its campaigns for diversity and against racism only apply domestically? No, everyone has the choice to get involved in a better, more humane World Cup in their own way.
Finally end the booming silence
One thing is already clear: the tournament will always retain the image of an exclusively economically and geopolitically profitable event for the host, brought about through bribery and carried out in a country whose football culture is poorly manageable. A boycott, however, would not improve the situation of workers in. On the contrary, an emirate exposed in this way would fall far behind the tentative reforms of recent years. Instead, the big football nations, the influential Fifa officials, the TV broadcasters and sponsors finally have to end the booming silence with which they acknowledge the ever new horror reports from the Persian Gulf. You must press for the implementation of the long-promised reforms under threat of real consequences such as the termination of existing collaborations and contracts.
The national team could initiate this process. And so also to win back the hearts of many football fans.
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
