The national team protests for the observance of human rights, the criticism is not specifically addressed. The sign is still important, there is a lot of praise. Now a DFB star is suggesting taking the protest to a new level. That would be a paradigm shift.
Leon Goretzka is a reflective young man, the professional from FC Bayern is strong in opinion and, unlike many colleagues, is not afraid to use the usual campaigns of clubs and associations to position himself on social issues. Clear, pointed and without a back door: “Fritz Walter once said that all national players are foreign ministers in shorts. I think that’s a very good slogan. We players should use the great attention we receive to raise awareness of such issues.” he once said.
Only with the formulation of his criticism of the upcoming World Cup hosts Qatar did Goretzka bad, surprisingly difficult recently. Before the game against Iceland, the national players had painted “HUMAN RIGHTS” on Thursday with their own painted jerseys. Human rights, clearly, a universally good thing.
But what exactly should be made clear remained too vague. Even the eloquent, clever Goretzka couldn’t change that, who, when asked by RTL reporter Laura Wontorra, said: “It was pretty clear, ahem. We, uh, just talked about it in the team, ahem. Of course we also did , uh, the World Cup ahead of us, uh, it is discussed again and again. That, uh, we also want to make it clear to society that we are not, uh, that we are not, uh, ignoring that, but that we are very clear say what kind of conditions there have to be, and uh, we tried to make that clear from our side today. ” Joshua Kimmich, someone else who is worried, demanded: “Now you have to take the opportunity to draw attention.” Football has the necessary “radiance”, says the 26-year-old Bayern professional.
Kroos wants protest “also during the tournament”
Really specific is someone who is not part of the DFB convoy these days: Toni Kroos. No, a boycott of the finals in the emirate on the Gulf will probably not solve problems such as poor working conditions and homophobia, said the Real Madrid midfield star, who stayed away from the concerted DFB protest due to injury. “I think rather that it is important to draw extreme attention to the problems again, maybe in advance or” – and that would then be a paradigm shift in the protest culture of professional footballers – “even during a tournament like this, so maybe from that what can improve “, said Kroos in the latest edition of the podcast” Einfach mal Luppen “with his brother Felix.
FIFA, which has never left any doubts about going through the controversial World Cup in Qatar, expressly refrained from sanctioning the protests during international match week. Political expressions of opinion are actually strictly forbidden for the teams in the vicinity of the games. Punishments, as they know at FIFA headquarters in Zurich and, of course, in Doha, would fuel the protest instead of pacifying it. “FIFA believes in freedom of expression and in the power of football to drive positive change,” said Zurich. But if the players, as requested by Kroos, carry their protest into the Qatari summer of 2022, it should be icy. To snub the hosts during the tournament, FIFA could not let the professionals get away with it. The ultimate endurance test would be how serious teams, athletes and the world association are with their values presented in campaign form.
“Madness”, “Certain Violence”
Kroos went one step further – and called the World Cup award, which was massively burdened by allegations of corruption, by the then FIFA Executive Committee around ex-President Joseph Blatter, Franz Beckenbauer and the self-confessed Qatar voter Michel Platini in 2010 as a fundamental mistake. In a monologue that lasted several minutes, Kroos listed what he saw as the terrible working conditions at World Cup stadiums and spoke of “that many workers from Qatar but also guest workers from other countries simply have to work nonstop, sometimes in 50 degrees heat” .
They would “simply suffer from inadequate nutrition and a lack of drinking water, which is insane, especially with the temperatures,” added Kroos and complained about a “certain violence” that “is carried out on workers”. The ongoing boycott question was “actually discussed much too late anyway,” he noted. Or more precisely: “In general, I am of the opinion that we are ten years too late for a boycott,” said national team colleague Joshua Kimmich recently in Bucharest. In December 2010, Blatter pulled the organizer Qatar out of the envelope.
The chairwoman of the Bundestag committee for human rights supports the actions of the German national team. “Anyone who remains silent about human rights violations is not acting apolitically – as sport claims,” said FDP politician Gyde Jensen. “Instead, through his silence, he sets a clear political signal by tacitly accepting the situation.” The DFB selection “did the only right thing” with their jersey campaigns in the World Cup qualification, they were no longer silent.
And that a few days after research by the Guardian had shown that more than 6500 workers from five Asian countries had died in the rich emirate of Qatar in the past ten years – precisely where the soccer World Cup is to take place next year. The moral implications of hosting the largest tournament in world sport there have been talked about for many years. Also at the DFB. The t-shirt campaign was a symbol. An important one at that. “This action in the national team sends an important signal for the situation in Qatar and increases the pressure on the government,” said spokesman Wolfgang Büttner of Human Rights Watch.
The director of the Swiss national team calls on athletes and, above all, associations to go one step further. In an interview with the Keystone-SDA agency, Pierluigi Tami said that “we have to face the issue in a serious way, the associations also have to work together. We shouldn’t think that we can solve the problem with a few slogans on T-shirts.” ” The Swiss Football Association SFV relies on the dialogue with FIFA and Amnesty International. “In this way we can also exert influence. Amnesty International also speaks out against a boycott,” said Tami.
Norway’s national coach Stale Solbakken was in the same direction. The protests, which were largely initiated by Norway’s team, were largely about “putting pressure on FIFA to deal more directly and more strictly with the authorities in Qatar in order to impose stricter conditions”. Nobody from the ranks of the DFB had become that specific.
“Not the merit of FIFA”
FIFA itself regularly points out improvements for the workers when it criticizes the organization and conditions in the emirate. “The human rights situation in Qatar has improved. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International report that,” said Jensen. “The increased global public pressure that has arisen from reporting on the inhumane conditions during the construction of the World Cup stadiums certainly contributed to this. This is not due to FIFA, but to human rights organizations and journalists.” The improvements are “extremely fragile”.
According to defender Robin Gosens, the DFB stars are now planning the third action for the evening game against North Macedonia. “There is still a lot of catching up to do. I believe that human rights are non-negotiable, and we have to bring a certain sustainability into it,” said Bergamo professional Gosens on the NDR2 Bundesliga show podcast.
National coach Joachim Löw, like DFB President Fritz Keller, praised the national players’ commitment. Like Kroos, the head coach, who is leaving in the summer, does not consider a World Cup boycott to be expedient. “A boycott doesn’t help anyone. With a tournament like this, you can generate attention all over the world and get things moving in the right direction,” said Löw. This is how his lead player Kroos sees it: “What one can say in general, and that is also important, that football must of course draw attention to the problems, also with the range and again and again.”
The DFB itself had contaminated the initiative, which, as the team unanimously assured, had not been discussed with those responsible, a few hours later itself. With a glossy image clip disguised as a “making of”. After all the praise and recognition, there was immediately ridicule and anger. The former national player Dietmar Hamann called him “unscrupulous”. “Doing thousands of PR with the misery shows how far you have come from us.” But this is another story.
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