Qatar is a freedom-loving country, Russia and especially President Putin need harmony, sport is not political. That’s how it is if you believe the FIFA Congress. Only one disturbs the heal-world fuss. You have to be grateful to Norway’s association president Klaveness for that.
Then someone – and a woman at that – comes onto the big, international football stage and raises serious allegations. Scandal! Norway’s football association president Lise Klaveness received a lot of criticism from the football powers that were present at the FIFA Congress in Qatar. What did she just say? Only the truth. But nobody else dares to do that.
Pretty sad. Because the facts that Klaveness presents are well known. But too serious to be forgotten. Human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have denounced Qatar for years. “The World Cup was awarded by FIFA in an unacceptable way and that had unacceptable consequences,” said the 40-year-old on Thursday. “Human rights, equality, democracy and the core interest of football were not in the starting XI. These basic rights were pushed off the field and onto the substitutes’ bench.” She spoke of injured and deceased workers on the stadium construction sites in Qatar, of the lack of rights for women and LGBTQ+.
She was the only one who spoke the unvarnished truth the day before the World Cup group draw. Unlike her FIFA colleagues, who wavered between horror, outrage and defense of Qatar, she is celebrated at least by Western experts and fans. “Excitement” Twitter is full of praise for the former international, saying she is “sensational” while FIFA is a “disgrace”.
Too many twisters in power
In fact, the speech was one thing above all, extremely remarkable, but what are we really happy about here? That someone speaks the truth. It is absurd that there is so much praise for facts that are not new. Or not absurd, because it makes it terrifyingly clear how far we have come from automatically expecting the truth in speeches.
For too long it’s been normal for men – it’s mostly men – to want to use their power to present their own view of things as reality. Former US President Donald Trump is a master at it, ex-FIFA President Sepp Blatter mastered the discipline just as much as his successor Infantino. IOC President Thomas Bach belongs to this group, and there are also some in the German Football Association who have probably twisted more facts than leaving them in place. Sport is political, there is no questioning it, and so sport has to deal with those in power, not simply adopt their opinion. Be it Bach with the Olympic Games in China or the DFB with the allocation of the 2006 World Cup and all the resulting catastrophes and criminal investigations. And Infantino with Qatar, the emirate by the way, in which, quite coincidentally, not only the World Cup takes place, but in which he lives since October.
Pessimists could almost assume that (sports) politics and truth don’t belong together. It certainly doesn’t hurt to fundamentally question statements, but immediately exposing them as lies is tiring. Klaveness shows that there is another way. That you don’t have to play every power game. That you can also appear on the world stage of football without being lulled into sleep. That’s refreshing, that’s encouraging. It would be even better if imitators could be found. And that’s why it’s perfectly okay to be thankful for something as simple as the truth.