“Violence”, “madness”, “error”: Kroos escalates Qatar criticism to a new level


“Violence”, “Insanity”, “Mistake”
Kroos escalates Qatar criticism to a new level

The criticism of the desert World Cup 2022 and especially of its host Qatar is as old as the idea of ​​the world tournament in footballing no man’s land itself. Now a DFB star finds hard words – and is much more concrete than t-shirt campaigns . Toni Kroos combines criticism with demands.

Football national player Toni Kroos has criticized the award of the World Cup to Qatar with unprecedented clarity and also initiated protest actions during the 2022 tournament. 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. “I think it is more important to draw extreme attention to the problems again, maybe in advance or during a tournament like this, so that something can improve,” said Kroos in the latest edition of the joint podcast “Just Luppen” with his brother Felix.

Toni Kroos described the awarding of the World Cup to Qatar in 2010 as a fundamental mistake. “I think it’s wrong that this tournament was given up,” said the 31-year-old. 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”.

Most recently, the German national football players, like their colleagues from Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, had protested on Tuesday evening at their World Cup qualifiers to demand compliance with human rights and thus also criticized the conditions in Qatar. Kroos is currently missing from the DFB team due to an injury.

According to research by the Guardian, more than 6500 workers from five Asian countries have died in the rich emirate in the past ten years. Qatar’s government said that reforms in recent years have significantly improved the situation of workers. The world football association FIFA also regularly points out improvements for the workers.

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