Qatar – NRC

Freek de Jonge handed over twenty thousand signatures to Marianne van Leeuwen of the KNVB in the Olympic Stadium. Enclosed text: “We want the KNVB to speak out in favor of moving the World Cup in Qatar.” Good of course, but offering a petition to the KNVB is just as hopeless as carrying water to the sea. In terms of organisation, the Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbal Bond does not differ in any way from the harmony or billiards association in the community centre. The complex in Zeist may be a bit larger, the buildings more impressive and Marianne van Leeuwen may have been the first woman to become director of professional football, but it remains Liesje in Blueberry Land. Even though a million signatures had been collected: the Dutch national team simply goes to Qatar, just like most sports journalists of course.

Marianne van Leeuwen accepted the petition and then turned everything around. The KNVB is going to the World Cup, the latest signals in Zeist are that there is movement and impact in the field of working conditions and human rights. “A boycott would have the opposite effect and even be harmful to the migrant workers who would lose their jobs, when we should be supporting them.”

She forgot to say that those 6,500 workers who died would otherwise have died for nothing.

Gijs de Jong, the secretary-general of the KNVB, to whom petitions are normally handed over against the World Cup in Qatar, could not have said it better. After several study trips in which he also spoke with ‘workers’, he also sees light at the end of the tunnel. We are of course not there yet, but eventually things will get better and let’s not forget that things are even worse in other Gulf countries than in Qatar. And in Dubai we all lie on the beach without feeling guilty. The fans of the human shortage will enjoy the KNVB in the coming months, I myself have a slight preference for Gijs de Jong’s sparring.

Typical KNVB to just put a traffic controller of a roundabout in a control tower in Schiphol. He knows a lot about everything that is coming flying, he does his best to make everything land while waving. Gijs de Jong is a marketer who automatically starts talking stupid things every time football hits society. That started in the long run-up to that corona-cursed European Championship of 2020 that would eventually be played in 2021. When a journalist noted that only few tickets would be available in the stadiums for real supporters, he noted that they were allowed to party on the street, in special zones.

Marcel van Roosmalen writes an exchange column with Ellen Deckwitz here.