Es has given excellent reports on “Qatar”, the complex surrounding the football World Cup which begins next week at the most absurd imaginable time of the year. Public television has severely scratched the surface of the product with critical documentaries, which it wants to sell us over four weeks with a total of 160 hours of transmission time, including fat advertising budgets. The broadcasters not only broadcast the sport, they also report on the economic and socio-political conditions of the globally operating event machinery that stomps behind it and the mechanics of which very few of us know.
However, what we have heard about it is so unbelievable that one can only speak of an immoral system. In the FIFA system, greed and bribery were the order of the day – one is reluctant to put it in the past tense. The idea of the then FIFA President Sepp Blatter to make the award for the years 2018 and 2022 together was already corrupt. The point was to create close links between the two lists of candidates in order to increase the possibility of vote-cheating and widespread purchasability. And so it happened.
Nudity in protest
Those who are outraged by Qatar’s lack of democracy also mean FIFA management. We now know that FIFA President Infantino has relocated to the host country or now has a domicile there; in these circles you have a few. DFB media director Steffen Simon has clearly stated the moral weights that come to rest on this funny scale: “Qatar didn’t invent the system that helped it get the World Cup.” No, because “the West” invented it . We. And after we invented it, we invited Qatar and others to bid to host the greatest sporting spectacle on earth.
Boycott or not? Please, everyone do what they want. There are good reasons for both. A group of fans at Schalke has been playing naked football for two years to protest against “Qatar”. In earnest. Some may find this brave, others stupid or aesthetically objectionable. We ourselves are part of the problem that we would so much like to solve. By the way, this has been the case for a long time. With the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, a right-wing regime of terror was washed clean, and anyone who wanted to take part had to shut up. That was true for the DFB, but also for the players. And what was the conclusion? Udo Jürgens sang “Buenos dias, Argentina!”.
