“We are all currently experiencing difficult times.” This sentence, or something similar, has been said often and in many places in the past few days. In Frankfurt, Hesse’s Prime Minister Boris Rhein said it at the sports press ball, and Mayor Mike Josef also made the same comments there. And then there was Roger Goodell, the powerful head of the National Football League (NFL), the highest-grossing sports league in the world, who is currently in Germany for two games of the season. War in Ukraine, war in the Middle East, the renewed anti-Semitic sentiments of some in this country and more. There are truly disturbing things happening in this world.
Rhein, Josef and Goodell emphasized something else in this context. Goodell summed it up well at a reception on Friday evening: “We want to use our sport to build bridges between countries, between people.” According to the NFL Commissioner, he hoped that football in Frankfurt could help “the “To spread the values and common interests that we stand for in sport.”
