If you don’t stand up and act, you’re complicit. – SPORTS & POLITICS

DOHA. Anyone who has prophesied about an alleged turning point in world sport in the past few weeks should watch the recording of the 72nd FIFA Congress again. In the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center, where the groups for the 2022 World Cup were drawn last Friday evening, there was a foretaste of how FIFA and Qatar will argue in the next nine months at the general assembly of the world association on Thursday. In short:

The World Cup in Qatar is a blessing for mankind.

Criticism of the conditions at the World Cup construction sites, the many thousands of deaths, the curtailment of press freedom, the human rights situation, corruption – all of which have been associated with this men’s World Cup in Qatar for more than a decade – or even calls for a boycott? All malicious and mendacious Western bias based on ignorance of the real situation. This sums up the messages spread in Doha by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, members of the feudal ruling Al-Thani family and Hassan Al-Thawadi, the sophisticated CEO of the Organizing Committee.

“My door is open to anyone who understands the issues,” Al-Thawadi said. He accused Norwegian federation president Lise Klaverness, who had made a remarkably critical speech, that she had not made contact beforehand. Which Lise Klaverness immediately had to reject.

Lise Klaveness made sharp criticism of the FIFA leaders at Thursday’s FIFA congress in Qatar.

Watch the full speech https://t.co/oz9Fryjwa3! pic.twitter.com/dvm8SSKfmc

— TV 2 Sport (@tv2sport) March 31, 2022

It had been known for a few days that Klaverness wanted to speak plainly. FIFA and Qatar officials have tried to influence. In vain, Mrs. Klaverness didn’t agree to a deal. As is the bad tradition in FIFA, some clacqueurs, such as a delegate from Honduras, immediately raised their hand and demanded that the discussion be ended. The topics don’t belong at the congress – it has to be about football. That’s how it’s always been in FIFA.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, the West is biased,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who has been controversial for many reasons and has been living in Doha for six months, where his daughters go to school. This critique of the “West” followed a script. Whereby “the West” is ultimately a synonym for almost everything that could be described as a free, democratic system of values. The message was clear: Anyone who stands up for such values ​​and fundamental rights is disrupting the project between FIFA and Qatar.

Basically, it’s the same argument fresh from the Beijing Winter Olympics. At that time it was the IOC and China’s ruler Xi Jinping. Today it is IOC member Infantino and Qatar’s feudal ruler Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, who is also an IOC member.

The next step on the mendacious argumentation scale will again be to accuse all critics of racism. This spin was developed for Qatar in 2014 by a highly paid PR consultant, from “the West” by the way, the American Michael Holtzman – along with a few other unsavory tricks. This alleged racism argument was not only put forward by the then FIFA President Joseph Blatter, but also by high-ranking members of the Olympic family such as Sheikh Ahmad al-Sabah from Kuwait, a long-time string puller in FIFA and the IOC, who has a second home in Doha and now was sentenced to prison in Switzerland.

Such lines of argument are known from Qatar and China and more recently from Saudi Arabia, but above all from Russia, where politics and sport claim that “the West” is to blame for the war in Ukraine – and that the sanctions against Russian sport are controlled by the West political maneuvers.

Russia may have been banned from the World Cup qualifying play-offs by FIFA a month ago, but the Russian FA and its officials remain highly valued and honorable members of the FIFA family. The Russian delegation around Alexej Sorokin grinned for the cameras at the congress, Sorokin was of course again wearing the finest tailor-made thread – while the president of the Ukrainian association was only connected via video, he was wearing a military protective vest. The man can be killed at any time by Putin’s invaders.

Speaking of Putin, with whom the FIFA greats hung out for a decade, who they paid through Gazprom, once a FIFA sponsor, and who organized the 2018 World Cup. Gianni Infantino did not mention the name of Putin in Doha on Thursday. He also avoided the word war. “Terrible conflict” was one of the synonyms used by Infantino. Then the incredibly infantile sentence: “Apparently the 2018 World Cup was not able to solve all the problems in the world.” That was by no means ironic, but meant seriously.

When it came to Russia, too, everything followed a script, everything was fine-tuned with the Qatari hosts of the most expensive World Cup of all time. Qatar and Russia had already worked closely together in the run-up to the severely corrupt World Cup awards on December 2, 2010. Qatar and Russia have since made a pact to defend the 2018 and 2022 World Cup projects against all well-founded attacks and investigations at multiple levels. Qatar and Russia recently renewed their sports-political partnership at a meeting in Moscow, just as Putin was already murdering children and women in Ukraine and turning cities to rubble and ash.

Only one Norwegian faced the FIFA establishment in Doha. Lise Klaverness is part of a good tradition. Karen Espelund worked for a long time as general secretary of the Norges Fotballforbund – she too has repeatedly held up a mirror to the corrupt international associations FIFA and UEFA. Espelund, in turn, had been promoted by former association boss Per Ravn Omdal. Omdal was also one of the positive exceptions in this business.

The German Football Association (DFB) does not have such a positive tradition. In the past three and a half decades there have only been two DFB princes who at times, if not consistently, have played a positive role at the highest levels of UEFA and FIFA: the recently deceased Egidius Braun and Theo Zwanziger. Everyone else has collected the many hundreds of thousands of euros annually for the honorary posts and joined an opaque, largely corrupt to seriously criminal system.

Short thread: German sports officials and the collective failure at international level in the areas of human rights, crime, good governance etc – today’s example @DFB and SPD-Neuendorf, the newcomer at the FIFA Congress in Doha…
/1 pic.twitter.com/DXdrZu1bqI

— SPORT & POLITICS (@JensWeinreich) March 31, 2022

Franz Beckenbauer never saw slaves in Doha – and other former high-ranking DFB princes such as Horst R. Schmidt and Helmut Spahn hired themselves out in Doha and in the highly dubious International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) served. The ICSS is an important part of Emir Tamim’s sports policy and intelligence arsenal. According to the documents, for example in the Football Leaks documented, also took over the spying on high-ranking officials of world sports. The ICSS is not far from those former CIA agents and other slouches who once worked on and wanted to turn Qatar critic Theo Zwanziger, the AP news agency recently revealed. Anyone who still speaks of so-called soft power in this context is playing down the problems.

The new DFB President Bernd Neuendorf could have set an example in Doha. Intellectually, the SPD politician is able to do this. His English is good. The issues raised by Lise Klaverness have been debated around the world for more than a decade, it’s not rocket science, it’s basics. But Neuendorf was silent. Like almost all German representatives at FIFA congresses before him. The DFB delegation did not support Lise Klaverness when it was necessary. Neuendorf has not positioned itself. He preferred to make a few promises through the media afterwards. You will observe, probe, ask questions – non-binding excuses.

But it’s more than a decade too late for announcements.

If you don’t stand up and act, you’re complicit.

Infantino and Qatar set the tone for the rest of the year: The West – bad and dishonest. The near and far east, the south – good and the future.

First Russia and China, now Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

This is what it looks like, the new world order of sport.

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