Real Madrid’s Toni Kroos is whistled down after repeatedly criticizing Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and sports offensive. He thanks you with an ironic tweet.
After the fiasco with the Turkish Super Cup, things are sparkling again in Riyadh: Real Madrid is celebrating winning the Spanish Super Cup.
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Real Madrid won the Spanish Super Cup with a 4-1 win against arch-rivals FC Barcelona on Sunday evening. The players were celebrated with shouts of Olé and a standing ovation from the audience. All players? No. The director Toni Kroos received a concert of whistles whenever he touched the ball. From the first shot during warm-up. Until he was substituted ten minutes before the end.
The cacophony is explained by the fact that the Super Cup took place in Saudi Arabia, where the Spanish association has been selling it for four years for 40 million euros per edition. On the one hand, people in the Gulf are crazy about football and the big football brands like Real Madrid. On the other hand, she is also “very proud of her culture and her country,” as the spokesman for a Saudi Real fan club told the newspaper “Marca”: “People think that Kroos has insulted their country.”
“An incredibly bad role model for a lot of youth players”
The former German national player had taken a critical stance on the Saudi sports offensive in various statements in the past. He called the fact that even an exceptional talent at the start of his career like Gabri Veiga, 21, succumbed to the lure of petrodollars “embarrassing” and “an incredibly bad role model for a lot of youth players.” For him, this would not be an option because of the human rights situation in the strict dictatorship, said Kroos.
In the semi-final against Atlético Madrid, not even a spectacular 5:3 was able to alleviate the anti-Kroos mood. The whistle was even blown during the minute’s silence for Franz Beckenbauer – which, as it turned out, was not meant personally, but rather referred to the rejection of a ritual unknown in the country’s culture.
Toni Kroos was booed in the semi-finals.
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There was no longer a minute’s silence before the final – but the whistles against Kroos even increased after the atmosphere had apparently been further heated up on social networks. “We can’t control that,” said the fan club representative: Even if the stadium announcer asked the spectators to cheer for Kroos and “not to mix football with politics.”
Anyone who wants to see it positively can see in the boos a form of freedom of expression that is not otherwise particularly high on the agenda in the country. However, the Saudi audience is becoming self-confident in that it no longer just idolizes foreign stars, but rather judges them. The Kroos case also exposes sports marketers’ appeasement theories, according to which the liaison with the Saudi is about purely commercial joint ventures, about jersey sales, television contracts and easy-earned fees.
Toni Kroos (right) in the Supercup final against Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal – Real Madrid wins against their arch-rivals 4-1.
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In reality, you don’t just go to markets, but also to societies that don’t necessarily change attitudes because of the important visit, but rather seem to see themselves strengthened by them. And in reality, the expected host of the 2034 World Cup is of course a highly political host.
The Turkish finalists left and were welcomed home like heroes
Whoever orders Saudi, gets Saudi: Two days before New Year’s Eve, the Turkish Football Association also wanted to hold its Super Cup in Riyadh for good business. The plan ended in disaster. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of secular Turkey, the participating Istanbul teams Galatasaray and Fenerbahce wanted to warm up in T-shirts with the portrait of the state’s founder, Kemal Atatürk.
The authorities of the religious Saudi regime banned the action as well as other homages to Ataturk in the stands. Shortly before kick-off, the two teams finally refused to play. They were welcomed home like heroes.
From Thursday Inter, Napoli, Fiorentina and Lazio will compete in the Italian Super Cup in Riyadh. “All this because of a few million more?” asked Napoli President Aurelio De Laurentiis rhetorically and, among other things, denounced the standard of women’s and workers’ rights in the country. But such voices remain the exception. Toni Kroos didn’t even receive any encouragement from his club during his days in Riyadh. The famously calm German could live with it. “What fun, great audience,” he wrote ironically after the semi-final. He also showed an excellent performance in the final.
That was fun today! Amazing crowd😍
— Toni Kroos (@ToniKroos) January 10, 2024