The hosts didn’t fight spectacularly, but he obviously told FIFA it wasn’t going to be good, and that wasn’t what we agreed on. And FIFA knew what to do.
On the 3rd of November, he mailed his general message to the participants with the words “We ask you to focus on football”, in which the following lofty thoughts were formulated: “We know that football does not work in a vacuum, and we are also aware that there are many challenges and political difficulties All over the world. But please don’t let football get dragged into every ideological or political battle there is. Everyone is welcome to the World Cup regardless of their origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or nationality.”
Oh, how beautiful and lofty thoughts.
Yet we cannot move. Hungary – as we have seen many times – outside of lofty principles, the rainbow in our country is very suitable for the exercise of political influence.
FIFA’s polite message fell on deaf ears. For example, as soon as the England national team arrived in Qatar, at the first press conference, one of the team’s players, James Maddison, was immediately asked what he thought about the status of LMBTG rights in the Arab country.
Duty, they are aware of the seriousness of the issue, blah blah, the attacker briefly stated, and then added, “Maybe I’m not educated enough to make a statement on this. I don’t want to say a bad thing.” With their permission, we’d translate: “I’m sorry, let them leave me alone with this apology.” In any case, in keeping with Jurgen Klopp’s opinion expressed long before the World Cup, that teams and players should be excluded from this programme, it is none of their business.
We cannot claim that it was in response to this, but it is still curious that two days before the start of the World Cup, the host country announced that it would not allow the consumption of beer either inside or outside the stadiums. The announcement hurts FIFA a lot, as it has a seventy-five million dollar contract with Budweiser… FIFA didn’t leave it at that. Already on the day of the Opening Ceremony, it was leaked that team captains who wore rainbow armbands would be punished. According to the latest news, the teams preparing for the demonstration are not going to back down. In danger, for example Harry Kane Manuel Neuer will receive a yellow card for this action in every match, so he will be forced to miss the Group C match.
