Essay | The money trickled onto the soccer field, and that was the end of a love story

I remember vivid details of the 1982 FIFA World Cup.

of Brazil Zico amazing spiraling free kick against Argentina. Germany goalkeeper Toni Schumacher arrogant look after he had executed the French player. Italian by Marco Tardelli ecstatic fanning after the goal in the final match.

I was a child during the Games. I wasn’t there and I didn’t even see any of the matches on TV.

My memories are from the summary program broadcast after the World Cup, which I re-watched on VHS video so many times that I still recognize the voice of the British commentator.

Later, the World Cup tournament became a celebration moment that occurs every four years. So important that I outline the phases of my own life based on the rhythm of the World Cup.

I watched the 1986 Mexico Games with my father on a family vacation in Mallorca. 1990 The Italian Games were in the summer of ripple camp. At the time of the 1994 US Games, I was in the army. In 1998, during the French Games, I had entered into my first longer employment relationship.

This is normal for us football fans.

Now the World Cup is held in Qatar. The first match is today, Sunday. Qatar is criticized for poor human rights. Some therefore boycotted the Games.

I haven’t made that decision. It hasn’t really been necessary, because I feel that the Qatar Games are just the culmination of a long development in which top football has gone to waste.

I have approached football with love. Now the opposite of passion has crept into the relationship, indifference. I don’t even care to watch anymore.

Plenty During the last 30 years, the world has been shaped by accelerating globalization. People, goods and money move rapidly across borders. The whole world has become a playground for companies.

The result has been tremendous economic growth and a rise in the standard of living. In China, which has become the “factory of the world”, more than 800 million people have risen from poverty.

Even in football, globalization meant a new kind of movement of money and labor. The removal of restrictions opened up access to the best leagues in Europe for more and more players from all over the world. The matches of these series began to be televised worldwide. The value of television and advertising contracts swelled. There was a flood of money.

The manifestation of this change is the English Premier League, founded in 1992. The fluffy British football became an international hit product.

The downside of globalization is that money accumulates for the few. Individual companies and their owners have more wealth than many nations.

Many rich people wanted their own football club. In a global world, it was possible to get it almost anywhere. In 2003, a Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich bought the big London club Chelsea.

Business slang had it disruption. That is, a turn that changed the playing field.

Chelsea had the money to buy and hire the best players. It brought success. But the competition was skewed. Other clubs had to earn their money through their own activities. For Chelsea, money flowed from outside, from Abramovich’s murky fortune, which had its roots Putin’s In Russian corruption and tentacles in tax havens around the world.

Not a very fair game.

Fanius is a personal emotional bond. When your favorite club wins, fans say that we we won

It matters what we stand for.

In recent years, one football fan after another has noticed that their own club represents things that they themselves would not want to be a part of.

Located on the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates is a country with about ten million inhabitants. Only one million of them are citizens of the state. The vast majority are migrant workers, who are treated almost like slaves. There is no freedom of speech, women are oppressed. The money comes from oil.

A similar social structure exists in neighboring countries: Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

These Gulf countries have taken the development the furthest, where football is used to polish the state’s image.

The owner of Manchester City is a sheikh Mansoor, who is the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and a member of the ruling family of its capital, Abu Dhabi. Oil money has contributed to City’s success. At the same time, its players have been harnessed for PR trips and advertisements on behalf of Abu Dhabi.

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We are financed with dirty money.

Qatar, on the other hand, owns the big French club Paris Saint-Germain, the loudest club in the world. Through the investment company, the owner is the Emir of Qatar himself Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. With the help of PSG, Qatar has been able to use the most followed players in the world for its PR use, such as Lionel Messi’s, Neymar’s, Kylian Mbappé. When Messi praises Qatar on social media, 373 million people follow.

Saudi Arabia only got its own club last year. It owns Newcastle in northern England through its investment company.

Of course, money affects football in other ways than through ownership.

The London club Arsenal’s stadium is called Emirates, i.e. the airline of the United Arab Emirates. The state of Rwanda is also one of the sponsors of the club, it is also advertised on the jersey. Rwanda is an East African dictatorship.

I’m an Arsenal supporter, have been since I was a teenager.

We are financed with dirty money.

That kind of messes up love.

What anything that moves the masses is political. So is football.

At least in the sense that football can be used as a political tool. On the other hand, the effect doesn’t really work. Football does not change societies. And not the world.

However, it can have some effect.

The FIFA World Cup puts the respective host country in the world spotlight.

When Argentina hosted the Games in 1978, the country was ruled by a military junta. The players were accommodated in Buenos Aires at the EMSA naval school. Before the Games, the school housed a torture center where democracy activists were tortured.

Argentina hoped that the journalists who came to the country would focus on reporting the football celebration. It was the other way around. The victims of the junta and dissidents received more attention in the world than ever before. International pressure grew.

Perhaps it had an effect on the end of military rule five years later.

Another example is Russia. It hosted the previous world championships, in 2018. Putin’s crimes both at home and abroad were well known. At the Games, Putin had his moment of celebration. After that he continued worse than ever.

Qatar got the games to be held now with the help of corruption. Qatar itself denies it, but a lot of evidence of corruption has already accumulated in, among other things, the trials that have taken place against representatives of the international football association Fifa.

The host of the competition was decided by Fifa’s 22-person management team, whose members were satisfied with money and luxury treatment in different parts of the world.

Small Qatar did not have any natural attraction factors as a host. No soccer culture to mention, no stadiums, no climate suitable for athletes. And no rule of law or free media.

However, eyes are now directed to Qatar.

International pressure has led to some improvements. For example, the slave-like labor law was changed even before the Games. But the impact of the change was mild: from catastrophic to miserable. The World Cup matches are played in stadiums, the construction of which has resulted in the death of migrant workers.

Football is at its best when you play it yourself. Watching others play is not as much fun. But still good fun.

Some watch matches impartially, admiring only the game itself, the players’ performances and tactics. I’m one of those people who always wants to be on the side of one or the other team.

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Football has a strong moral base.

In the World Cup, I have often supported Ghana, Senegal or the team of another African country just because the success of the underdog is always a fun surprise.

I have cheered for Holland for a long time because the team usually tries to play great attacking football. It’s stuck in my mind by Marco van Basten or By Dennis Bergkamp great goals.

However, the World Cup final in 2010 was a confusing experience. Holland played ugly, even violently. It felt that Holland betrayed its principles.

In the end, I was quite satisfied that Spain, who played a fun tiki-taka passing game, won. Scored the winning goal Andrés Iniesta, a brilliant player and a perfect gentleman. It felt right.

Football has a strong moral base.

It is frowned upon to win with an ugly game. Or by just focusing on defense. After the matches, we talk about whether the victory was deserved.

It is precisely from this that the broader disapproval that we fans now feel about the phenomena of top football also stems from. Winning with oil money or corruption is not deserved. Polishing the reputation of dictatorships feels like cheating. It’s not pretty to watch the players scrambling.

As a football fan have to think about how to deal with all this.

For me, the situation is a kind of relationship crisis.

It is true that watching football is not as fun as it used to be. At the same time, it must be admitted that it still attracts.

In relationship crises, we advise you to put your feelings into words and express your wishes.

I miss the feeling. There are many wishes:

This must be the last time Fifa allows an authoritarian state to host the World Cup. The rules regarding club funding must finally be followed. Stricter criteria must be applied to acceptable ownership.

My dear, if you really promise to change, I still want to try.