Issues Around the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia: a Showcase of How Sports and Politics Mix
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
SUG 2018; 15 (2-3): 283-296 Kommentar/Commentary Danyel Reiche* Issues around the FIFA World Cup 2018 in Russia: A showcase of how sports and politics mix Wie die FIFA Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2018 in Russland exemplarisch belegt, dass Sport und Politik nicht voneinander zu trennen sind DOI 10.1515/sug-2018-0013 Summery: The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia was another demonstration in how sports and politics mix. In protest of Russian politics, few leaders from Western countries attended. For this World Cup, public resources were misused in that half of the stadiums built in Russia were left as “white elephants” with no long- term use. The tournament in Russia marked a shift from the West to the East with sponsors from authoritarian countries having saved the business model of FIFA. The policy of fining misconduct during the World Cup showed FIFA’s commit- ment to protect its remaining sponsors while proclaimed values, such as fighting racism, were of minor importance. The case of Iranian women using the opportu- nity not only to attend their national team’s games in Russia but also to advocate for the right of women to enter stadiums in Iran showed that football can also be an agent for social change. In two countries (Germany, United States), World Cup matches hosted female commentators on television for the first time. In Belgium, players operated largely above the Flemish-Walloon divide. The article concludes by comparing the last World Cup in Russia with the next one in Qatar and iden- tifying topics for future research. Zusammenfassung: Die FIFA Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2018 in Russland war ein erneuter Beleg dafür, dass Sport und Politik nicht voneinander zu trennen sind. Aus Protest gegen die Politik Russlands blieben die meisten westlichen Staatsoberhäupter bewusst der WM fern. Die Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft 2018 *Dr. Danyel Reiche: American University of Beirut, Department of Political Studies and Public Administration, Riad El Solh 1107 2020, Beirut, Lebanon, E-Mail: [email protected] Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 1/6/19 10:20 AM 284 D. Reiche war ein Beispiel für die missbräuchliche Verwendung öffentlicher Gelder. Die Hälfte aller WM-Stadien wird nach dem Wettbewerb ohne langfristige Nutzung als „weiße Elefanten“ zurückbleiben. Das Turnier in Russland markierte eine Verschiebung von westlichen hin zu Sponsoren aus autoritären Ländern, die das Geschäfts-Modell der FIFA gerettet haben. Das Vorgehen der FIFA, Fehlverhal- ten während der WM zu ahnden, verfolgte das Hauptinteresse, die verblieben- den Sponsoren zu schützen. Proklamierte Werte wie der Kampf gegen Rassismus mussten dem hintenanstehen. Der Fall iranischer Frauen, die die Möglichkeit genutzt haben, Spiele ihrer Natio- nalmannschaft in Russland zu besuchen und dabei gegen das Stadionverbot für Frauen in ihrem Heimatland zu demonstrieren, hat gezeigt, dass Fußball durch- aus auch als Vehikel für sozialen Wandel dienen kann. In zwei Ländern, Deutsch- land und den Vereinigten Staaten, wurden WM-Spiele im Fernsehen erstmals von Frauen kommentiert. In Belgien haben flämische und wallonische Nationalspie- ler die einstmalige Binnen-Trennung überwunden. Am Ende vergleicht der Artikel die letzte WM in Russland mit der nächsten in Katar und identifiziert Themen für zukünftige Forschung zu Fußballweltmeister- schaften. Preface The neoliberal mantra international sports governing bodies such as the Fédéra- tion Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) follow is that sports and politics do not mix. The rationale of this mantra bases itself on pure capitalism: It is easier to sell sports around the world when unbothered by public discussions about “inconvenient” issues such as workers’ and minority rights in host countries. This approach worked fairly well at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, with the exception of the World Cup final when members of the punk collective Pussy Riot ran onto the pitch, calling “for the release of political prisoners, the end for illegal detentions at political rallies, stopping the policing of people’s political views on social media and for more open political competition” (“Pussy Riot members jailed”, 2018). The action at the time was hardly noticed, since FIFA does not permit stadium cameras to show spectators running onto the field; newspapers all over the world reported the inci- dent, including photographic coverage. Regardless, the event remained a niche topic in coverage of the spectacular final match between France and Croatia. Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 1/6/19 10:20 AM Issues around the FIFA World Cup 2018 285 The recent World Cup in Russia and the next one to be held in Qatar are not the first instances of awarding the greatest event of the most popular sport in the world to an authoritarian country: In 1978 the World Cup was hosted by Argen- tina, a military dictatorship at that time. The Olympic Summer Games took place in 2008 in China and the Olympic Winter Games in 2018 in Russia. Authoritarian countries are for FIFA and the IOC a convenient choice: Popular protests generally do not occur in these countries as they did in Brazil prior to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. In mass demonstrations in Brazil people protested the allocation of public resources for stadiums rather than for health and education. On the other hand, no hooliganism occurred as it did at the European Football championship in 2016 in France. While the public tends to turn its attention during mega-sporting events such as the last World Cup towards what is happening on the pitch, the tournament in Russia was yet another demonstration in how sports and politics mix. Plenty of examples will be presented in this essay, demonstrating that foot- ball is far more than just a game. Political Boycotts Democratic countries such as Germany and the United States do not protest against mega-sporting events in authoritarian countries by calling for their ath- letes to boycott the games. Previous boycotts, such as the US-led boycott of the Olympic Summer Games in Moscow in 1980, were in fact unsuccessful. Despite this boycott to protest the invasion into Afghanistan, the Soviet Union did not completely withdraw its troops until 1989. The main victims of Jimmy Carter’s initiative to abstain from the Moscow Games were the Western athletes who could not participate in the greatest multi-sporting event in the world. For many ath- letes this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the Olympics was one that they missed. Perhaps the only successful boycott was that of South African players, which lasted decades and might have contributed to apartheid’s end. While no country asked its athletes to abstain from the 2018 World Cup, the boycott happened on a different level: Few leaders from Western countries atten- ded. The few exceptions were leaders from countries that advanced in the tour- nament and wanted to support their national teams. According to the Kremlin website, only 17 heads of states and governments attended the opening ceremony and first match of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in which Russia played against Saudi Arabia. The list includes only two out of 32 countries that participated in the World Cup: Panama (a first-time participant) and Saudi-Arabia. Two of the listed countries are not even recognized by a vast majority of countries in the world: Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Granting these countries the global spotlight served Authenticated | [email protected] author's copy Download Date | 1/6/19 10:20 AM 286 D. Reiche the purpose of helping them in their unpromising struggle for international rec- ognition, which has so far mainly been supported by Russia and Venezuela. The other countries present were mostly authoritarian countries (listed alphabeti- cally): Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Moldova, Paraguay, Rwanda, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and North Korea (President of Russia, 2018). There were no heads of state from Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, for example. Emmanuel Macron (and the same applies to the Croa- tian president) came to Russia at a later stage of the tournament only due to the success of France’s national team, which, at the end, won the tournament in a spectacular final against Croatia. In the case of England, even the success of the national football team did not sway the government. While many leaders such as Angela Merkel did not give the public reasons for their absence from the World Cup, “Prime Minister Theresa May ordered officials including Prince William, who’s president of the English Football Association, to boycott the World Cup over the nerve-agent poisoning of a former spy in England that the U.K. blames on the Kremlin” (Halpin & Kuzmanovic, 2018). White Elephants The awarding of this mega-sporting event is not the only highly political decision. Within host countries, the events are more than just part of a game. This partic- ularly concerns the use of public resources. There is a regrettable path depen- dency of the misuse of public resources at previous World Cups: As in South Africa 2010 and Brazil 2014, the FIFA World Cup 2018 left “white elephants” in the host country Russia. White elephants are infrastructure (in this case stadi- ums) built for a mega-sporting events that have no long-term use. According to an article in the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, five of the 12 World Cup sta- diums were built in cities without a first league football team: Sochi, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Saransk, and Volgograd. Some of these cities do not even have a second league team. The Luzhniki Stadium, the venue of the opening and final match of the 2018 World Cup, is in Moscow, a city with several first league teams - all have their own stadiums and none have so far been interested in moving.