Once upon a time there was a football club (forgive me, a més-que-un-club football club) that in 2010 signed an agreement with the company Qatar Sports Investments to stamp the name of this tiny Middle Eastern country on the jersey of its first team. The bargain involved five years of sponsorship – namely, about 150 million cucumbers – and was celebrated by its Board of Directors (of ill repute) for the simple fact that it improved the millions obtained by the rival (and white) jersey in a quite similar sponsorship case. By those cosis of life, this més-que-un-club previously advertised the most important international agency on the planet for the humanitarian development of children, called UNICEF, an entity that (after financial compensation) ended up stamped on the players' arm and delighted to share fabric with Qatar.
Excuse the rhetoric (and the excess of parentheses); everyone remembers that the team in question is Barça. Also that part of the journalistic universe already criticized that the culer entity entered the game of sportwashing by displaying on the players' chests the name of a country where not only was a whole World Cup hosted without the region having any kind of heritage, tradition or mass of fans of the sport in question, but that it failed in the chapter of human rights, especially regarding the sector of women, homosexuals and workers. All this was discussed at length, but the uproar was buried when Barça's members approved the Board's decision and Qatar began to frequent as a financial brand in many European clubs. In all that process related to Barça, and in the purchase of teams by Qatari capital, we did not hear a single, and when I write a single I mean not a soul, football player questioning the ethical lack of this new normality.
It is surprising, therefore, that most players on the planet have been caught by a sudden obsession with human rights in this controversial World Cup in Qatar. It is, at least, suspicious that no Spanish, English or German star has considered it appropriate to demand the rights of homosexuals during a City-United match or those of the highly exploited Qatari workers in any match of PSG. An illiberal regime like Qatar's awakens in me a sympathy equivalent to an electric shock to the scrotum, but even more appalling is the role of players who have always skirted political and humanitarian issues when their salary was at stake, while now they pretend to work as ambassadors for the feminine. With most Western locker rooms overflowing with homosexuals who still don't even dream of coming out, I would say we have a lot of work at home before we can give lessons abroad.
An illiberal regime like Qatar's awakens in me a sympathy equivalent to an electric shock to the scrotum, but even more appalling is the role of players who have always skirted political and humanitarian issues when their salary was at stakeI can understand that soccer players are not responsible for the colonial past of their respective countries and, in this sense, I can still tolerate the pamema to see French, German or UK stars handing out moral lessons. But from a homophobic environment like that of football players, who have completely ignored the women's section of their respective teams until three days ago and who still maintain the taboo of homosexuality as an unconfessable matter, I do not accept even a psalmody. When I see one of these heroes confront Nasser bin Ghanim Al-Khelali or the Roman Abramovich of the day, we will start talking about ethics.Until then, that they play soccer and spare us posturing of false solidarity. The responsibility for agreements between a club like Barça or Qatar does not lie with the players, that would be the last straw; but their ancestral silence disqualifies them from exporting lessons to others.
Qatar has bought a World Cup through a corrupt FIFA to accelerate Doha and its country's membership in the global economy. No one disputes this; but this is an operation that began some time ago, in commercial relations such as the aforementioned between Barcelona and Qatar, and in this joint path most of the planet's sports officials, players included, have participated in one way or another. And if there is any Spanish citizen who has an appetite for freedom of expression, it would be enough to remind them how, even today, flags and banners are confiscated in stadiums where citizens have that curious habit of expressing their political thought. Let no one give lessons; let us all together have a little shame for our part.
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