Football World Cup in the USA: Nobody can feel safe

Zu At the beginning of the week, Rainer Bonhof and Jogi Löw sat on stage at the Cologne literature festival “Litcologne”. One world champion since 1974 and President of Borussia Mönchengladbach, the other world champion since 2014 and former national coach “How do you become world champion?” was the topic, and those involved couldn’t reveal a recipe, but they did know some interesting facts from the past. Bonhof remembered how, months after winning the title, he still stood so majestically above the things of everyday life that he considered it an imposition to have to refuel himself. Until his wife asked him: “Can you be Rainer again?” Löw reported how the Bayern players’ wheat beer celebration woke him up at night, and how he then appeared at the party in boxer shorts and a T-shirt and pulled the plug on the jukebox.

But the evening wasn’t just about nostalgia. When the next World Cup was discussed, Bonhof surprised the audience with his doubts: He said he didn’t know whether the DFB team should even play there given the security situation in the USA and Mexico. He also touched on the moral aspect. He didn’t want to promote a boycott (“we’re too much footballers for that”), but his argument confirmed similar ideas. Jogi Löw summarized it via Express together: “The political situation is completely overshadowing the tournament.” There was also political discussion before the tournaments in 2014 in Brazil, 2018 in Russia and 2022 in Qatar, “but playing in a country that is currently at war…” No, he didn’t need to finish the sentence.

There will be less than three months until the World Cup tournament opens. One would like to look at the deadline in the hope that the bombings in the Middle East will have come to an end by the first game. But blessed are those who have confidence. US President Donald Trump does not indicate that he sees the FIFA Peace Prize as an obligation. Now he has set his sights on Cuba.

He doesn’t take the World Cup into account. From his point of view, the fact that Iran’s footballers were the first to qualify for the World Cup should not play a role when ordering his troops to shoot. But his ignorance emerges in the cynical message to the Iranian team. She was still “warmly” welcome, he said, but he couldn’t promise her “safety.” This is what the mafia protection money collector says.

Before the 2006 World Cup, the Germans spread the slogan “The world is a guest of friends”. That sounded very ambitious, but it worked. The world came and felt comfortable, and this was also the case in Brazil, Russia and Qatar, as debatable as the conditions there were. These countries wanted football fans to come. The USA? Threatening to conduct an attitude test, examining the social media past of those entering the country, and constantly possible visa checks. Fans from Central and South America, who are more numerous than Europeans in Russia and Qatar, have to fear falling into the clutches of the anti-foreign militia ICE in the USA.

National coach Julian Nagelsmann cannot be blamed for avoiding political rhetoric. All he can do is influence the sport, he said this week, and make fans at home “feel good” with good games. But can you enjoy them? Currently, the longing for distraction is opposed to critical consciousness. A good World Cup feeling doesn’t want to arise.