Bernd Neuendorf believes it is no longer possible to award football World Cups to countries such as Qatar or Russia in the future. The world governing body FIFA has included a corresponding human rights passage due to public pressure, said the head of the German Football Association (DFB) on Thursday (November 3, 2022) at a panel discussion in Dortmund.
“FIFA has included a human rights passage regarding the awarding of future World Cups, which did not exist before“Said Neuendorf at the event in the Dortmund Football Museum. “This shows that the award to Qatar and perhaps also to Russia would be difficult to imagine today, so uncritically and without conditions. That has changed, sport and politics.”
Neuendorf: World Cup award “has become a political issue”
Neuendorf showed up “very happy“about his recent trip to Qatar in the delegation of Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD). “It shows that we have never experienced a tournament like this, that awarding such events has become a political issue“, he emphasized: “In the past, these decisions were made in sports associations and were then more likely to be accepted politically, but that has changed.”
The DFB boss repeated his call for a compensation fund for the relatives of workers who died or were injured on World Cup construction sites. The recent refusal by the host country has “irritated“. Qatar’s Labor Minister Ali bin Samikh Al Marri had a possible fund in an interview with AFP as “publicity stuntFaeser has announced that despite her criticism of the organizers of the World Cup (November 20 to December 18), the first game of the German national team against Japan will be attended on November 23.