There are gay football fans and hosting it in a country where homosexuality against the law and actively punished is totally disrespectful to the gay fans who want to travel out there to support their country. I hate the term tolerance because of the minimum respect it implies but that's what FIFA preaches for homosexuality so why have they given it to a country that's totally intolerant? Would you be happy if you were travelling to a country to support Spurs and had to pretend that you were Muslim? It's the same for homosexuals being essentially forced to hide their being gay. Of course there's homophobia here too but in this country we punish the homophobia and not the homosexuals. That's what's fundamentally in total contradiction to FIFA's stance yet they ignored it and gave Qatar the World Cup anyway. It's nothing to do with marginalising Islamic countries and everything to do with looking after the freedom of gay fans to support their teams.
Panorama neglected to mention you see things like this at Premier League games... please log in to view this image ...and, come to think of it, we haven't heard Sol Campbell tell English people not to travel to London for the Olympics.
i dont think nobody has to pretend they are muslim. it is a law in their country...there are many laws in many countries that counter the beliefs and lifestyles of many other nations. people have to respect that when entering that country......this is no diffrent...however if the laws of Qatar bother many folk then maybe it would have been a good idea to not have them there. i think it is always baffling that people in the West think that there laws are the laws of Humanity and understanding..when actually we live in a world which contains many worlds with laws derived from many sources. ita a tournament that lasts a month...if you cant put something back you believe in for a month..or cant do it in private...then dont go, but dont be complaining about the way a whole nation,race etc live...if the authorities of the country started to harass people due to their sexuality etc then that is a diffrent thing. all that has been said is..it is a law of the country(Qatar)...respect it for a month...your there for football reasons. id say the bigger problem is the open racism in the forthcoming Euros. i hear many folk in this country try to use the old chestnut when trying to tell foreigners to conform to the British way of living 'when in Rome....' p.s i have no problem with gay people so i dont want this to go that way....im trying to put a perspective on it because i think and ive seen many folk on here have a pop at the country..which leads to having a pop at the creed,religion etc. theres plenty of that in this world without football contributing to it.
FIFA and UEFA can't claim that they want to stamp out homophobia and racism in one breath and then hand major tournaments to countries where both are rife. Saying that we should be intolerant of intolerance doesn't sit well with me at all. Suarez was banned for a massive chunk of the season for displaying his own ignorance. The system can't come down on the individual while embracing the same behaviour from an entire country. It's pure hypocrisy. I'd argue that the racism from a minority of Chelsea fans should've been dealt with in the past, as it's well documented, but it's relatively minor when compared to that displayed in a lot of other countries. England does still need to do quite a lot to get it's own house in order, but FIFA/UEFA need to take the issues far more seriously, too.
me and a couple of mates went to krakow,for a weekend,when the train pulled into the station at about 10 on the Saturday morning,the Station was full of police in riot gear.We asked why and were told because of the football fan's,and this was because the main Krakow team were away!.And Polish bird's are Hot!
Apologies that sentence was meant to read "had to pretend that you weren't Muslim". I say that because neither is something you should be asking people to "turn off" for a month. It's not an attack on Qatar's law either, it's just stating that it goes against UEFA's own policies and principles on tolerance have not been upheld.
The problem FIFA and UEFA (and the IOC) have in this regard is that they think that, by having the eyes of the world on these countries, the countries will crack down on such behaviour for the tournaments and the knock-on effect is that the countries will learn from this and take it on board, and it will leave a lasting legacy of tolerance on these countries. It's complete bollocks, of course. Did racial segregation end in the US after the 1932 Olympics? Was the rise of Fascism turned back after the 1934 World Cup or 1936 Olympics? Were ethnic tensions calmed by hosting the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo? Did people stop awarding major sporting events to the US after they royally ****ed up the 1994 World Cup and 1996 Olympics? Of course not - but the delusions that these organisations have about what they can do for the world through the medium of sporting events has made them award events to places where hosting them would cripple the country, cause massive problems due to insufficient infrastructure, or run the risk of fans and/or spectators being mugged/assaulted/killed by being in the wrong part of town after dark. FIFA has been going overboard in terms of the idea of "legacy" by awarding World cups to the USA, Japan/South Korea, South Africa, Russia and Qatar. It was never about corruption that the non-European tournament was awarded to these countries, but because they have this fool idea of expanding the football family (or whatever their corporate term for it is) by bringing a World Cup to a new frontier. The thing is, more often than not it's a bad idea for so many reasons - South Africa was a debacle waiting to happen, the USA didn't even have their own league when they were awarded the tournament, whilst neither of Japan or Qatar had even managed to qualify for the tournament when they were awarded the World Cup. Indeed, the only success of that bunch (to sate) is the 2002 tournament, because since then Japan has developed a genuine football fan culture, J-League attendances are healthy, and both Japan and South Korea have seen genuine improvement in the quality of their players since then. Still, at least Ensil isn't here to bring this down with his anti-Arab agenda...
Eurovision is a poor example..it has always been a political stick for nations to have a pop at each other or a way of brown nosing....and people watching it are fully aware of that and thrive off it...football on the face of it condems such things. plus football talks up its influence on humans through the game...yet hypocrites and simpletons run the organisation and make the big decisions...that leave the normal person scratching their heads in disbelief.
Holy ****. Just watched the programme. I actually can't believe it. The police are seriously, massively part of the problem there. There's never been racist behaviour in that stadium?! Wow. And what about that "inclusion zone"! Never was there a more flawed name. Tell you what - one place in the world I would not want to be in a couple of weeks' time is in the "inclusion zone" in some town in Ukraine, especially if I was a bit brown. I'm sort of imagining the "inclusion zone" as having a metal fence round it topped with razor wire... If a referee has the balls to stop a game early on in the tournament that would be amazing. Just one referee who can totally undermine the whole thing. Who's the English one going out there? Howard Webb? I'd forgive all his crap displays in our games if he abandoned a game cos the police refused to do anything about racist chanting or zeig heiling. He'd be a hero. Hope he's watched this.
HBIC - agree with your point about legacy - it's total arse-water. And yes - very corporate with all this talk of "widening the footballing family" or other prattle. However I've got to take you up on the first three paragraphs. Basically the idea that altering superficial behaviour of a population through attaching social shame to certain behaviours you can thereby create a deep and lasting effect is the basic tenet of political correctness. And it has seemed to work. Yes of course people (including me) can get very frustrated when it is misunderstood, stupidly applied etc. But by making it socially unacceptable (basically just "rude") to say "******" or "coon" or to make assumptions about someone's attributes or personality based on race/sexuality etc, people in the Western world now are much less prejudiced than people were fifty years ago. If a country and the individuals in it are made to feel judged, belittled, mocked, alienated by the behaviour of these fans then that will have a big effect on the whole country's general behaviour and thoughts well beyond the tournament. Obviously crazy ****s will still be crazy ****s. But maybe the less crazy ****s might not want to share with their work colleagues what they think about Jews. Maybe they might start feeling that going off on racist tirades is just not a good way to get on with people. Impressionable young people at football matches (as we all were at one point) might think "hang on - I'm pretty sure that loads of people would think I was knob if I do a fascist salute like that guy over there. I'm pretty sure Justin Timberlake wouldn't do this".* Also have to point out that all those examples from the 30s are irrelevant because a sporting event can only promulgate the dominant or desirable doctrine of the organisers. The Olympics/World Cup is no more inherently inclusive or liberal than the nations who control it. No doubt the express political ideals of those tournaments and their organisers were not a liberal, 21st century mindset but more in line with politics of the day. The Olympic spirit is currently a very 2012 thing. In 1936 it would have been a very 1936 thing. *(Popular musics reference there by someone who properly had to think long and hard for a) ANY pop star from the last five years b) one who wasn't black).
