Group photo of the national football team: see, hear, but say nothing

If we imagine football as a product that is handily packaged on the supermarket shelf, then we could not really buy the special edition Qatar 2022™ with a clear conscience based on the contents.

The Social Nutri Score would be an F on a red background;

because of the working conditions of the people involved in the production, because of the general ecological balance and also considering the anti-queer attitude of this year's supplier.

Now the manufacturers are very anxious to sell their product with the greatest possible profit this year and not to lose consumers worldwide, which is why they are trying to wrap the obviously less tasty recipe with their usual colorful company philosophy.

At the same time, they don't want to upset the new supplier, who has invested so much money to inflate the product bigger than ever before - which is why the manufacturer and supplier agreed, just before delivery, to remove the previous symbolic packaging in the form of a colorful design.

After all, customers know it's football.

Without this philosophy and brand message, however, numerous amateurs and connoisseurs notice that football has become inedible, suddenly everyone tastes the politics that, according to the manufacturer, should not be included.

Unfortunately, customers who bought products that work to tackle the climate crisis, promote equality and defend human rights in particular can no longer recommend football.

Some secretly take it anyway, but are aware that football has now become the Guilty Pleasure for cheat days.

To make this complicated new branding comprehensible to endgame consumers just before the start of the fall sale, soccer manufacturer Gianni Infantino stepped out in front of the world last Saturday and defended the claims of his new supplier in an hour-long Dadaist performance that, in its bizarreness, equaled the absurdity of the whole thing in a nutshell.

Infantino said he felt "African," "disabled," "homosexual";

accused the West of double standards - and in fact, in his display of claims of inclusion in a rainbow washing spin cycle, he virtuously softened the last remnants of moral values ​​that football had previously made consumable in other questionable contexts.

Now the local audience is no longer even allowed to wash down the bitter taste of this new football with enough beer during the game - unless you are one of the wealthier consumers in the VIP boxes.

And if you look at it soberly, this football is somehow different, but not football anymore.

Because in the attempt to sell this new football surprise egg with games, fun and human rights violations, the moral incompatibility becomes obvious.

All symbolic packaging discussions - from colorful hearts on bandages to the word "Love" on the collar of Belgian jerseys - are sobering attempts to smuggle visible solidarity past the openly anti-queer system, which fail because all those who depend on this system are open to blackmail.

For example, the Belgian pre-match shirt was banned because it is too colorful with five colors.

Fans weren’t allowed into the stadiums with anything with rainbows anyway – and outside, too, the rainbow phobia assumed absurd proportions when a stranger ripped a flag of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco out of the hands of the Brazilian journalist Victor Pereira and, according to his statement, dropped it on the ground thrown and kicked.

A flag containing a tricolor arc of red, yellow and green;

an incident he filmed on his cell phone - which was taken from him by police and only recovered after he deleted the unfavorable video evidence.

I suppose if it had been meteorologically necessary,

The "One Love" bandage was actually supposed to be a helpless effort to counter this predictable censorship and allow the international fans a bit of protest against the misanthropy.

But after Fifa had put pressure on the national teams - the Danish football association DBU reported, for example, that Fifa officials came to the English team hotel and threatened sporting consequences (at least a yellow card, point deductions and fines are also possible) - the participating teams buckled a.

The anger was understandably high among many fans and observers.

So the teams weren't even willing to give that little signal because, like overpaid elementary school students, they had been admonished by the even more overpaid teacher.

Despite all the disappointment at so much lack of principle, the company's own standards have already been reduced so much that Rewe has been praised for not extending an already expiring contract with the DFB.

This is perhaps the most interesting effect: as we wrestle with these commercial micro-gestures, we engage in bizarre mental haggling and discuss how many inches of rainbows should be allowed into the stadium - forgetting how instrumental this simple gesture is in view of the mendacity of the whole scenario remains.

The colorful bandage was intended to give football fans a good feeling, a symbolic handkerchief to console them for the unignorable, performative contradictions of this World Cup.

And this bandage would of course only have been one of the most colorful advertising gimmicks of the year;

a swallow in the penalty area, which should show the audience that in this game, which could only be made possible by human rights violations, at least everyone involved in the game is actually in favor of human rights.

In this tension between selling sport as profitably as possible in less popular corners of the world and at the same time remaining popular enough to be able to sell even more sport, the German national soccer team tried to somehow make themselves heard.

Before the opening game against Japan, they wanted to set an example for values ​​such as diversity and mutual respect, as they then wrote on Twitter.

That's why the players covered their mouths for the team photo before the game.

In pantomime, it was about staging a language ban.

Because, according to the statement by the DFB team on Twitter: "Forbidding us to wear bandages is like banning our mouths."

Unwittingly, however, one could also read this act as a gesture that would have been more honest: "We keep our mouths shut." And so the starting XI looked like one of the three famous Japanese monkeys: the one who sees and hears but says nothing.

It is probably the perfect promotional image for this World Cup.

However, I don't want to condemn this free spirit too much, after all, some of the players wore shoes that stood out with a subtle, colorful spectrum of colors, which allowed them to lace up with a hint of the rainbow after all.

The Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, who was present in the stadium, somehow managed the miracle of Qatar and got a "One Love" bandage in the stadium, which was secured by the rainbow protection police.

Their determination was widely praised and actually came across as bold and defiant in contrast to the players.

But she, too, made herself a figure of soothing marketing on the moral playing field.

A press photo shows Infantino, who was sitting next to her during the game, posing with her by smilingly pointing to the minister's forbidden armband.

When he asked her about the pad, she said, "Not as bad as you think it is, isn't it?" How Infantino reacted is not known.

But Faeser fails to recognize the real problem here: Everything is bad about this World Cup,