World Cup in Qatar: Emmanuel Macron believes that sport is not politics (and he’s wrong)

A few days after the launch of the World Cup, which is taking place in Qatar, the distrust towards this planetary sporting event does not diminish. Never has a World Cup been so controversialbetween calls for a boycott and suspicions about possible fake fans.

Still, some would like to take us back to the illusion of this good old folk festival what is football, like Emmanuel Macron:“Don’t politicize sport”insisted from Bangkok, on his way to the Asia-Pacific Cooperation Forum summit, before adding: “These questions need to be asked when attributing the event. »

Oh good ? However, there are plenty of easy-going examples that remind us that sport and politics are closely linked and that forgetting it (or worse, denying it) is ignorance at best, denial at worst. From the black-gloved fist raised by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968 to soccer player Colin Kaepernick’s knee on the ground to show his solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in 2016, the sports hall has always been the scene of political gestures. Many athletes have used high profile competitions in the past to convey political messages or to defend a cause (and we would like some footballers in France to remember this, like Hugo Lloris for example).

An eminently political World Cup, no offense to Emmanuel Macron

Already this little phrase by Emmanuel Macron tends to make us forget that the assignment of this World Cup to Qatar in 2010 was in itself a political choice made by Fifa.

It should also be forgotten that Fifa did not even hesitate to exclude Russia from the competition a month after the start of the invasion of Ukraine. No politics in the field, but colossal economic interests for Qatar, and the desire to keep it soft power and continue to establish itself as a power that counts on the international scene… despite serious violations of human rights and an ecological primacy that promises to be catastrophic.

Convinced that sport is not politics, Emmanuel Macron therefore has no intention of boycotting this World Cup and intends to attend the French team’s matches if they reach the semifinals.

Photo credit: European Parliament, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons