LONDON – Barely four months after a public battle over rainbow-colored bracelets overshadowed the start of the World Cup in Qatar, world football’s governing body is facing similar questions over whether players will be allowed to show their support for gay rights this year. Women’s World Cup.
It’s a fight that everyone involved agreed shouldn’t have happened again.
Stung by fierce public and internal backlash in November when football leaders silenced a plan to wear armbands to promote a social justice campaign by threatening to suspend players who took part, FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, said in March that lessons had been learned from the events in Qatar. Seeking another battle with some of the world’s top women’s players at their own championship, Infantino vowed there would be a solution before the Women’s World Cup kicks off on July 20 in Australia and New Zealand.
But while offering those assurances, FIFA had already found a new way to anger both its players and its partners.
It had come close to agreeing, without consulting the organizers in Australia or New Zealand, to a sponsorship deal that would have made Saudi Arabia, through its tourism brand Visit Saudi, a major sponsor of the women’s tournament. The partnership would have seen dozens of gay players take to the field for matches at stadiums advertising travel to a country that does not recognize same-sex relationships and where homosexuality remains a criminal offence.
It was only after weeks of silence, behind-the-scenes crisis talks and public reprimands from officials in both host countries that FIFA confirmed the deal was dead. Infantino dismissed the whole controversy about it as “a storm in a teacup.” For others it was much more than that.
“As a leader, you need to take a stand on issues that you feel strongly about,” said James Johnson, the CEO of Football Australia, the sport’s governing body in the country.
“This is one that surprised us. It was one that we talked about with our players, our governments, our partners. And we also had a good sense of the general feeling in the Australian community that this deal was not in line with how we saw the tournament play out. So we decided with New Zealand that we would put our foot down on this occasion.”
Australia’s players have been particularly frustrated with the proposed Saudi sponsorship, Johnson said, so much so that the situation has reinforced the team’s attitude that the tournament should be used as a platform to promote the values they stand for. At least one Australian player said FIFA’s decision to bring the World Cup to Qatar, and its willingness to bow to local views, had been instructive.
“I think the last World Cup, the men’s World Cup, was a great example of what’s going on in the world and how much is still wrong,” said Emily Gielnik, a forward who has been a member of the Australian women’s team for many years. more than a decade.
“And I think there were some teams trying to represent that and of course playing the World Cup in that country was very controversial for a lot of reasons. And hopefully we can embody that and look like that, and be proud of who we are as people .
Several federations that bring teams to the tournament, including those from England and the Netherlands, two of the countries that have been strongest with FIFA over armbands in Qatar, as well as prominent powers such as the United States and Germany, have a history of supporting of their players and the causes that matter most to them.
While plans for similar protests have not been made public, female players may also be less likely than their male counterparts to back down if FIFA tries to clamp down on their coverage, such as in Qatar. The teams coming to Australia and New Zealand feature some of the most prominent female athletes in the world, many of whom can easily speak their minds on Saudi Arabia or something elseand which have been encouraged by recent successes in combat as diverse as equal pay and uniform design.
The women’s game, Gielnik said, was further ahead than the men’s game when it came to speaking up about social issues, and she predicted that teams and players would not shy away from using the platform the World Cup provides.
“I think some things will be controversial,” said Gielnik, one of many gay players on the Matildas team. “It depends on which path we take and which path other countries take.”
It was not easy for FIFA to distance itself from the Visit Saudi agreement. Saudi officials expressed frustration at losing the deal, part of a series of sponsorships Saudi Arabia agreed with FIFA to promote the kingdom. Visit Saudi was quietly added to the list of sponsors at last year’s Qatar World Cup and then at the Club World Cup in Morocco in January.
Clearly frustrated at having to change plans and disappoint Saudi Arabia, which has proven to be a major pillar of its own interests, Infantino chided FIFA’s critics for pressure to cancel the Visit Saudi deal for the women’s major championship. Australia, he pointed out, maintains ongoing economic ties with the kingdom.
“There’s a double standard that I really don’t understand,” Infantino said. “There is no problem. There is no agreement. But of course we want to see how we can involve Saudi sponsors, and those from Qatar, in women’s football in general.”
Johnson, the Australian football manager, and others responded that attitudes to homosexuality in the Gulf were only part of the problem. At a recent event hosted by the Australian High Commission in London to mark 100 days to the start of the World Cup, officials spoke about how the tournament would also act as a showcase to promote tourism to both host nations, highlighting another reason why FIFA has a planned agreement. to emphasize that Saudi tourism has caused so much suffering.
“It could have been Visit Finland and it still would have been a problem,” Johnson said.