World Cup boycott? German government won’t intervene

The German government will not get involved in a debate about a possible boycott of this summer’s football World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada, State Minister for Sport Christiane Schenderlein has said.

“Decisions on participation in or a boycott of major sporting events are the sole responsibility of the relevant sports associations, not politicians,” Schenderlein said in a government statement on Monday.

She said the assessment was up to the respective federations, naming the German Football Federation (DFB) and world governing body FIFA.

“The federal government will accept this assessment,” she said.

A government spokesman said on Monday that if the German national team was involved it was not up to the government to decide on the participation of the team at competitions.

There have been boycott considerations in Germany and some other European countries in connection with the policy of United States President Donald Trump regarding Greenland and on the domestic front, with a second fatal shooting on the weekend by US immigration officers.

DFB president Bernd Neuendorf said at a German Football League (DFL) reception that the issue “is not a big debate because I believe that we agree at the DFB that we consider this debate wrong at this time.”

DFL Hans-Joachim Watzke said at the same event he doesn’t think “the time is right to discuss something like that at the moment.

“When the time is right, we will discuss it, but from my point of view, it is completely out of place right now,” he said.

Watzke, who is also a DFB vice-president, said he was not aware this was a major issue, and was supported by Bayern Munich CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen who also said that he had “in the past never seen a World Cup that was boycotted.”

Dreesen also recalled the 2018 World Cup in Russia where all teams played four years after Russia annexed the Crimea from Ukraine. He said sport should concentrate on playing football while geopolitics were made elsewhere.

Christian Democrats foreign policy expert Jürgen Hardt had recently raised the boycott issue should the US annex Greenland. Trump said last week the US would not use military force.

The shooting in Minneapolis on Saturday prompted Monday’s comments by the spokesman after reporters raised the issue.

DFB vice-president and St Pauli chairman Oke Göttlich called for at least a boycott debate last week, telling the Hamburger Morgenpost paper “that for me the time has definitely come.”

He renewed his stance on Monday but Neuendorf criticised him by saying that they first deliberate at the DFB and then form an opinion.

Bavarian Prime Minister and Christian Social Union party chief Markus Söder meanwhile dismissed a possible German team World Cup boycott as “absolute nonsense” from a players’ point of a view and foreign policy considerations.

“What’s that supposed to mean, apart from the fact that the World Cup isn’t just being held in the United States, but also in Canada and Mexico?” Söder said after a party meeting in Munich.