World Cup Qatar 2022: the German Federation renounced using the solidarity bracelet and justified the decision by “blackmail” of FIFA

They seek to give clear explanations. The German Football Federation (DFB) has responded to the criticism it has received for refusing to wear the solidarity bracelet in Qatar 2022 and has justified the decision by alleging “blackmail” from FIFA. Germany will open on Wednesday against Japan in the World Cup.

”We have not knelt before FIFA. We understand the disappointment and outrage. We were subjected to extreme blackmail where we thought we had to make this decision even though we didn’t want to make it.”, explained the director of communication of the DFB Steffen Simon in statements to the station Deutschlandfunk.

Germany, along with six other teams, had announced that they would wear a heart bracelet with colors similar to, but not identical to, the LGBT flag. However, after FIFA announced sports sanctions, the seven federations have reversed that decision, which has generated harsh criticism.

”They would have accepted fines, write the federations. But they want to avoid sporting consequences such as a yellow card. For them the bracelet had less value than making a tactical foul in the center of the field ”, writes in a commentary the weekly “Die Zeit”.

In its newscast last night, the first German public television channel, ARD -which has the rights to the World Cup together with the second ZDF channel- issued a comment saying that for Germany it was better “losing points and being eliminated in the group stage with the bracelet than being world champion without the bracelet”.

Kimmich’s claim

The player of the German national team Joshua Kimmich acknowledged that he is surprised by the decision of the federations to rule out that footballers wear the ‘One Love’ bracelet due to possible FIFA sanctions.

”In the end it was a decision of the associations that everyone supported. In general, I was a bit surprised because I had the feeling that the bracelet was being talked about in a rather irrelevant way. Now I feel that it is a strong signal. We continue to collect complaints. Players are quite thoughtful and we should attend to complaints”, indicated the Bayern Munich player.