It’s only four letters – but even those are too many for FIFA.
“LOVE” is actually written on the back collar of the white away shirt of the Belgium national team. But the Red Devils are allowed to world cup in qatar Not competition. This is reported by Pieter Bossaert, the boss of the Belgian association of the newspaper “Het Nieuwsblad”.
“The word “love” has to go. It’s sad, but FIFA doesn’t give us a choice. Otherwise, the equipment remains unchanged,” confirms Bossaert.
The report states that the Belgian Football Association will now tape the term.
The hammering of Belgium’s jersey followed immediately after the pad scandal at the World Cup in Qatar. At noon it came to light: because of the European captains’ “One Love” armbands, the world federation has put participants in a campaign for human rights and diversity under enormous pressure – and threatened with sporting sanctions.
The sad result: The German Football Association and other federations, as well as Belgium, bowed out – and so are now without a symbolic piece of material in Qatar, which is supposed to promote tolerance and diversity.
For Borussia Dortmund’s Belgian national player Thomas Meunier (31), the European World Cup participants’ banned campaign with the “One Love” captain’s armband comes too late. “You cannot start a protest when you are here. it’s too late now. Now we can only accept the situation,” the defender said on Monday at the Belgian team quarters on the west coast of Qatar.
From FIFA’s point of view, it is certainly wise to ban it now,” said Meunier, who found the development “a real shame”.
“But we all know how things are here. We know the rules and we have to accept that they are different from us.” Meunier, who started the tournament with his team against Canada on Wednesday, lamented not being able to do anything about it as a player: “We can only respond on the pitch.”
