2023-06-22 18:00:02
The Barça statutes include as one of the organization’s purposes that “the club will ensure the protection and promotion of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (…but skin is skin). This adversative should complete the sentence so that it is not a hypocritical proclamation, but a truer statement of reality. In these times, the values that had been the pride of the culers with Unicef on their chests, are blurred to be vestiges. Groucho Marx is credited with a famous quote that Joan Laporta could well adopt: “These are my principles and, if you don’t like them, I have others”. The president, belligerent with the bet of Sandro Rosell and Josep Maria Bartomeu to sell the shirt in Qatar, is now “enthusiastic” to travel there and do personal business and for the club.
What used to be an Islamic dictatorship, is now, all of a sudden, a consolidated democracy where the human rights defended by the Barça charter are respected? It is difficult to pinpoint at what point Laporta has begun to feel comfortable in contexts that were so criticized by his parishioners when he was not in government. Perhaps the visit, weeks ago, to another paradise of tolerance like Saudi Arabia with the intermediary commissioner Pini Zahavi helped him prepare the ground. It is unknown what the exact purpose of the excursion was, but in any case, in 2021 he had already given the green light to a friendly that was played there as a tribute to Maradona. Laporta has long since begun to embrace these new friends because it is increasingly clear that in the current drift of football it is very difficult not to fall into the temptation of the drug of petrodollars.
The party of the unsustainable bubble can only be paid for by those who need to whiten thanks to our daily complicity. The last World Cup, the exodus of trading cards and City’s treble prove it. The ball must continue to roll even at the risk of getting blood on it. In short, if you have to try to be desperately competitive, you have to do it with tweezers on your nose and throwing shovelfuls of sand at the old romanticism of values. The newspaper library is already starting to take its toll, but if alliances with Qatari partners are to be closed, the Laporta board will find a way to write a positive story about it. This is Barça’s problem: wanting to sell that you are something you are not. Perhaps, right from the start, it is necessary to warn everyone with the Groucho Marx quote. The beginnings of a few years ago have passed into history.
#Qatar #bad #anymore #values #important