After England, Wales and Germany announced they would wear OneLove armbands, FIFA has now released their own collection.
Your car is only the standard version, mine has seat massagers and automatic headlights. Like the younger sister who just wants to be seen to be taller, prettier and more intelligent than her older sibling, the lovely folk over at FIFA have taken it upon themselves to release a new collection of socially aware armbands that the captains can parade during the World Cup in a country that does not allow for these basic human rights to be granted. Isn’t that just lovely.
England to ignore FIFA initiative
Despite FIFA’s innovative and commendable efforts in promoting values such as #BringTheMoves, England are sticking to their original idea (they are yet to have any response from FIFA) of wearing the OneLove armband, in support of the LGBTQ+ community. In case you weren’t aware, #BringTheMoves is, as explained in FIFA’s concise, 120-word statement on their website, an initiative that encourages children to “create their moves” before uploading them to social media. Apart from the World Health Organisation employees who were part of the plan, the social media uptake of this initiative has, until now, been something of a slow burner. In other words, it’s a load of word soup from football’s governing body.
More last minute decisions from FIFA
This move comes with little over 24 hours to go until the tournament kicks off at the Al Bayt stadium, where hosts Qatar will play Ecuador. Yesterday, FIFA announced a u-turn on beer being sold around the perimeter of the stadiums, with President Gianni Infantino today saying “three hours a day you cannot drink a beer, you will survive,”. Main sponsors Budweiser signed a $75 million deal with FIFA to be the sole provider of alcohol at the tournament but have now been forced to limit their sales to the fan parks after the original plans were scrapped at the eleventh hour. Alcohol will still continue to be sold in the areas of the stadiums reserved for corporate partners. Make of that what you will.
The banning of beer for travelling fans came after another u-turn, in which it was revealed that the fans paid to go to Qatar and post positive social media comments had had their finance packages cut, blaming “misinformed statements” in the media. Authorities reportedly blamed the decision on the bad press which followed the revelation of the paid fan packages. The Guardian reports that multiple sponsors are now concerned about the deals they signed with the tournament organisers.
