Dear Werder fans,
In the last few days, national team squads worldwide have been announced for the 2022 World Cup. From an SV Werder Bremen perspective, with call-ups for Niclas Füllkrug and Milos Veljkovic, reporting on the event, which has been heavily criticised ever since being awarded to Qatar over a decade ago, has also finally begun.
In the last months, we have thought long and hard about our approach to this tournament. As SV Werder we have a clear position: The World Cup should never have been allowed to be awarded to Qatar. On the one hand, non-transparent decisions and corruption around the awarding of the competition has done long-lasting damage to football’s reputation. While on the other, disgraceful abuses of human rights, discrimination of the LGBTIQA+ community and strong restrictions to women’s rights in the country, as well as the ways in which natural resources have been used, are not compatible with our values.
A complete boycott of the tournament has been demanded by many. However, from our perspective, total silence around the event does not send the right signal. It is important to point out serious grievances on the ground, rather than hide them behind a supposedly uninvolved silence. At Werder, we are not only a club that an unbelievable number of people have passionately cheered on for generations; we are also a part of the footballing economy. As a result, we have a societal responsibility to not be silent, but to keep working so that a mistake such as this is not repeated.
As a result, we also want to consciously allow critical voices to have their say in interviews, posts and stories on our official channels, so that a reflective, well-founded discussion can be fostered around topics like discrimination against the LGBTIQA+ community, gender equality or the necessity to have more ecological sustainability in football. This is what our media team is currently working on.
We will report on the sporting performance of our players. And we will obviously be pleased for two long-serving and loyal Werder players, if they are personally able to realise their dreams with their national teams. For the players, it is possibly the highlight of their careers. It would be wrong, however, to be overly emotional. At SVW, we will refrain from passionately cheering on the tournament in our communications. Official content from FIFA and from Qatar will be boycotted and not shown on our channels. We don’t want to be associated with the tournament so won’t use licensed material, official hashtags or links to official channels.
SV Werder Bremen has shown clear opposition to racism and has actively stood against discrimination for many years. We stand for a colourful, open-minded, diverse community, for equal rights regardless of gender, ethnicity, background, beliefs, social standing, sexual identity or disability. We stand for inclusion for all. In the coming weeks, we want to authentically demonstrate our dedication to these values once again.
Lebenslang Grün-Weiß
