i really don’t want to well actually anything about this because i– a queer woman who’s married to a queer hungarian woman, and who loves football with all my dumb little heart– am deeply frustrated by the whole situation surrounding this, but i think there’s some important context not included here.
(also, just as an aside: i think how germany as a country responded is fantastic but that any alignment of hungary passing this law and the team being knocked out is a little fucked up. the team is not the government– some have even outright spoken out in support of queer rights– and the actions of the fucked up government are not representative of the hungarian people as a whole and it’s really important, i think, that those things not be conflated)
euro 2020 started with the first matchday on june 11
hungary passed its repulsive anti-queer law on june 15
manuel neur, the captain of the german team, has been wearing a pride flag-patterned captain’s armband since germany’s opening match
uefa investigated neur wearing the armband to determine if it was political speech and determined that while the pride flag is a positive symbol for diversity, it is not itself a political statement and does not violate uefa’s requirements that athletes not make political statements
in response to the hungarian law being passed and germany’s upcoming game in munich against hungary, the mayor of munich put in a request to uefa to allow them to light allianz stadium in pride colors for the match
uefa declines the request on the basis of it being a political statement
there’s a key difference between neur’s armband– which was clearly decided upon prior to hungary passing this law– being a symbol of support for queer rights and munich wanting to light up their stadium like a pride flag in direct response to hungary passing this law. the munich request was, in fact, a directly political one– one that i think is great, to be clear– because the point of it was to criticize a hungarian law when a shitload of hungarians would be watching and viktor orban and a collection of his cronies would have been in attendance. neur wearing an armband during pride month is not a political gesture in response to something any of the opposing teams did. uefa’s response, while not one i like, is reasonable and in line with their stance on political neutrality. both decisions make sense within uefa’s existing policy framework.
the issue that’s getting glossed over in all of the discussions here– people are mad at uefa and shouting about hypocrisy and inconsistency in rulings between the neur one and the munich one, calling out fake allyship, etc etc– is that uefa considers itself a politically neutral organization. and while there are arguments to be made that organizations like uefa and the ioc and whatnot should be politically neutral because bringing people together over a common interest who would normally never interact is good, the fact remains that the problem with this whole situation isn’t that uefa enforced its existing political neutrality, it’s that uefa is determined to maintain their stance as “politically neutral”.
human rights cannot be separated from politics, and organizations like uefa need to acknowledge that and address it. so do the ioc– as evidenced by their approach to black lives matter– and other big, powerful athletic organizations. politics and human rights are interminably intertwined and athletic organizations need to acknowledge that and abandon this lofty, privileged, absurd idea that they can or should be politically neutral. even if they’re worried about the idea of organizations or governments trying to lobby through sports advertising or what the hell ever, at the very fucking least they need to align themselves with human rights progress and stand by it.
