Unease over Russian football World Cup: opinion
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
12.04.2017 10:00
A Swiss-American probe into how Russia and Qatar were give the right to host football World Cups in 2018 and 2022, respectively, have already seen charges against and dismissals of FIFA officials, a journalist for the Gazeta Polska Codziennie daily has said.
KremlFoto: Flickr.com/Larry Koester
According to the journalist, Marcin Herman, German MPs have called for a boycott of the competition in Russia in response to recent brutal repressions of anti-corruption protestors, while two years ago some US senators wanted to stop Russia from hosting the event.
The journalist added, citing the German press, that North Korean "slaves" are building a stadium in St. Petersburg which raises concerns about quality and safety, as well as moral concerns.
He also said that holding some of the matches in stadiums in Kaliningrad, where army exercises are held near the Polish border to practice an attack on Poland, and in Rostov, some 200 km from “Russian-occupied” Donbass, in eastern Ukraine, is akin to the Berlin Olympics held in 1936, ahead of a German attack on Poland which launched WWII.
At the same time, the journalist said, many Russian citizens are concerned that the football world cup – following the winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 – is another opportunity for “thieving and a nail in the coffin of the Russian economy”.