“That’s what happens when a Qatari lobbyist meets a human rights believer.” Andreas Rettig clearly explains the five-minute dispute with Uli Hoeneß in the Sport1 “double pass”. The former DFL boss also finds a reason for the honorary president of FC Bayern to pick up the phone.
After the verbal skirmishes on Sunday, Andreas Rettig identified a possible reason for the 70-year-old’s call with Bayern Munich’s Honorary President Uli Hoeneß live on the TV show “Doppelpass” on Sport1. “Maybe boredom,” suspected the former managing director of the German Football League (DFL) at Spox and Goal.
The 59-year-old longtime Bundesliga manager and Hoeneß had exchanged verbal blows for around five minutes. Hoeneß had sided with World Cup hosts Qatar. Rettig is a proven critic of the World Cup finals in the emirate on the Persian Gulf.
“If the shareholders of a company decide to sell shares to Qatar, you can criticize that. But then that is the decision of the shareholders. The biggest shareholders of FC Bayern are the members. If they reject such a commitment, that’s it accept. For FC Bayern, the vote of its members seems to be of secondary importance,” emphasized Rettig.
The differences of opinion between him and Hoeneß, himself for many years as manager of FC Bayern Head of the “Attack Department” at the German record champions, are no coincidence, according to Rettig: “That happens when a Qatari lobbyist meets a person who is committed to human rights. “
According to Rettig, the fact that Hoeneß included the Qatari gas supplies in his chain of arguments for the emirate was an inadmissible mixing of levels: “You can see the strategically used sports washing of an autocratic state without freedom of the press and freedom of expression and massive human rights violations, which is also characterized by the organization of a World Cup promises a personal image transfer, don’t set it off against an economy that has got into energy shortages through no fault of its own.”
The former DFL managing director added smugly: “Change through trade has not led to success elsewhere.”
