No Irish, No Yanks, No Clogs - FIFA World Cup 2018

Germans in "stabbed in the back" narrative shockah

Yes I agree with ERKOT SOGUT in his attack on Hoeness. It is good.

I think I also agree that people should not pose with either Erdogan or Putin, who are both terrible.

Though I suppose every player in the World Cup Final was forced to pose with (or near) Putin.

you might question the anti-erdogan outrage of citizens of EU countries who have backed him for years when its mesut ozil who feels its full force

Probably time for people to stop pretending that Erdogan is uniquely terrible in a footballing world where Arsenal are doing jolly photo ops with Paul Kagame and the next World Cup is in fucking Qatar.

innit!

Probably also time to stop whatabouttisms like 'others in the footballing world are doing jolly photo ops w terrible people too' because it doesn't mean Ozil can't be called out for doing the same. xp

If only we could move all (terrible) politicians and racist pundits to a Gulag.

It isn't a whatabouttism if your entire point is that Ozil is being held to a racist double-standard.

it's about the capacity in which you make these appearances and their significance. I don't really see how it's my place to police the way ppl from a given diaspora navigate relationships with their ancestral homeland. I know a few ppl are v much unconvinced by this "respecting the office" distinction (which is obv particularly tricky when the holder of that office created/transformed it for himself) but it's a v common compromise and often useful & reckoning with erdogan's political project is only one factor in his thinking here and can be much better done elsewhere

I've just remembered something that happened yesterday, apropos of nothing in particular.. I was reading about this story online at work yesterday when one of my colleagues, who is a Turkish Kurd, saw the offending photograph of Ozil and Erdogan and said, "I hate those two people".

She is definitely not a football fan btw!

This piece is a pretty excellent summary:

https://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2018/7/23/17603426/mesut-ozil-retirement-germany-erdogan-turkey

Perhaps now he has quit GER, Ozil will play better for AFC?

He has been given the #10 shirt.

This piece is a pretty excellent summary:

https://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2018/7/23/17603426/mesut-ozil-retirement-germany-erdogan-turkey

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, July 24, 2018 11:47 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this is good.

It's the same in the Netherlands. If they do well, their Dutch, if they don't, they're 'of Moroccan descent'. You'll never hear this about the Dutch basketball or ice hockey team being made up mostly of players born in Northern America, or the table tennis team made up of players born mostly in China. Because Morrocans are Dutch racists prime target and responsible for everything wrong here.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-34909845

(Guy needs to do a survey on England fans being English when they behave well and British when they behave badly)

some good stuff in that but this -

Respect for the office is not an adequate explanation or apology for taking a photo with a man who is responsible for heinous and repressive actions

- is purity politics logic, might feel good to declaim, but like not negotiating with terrorists it's deluded posturing. the notion that this is a significant or concerning part of the normalisation of the erdogan regime is absurd. there's such dishonesty and wilful blindness in seeing everything through this lens.

ogmorotm

raheem sterling treatment comparable

daniel day lewis british winning oscar irish drunk at afterparty of oscars relevant

Scottish star Andy Mürray PLUMMETS to 999 in the rankings (soon to be rehabilitated to British when he's winning again).

Ozil is a public figure - his remarks and yes, who he does take a picture with should be given some scrutiny. So does "respect for the office" also mean respect for all the actions carried out by that office? I understand its overstated in terms of giving legitimacy to any regime but if you going to play that game.

it doesn't, or it doesn't necessarily

im willing to take his diasporic explanation at face value tbh. for me it has a ring of good faith argument that the criticism of the picture, his lack of teutonic affiliation, his scapegoating for the faults if his national side, all lack

you could circle all day around the rights and wrongs of what a footballer posing for a picture with a distasteful but (legitimate)(sub in better word here) head of state of his ancestral home means to the footballer as person, the footballer as targeted immigrant, the footballer as footballer, the footballer as marketing tool, the home country, the foster country, the press of the latter, the right of the latter, the message boards of ilx

its all imo bollocks tho. in context or not. the backlash held as proportionate to the sin or not.

the guy can be proud to have risen to the level he has to be asked to meet the president of his grandparents country without it being abringing endorsement of policies (people who look to footballers and others for ringing endorsements of policies are...cunts btw)

they're cunts and i hope they die

#startedreasonable

"acknowledged" for "legitimate"

or just no descriptor at all but yeah ykwis

If a US footballer, based in the UK, had had a PR cheesy photo taken with Trump during his visit that would really have gone down well.

thats not rly comparable tho

a US footballer in the UK aint diaspora if we're talking diaspora

it just seems odd to treat him in isolation. from the reaction it seems safe to assume he's not a secret die-hard AKP supporter who begged for this meeting, instead he's caught in this position of having to upset ppl and he's tried to play it diplomatically. if erdogan was a total pariah he'd deserve criticism but as it is we're all in democracies who have consistently backed turkey and it seems absurd to look to mesut ozil for moral clarity and leadership

True but there is a bit of context going on here, I mentioned Trump because he is especially disliked in the UK, much of it down to various stupid comments he's made about the UK. Meanwhile, for some time, Erdogan has been casually throwing the N word around, in connection with Germany and the German government, unlikely to endea him to many people in Germany.

oh the other n word

v confused for a sec

You can be proud of your heritage and show it in a lot of ways, one distasteful way to do it is to take a picture with a president who’s committed horrible acts against his people

Tom’s turkish friend sounds reasonable and probably people who are closer to that situation would feel the same

i do fifteen distasteful things before lunch and i aint under ozils pressures

Well, she is Kurdish so highly unlikely to be Erdogan's biggest fan.

Youre also a nobody tho

(not that I wouldn't welcome a principled stance from him but then charges of empty grandstanding would be hovering nearby. the expectations on footballers seem bizarre and often incoherent)

("democracies", obv)

if its only about posing with a leader who personally is responsible for despicable actions, look anyone can get the objection. theres just a limit in anyones right to apply that to someone in ozils position imo, you run foul of that limit pretty much immediately tbh

if he chose to piss off the entirety of german tabloid thought and institutional racism as opposed to family/community (we wont ever find out how much of this is convenient ofc) and wider international anti-erdogan political chatocracy is collateral damage....eh look a man has to put his foot somewhere evrn when the floor is messy yknow

just realised I have failed to acknowledge pasting ilx at fantasy football. crumbled in the QFs and tailed off dramatically in the following rounds and still had a 70 point lead at the end. for shame.

It's one thing for Kurds or fellow Turks to be disappointed of Özil's actions, how the head of the German Football Association come into play still boggles my mind.

cos hes a fuck

it just seems odd to treat him in isolation. from the reaction it seems safe to assume he's not a secret die-hard AKP supporter who begged for this meeting, instead he's caught in this position of having to upset ppl and he's tried to play it diplomatically. if erdogan was a total pariah he'd deserve criticism but as it is we're all in democracies who have consistently backed turkey and it seems absurd to look to mesut ozil for moral clarity and leadership

― ogmor, Tuesday, 24 July 2018 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

While that is true, and the way this picture was deployed to attack him is deplorable (not least because as you say the people of the countries attacking him deal with Turkey, make deals with that country and so on) its also the case that Ozil, as a citizen, is turning a blind eye to what is happening in the country of his family too. You just don't blindly have respect for the state when you don't actually what they are up to. He knows the ppl in the German FA and their actions and words, why doesn't he know more about Ergodan?

Its overstated that he is giving legitimacy to a regime lol, but the criticism of that picture shouldn't be dismissed altogether. It was really naive at the least.

Also he should surely know how unpopular Erdogan is in Germany in particular, but he's a footballer I suppose. I do think the I Am Honouring The Current Leader Of My Forefathers thing is a bit of baloney dreamed up by his PR people after the fact, though.

I'm glad that we've covered the fact that Erdogan is an asshole and that Özil is an idiot to potentially not think like us on the subject.

xxp yeah well this is the nature of diplomacy. sometimes isolating and refusing to play nice is effective, in this instance I'm not sure what it would achieve. for all I know he may be v well informed about turkish politics but feel the same way.

lots of ppl do of course have more or less blind respect for institutions/the ppl they represent which is sub-ideal but another thing I don't feel ozil can be fairly singled out for

I'm sorry that I have to post this extremely distressing picture, but I really do have to.

https://i.imgur.com/KYMuPqh.jpg

Kenny Sansom's leer always cracks me up there.

Xp

Never liked those dudes