Germany’s Kimmich claims that players are not political experts prior to the Saudi World Cup voting

Joshua Kimmich, the new captain of Germany, said on Wednesday that players should stand up for values as role models in society, but they are not political experts. This comes before next month’s vote to choose Saudi Arabia to host the 2034 World Cup.

Concerns about human rights led to Saudi Arabia’s bid to host the 2026 World Cup, and Donald Trump was elected as the next president of the United States, which will co-host the tournament. When asked about politics in sports, Kimmich said that players could only do so much.

“As a captain of the national team, I think all of us players should stand for certain values.” At a news conference, Kimmich said, “But it’s not our job to be political all the time.”

Kimmich was talking before Germany’s Nations League games against Bosnia and Herzegovina on Saturday and Hungary three days later. Germany is in first place in Group A3.

Kimmich, who became captain after this year’s European Championship, said that Germany’s political attitude at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar did not help the team.

“Take the case of Qatar.” We didn’t give a good picture of ourselves as a country and as a team. We talked about politics, which took some of the fun out of the game. “In terms of organization, the World Cup was great,” he said.

In that World Cup, Germany players put their hands over their faces in a team photo before their group game against Japan. This was because of a fight over FIFA’s threat to punish players for wearing a “OneLove” armband.

FIFA had warned seven European teams that they would be punished if they wore the armband that stands for acceptance and diversity, but only Germany officially disagreed with the decision. In Qatar, being gay is against the law.

“The views of Western countries are ones that we believe should be true everywhere.” She said, “As a country, we feel like we have problems too, on our own building sites.” “So, it is maybe good to focus on that.”

“We didn’t always do the right thing in the past. You want to stand up for values that can’t be changed, but we have experts who should handle politics.” I don’t know much about politics.”

Before the votes next month at the FIFA Congress, Saudi Arabia is the only country that wants to host the 2034 World Cup. Because of the country’s track record on human rights, human rights groups like Amnesty International have spoken out against this.

“I hope that the boys who will be in the tournament in 10 years can concentrate on the game.” When we are nominated, it is our job to do our best because we are judged by how well we do,” Kimmich said.

Saudi Arabia says that its laws protect its national security and rejects that it violates human rights.