January 21 – Bayern Munich have returned from a training camp in the Middle East to face a barrage of criticism over a friendly played in Saudi Arabia, with politicians and fans claiming the club had ignored the issue of human rights in the country.
The German champions spent just over a week at a training camp in Qatar earlier this month before moving on to Saudi to take on Al-Hilal.
“Sport has a strong voice but it does not use it at the points where it makes sense and can be helpful,” the Social Democratic Party MP and head of the parliamentary committee on sport, Dagmar Freitag, told Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Footballers don’t have to be politicians but they should be aware of human rights conditions and could set examples.”
The Greens spokesman for sports politics issues, Özcan Mutlu, said Bayern should never have played the game in Saudi Arabia where the recent public flogging of imprisoned blogger Raif Badawi caused an international outcry.
“I find this behaviour shameful,” said Mutlu. ” There is no honour to have a friendly game in Riyadh when, so to speak, right next to the stadium the blogger Badawi is flogged 1,000 times and has his skin pulled off his back.”
Bayern argued that the Saudi Arabia game was a sponsored event by one of its commercial partners while Qatar, where several teams regularly go for winter training, provided ideal conditions.
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