Netherlands captain Virgil van Dijk has explained the reason why he and a host of team captains decided in unison not to wear armbands branded with the ‘one love’ message which is in protest to the anti-LGBT stance of 2022 World Cup host Qatar.
LGBT rights and activities are criminalised in Qatar and much of the Arab world due to strongly-held religious beliefs. Global LGBT rights groups have however been pushing campaigns to send a powerful message against discrimination and criminalisation of LGBT individuals.
To that affect, the captains of England, Wales, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands and Switzerland teamed up to wear armed bands carrying the message “One Love”. This move not only contravened Qatari law but FIFA’s as well, which requires captains to wear armbands supplied by the global football governing body for the World Cup.
With the threat of getting sanctioned with yellow cards for refusing to comply with the rules, all the football associations of the concerned teams made a u-turn with Van Dijk admitting getting booked would not have been beneficial to him in a tournament he was looking forward to playing.
“I play in a position where a yellow card is not useful. I became a football player and I want to play these kinds of tournaments,” Van Dijk told Dutch public broadcaster Nederlandse Omroep Stichting.
“There are people who say we don’t have a backbone, but that’s not how it works.
“We just want to play football. I would have loved to play with that band, but not at the expense of a yellow card.”
Van Dijk played the entire 90 minutes as the Netherlands saw off current African champions Senegal 2-0 in their World Cup Group A opener at the Al Thumama Stadium on Monday evening.
