Protests - Part 17

German Naked Football Protest

German artist and filmmaker Gerritt Starczewski has been protesting the commercialization of football (which Americans call soccer) in an interesting way – by organizing naked football games.  The commercialization that he is protesting includes advertising banners at games and commercial sponsorships of everything including clothing.  That's partly why the protest games are played without clothes.  The short video above contains clips from a naked game in 2016.

This photo shows a lineup of two teams that played in August, 2020 in Oer Erkenschwick, Germany.  The players are wearing only shoes and socks.  The teams can be distinguished by the color of their socks (black vs blue).

Some of the players on one of the teams in Oer Erkenschwick.

In September, 2020, Starczewski organized an international game between a German team in black socks and a Dutch team in orange socks.

Some of the German players.

A brief video of the German-Dutch game.  The game was a protest against FIFA, the international organization that oversees football (soccer).  I'm sorry about the "Worldwide News" watermark and the blurring of frontal nudity – this was the best video I could find of that game.

At the end of the video, we saw players from both teams spelling out "Ey, FIFA leckt uns am Arsch" (above), which is German for "Hey, FIFA, kiss our ass" (literally "lick our ass").

We end with a short video of scenes from the 2020 game in Oer Erkenschwick.  This video doesn't blur nudity, but it was silent, so I borrowed the music from the first video.  A banner seen in the background says "Das System Fussball ist krank – da ziehen wir blank," which is German for "The football system is sick – let's strip."

Will these naked protest games make football (soccer) less commercial?  Of course not, but I hope he keeps doing them.