P. Köster: Cabin Sermon
Mercy for Kimmich! The national player debate is unfair and destructive
star-Voice Philipp Köster sees problems in the vaccination debate about Joshua Kimmich
© Sven Hoppe / DPA
Again Joshua Kimmich is at the center of a vaccination discussion. It’s unfair and destructive. In order for the debate to be constructive, however, the player also has to correct himself, says star– Voice of Philipp Köster.
It’s not been a good week for national player Joshua Kimmich. His admission that he had not yet been vaccinated and that he did not plan to make an appointment anytime soon sparked a heated public debate. All the frustration about vaccinators, unconventional thinkers and esoteric oaths that had accumulated in the vaccinated part of the population in recent months, now discharged from a soccer player, of all people, who neither denies the existence of the corona virus nor sees it as part of a world conspiracy.
No sooner did the kicker seem to have survived this sometimes irrational discussion with some lightness than it returned with new dynamism when national player Niklas Süle, although double vaccinated, tested positive for Corona. It was not this infection that made the biggest headlines, but the fact that Kimmich also had to leave the national team’s quarters and go into quarantine, which a vaccination would have saved him from. The announcement of the departure was only a few hours old, as the media were already disapprovingly calculated the horrific wages that FC Bayern, as an employer, would be allowed to withhold during the upcoming isolation.
Communication from Kimmich’s side was unfortunate
It was at the latest when two things became clear. First, that Kimmich will only get media calm if he decides to have a vaccination. And secondly, that it is apparently impossible at the moment to discuss such topics without thrashing the respective adversary with irreconcilable severity and mercilessness, without any interest in finding some kind of consensus in the end.
This is not a new phenomenon, and certainly not a football one. For years, new exciting topics have been found at breathtaking speed. Through a practiced interplay of established media and social networks, these then experience a brutal effect over and over again, which shatters the actual goal of a civilized discussion, namely the clarification of positions, in favor of a bitter struggle for sovereignty of opinion.
Now the Kimmich case is certainly an extreme example because it was not a footballing special topic, but the social mega-topic par excellence. Nevertheless, this discussion is a good example of what the conflicting parties could have done to give the debate a constructive character.
First of all, there is Kimmich himself. He only commented once and not even particularly happily. The indifferent statements on long-term consequences were not very convincing and did not invalidate the impression that someone here had only very superficially dealt with the question of vaccination. Kimmich and his management should have quickly dispelled this impression and reduced the area of attack. And they should have defended themselves absolutely and clearly against the appropriation by right-wing populists. Leaving the applause from the AfD uncommented was a mistake.
Even Kimmich critics have to touch their own nose
Kimmich’s silence also ensured that the camp of Kimmich’s defenders had to withdraw to arguments that were very thinly woven. To grant the player the right to self-determination of his own body, but not to all those who are endangered by unvaccinated contemporaries, worked hard. And all the lateral thinkers and oaths who immediately flooded the mailboxes of the media with savage insults after the first reports did not want to dwell on such subtleties anyway, but found confirmation from the old international Lukas Podolski, who stated in all seriousness that Kimmich was treated “like a felon. ”Was that so? In which prison was Kimmich taken by special forces?
But of course all those who criticized Kimmich harshly, in some cases, have to ask themselves whether the quick and clear condemnation of the refusal to vaccinate also contributed to the irreconcilable tone of the debate. A few hours after the Kimmich statement, I myself rumbled on n-tv that this was really “stupid talk”. Was that appropriate? Rather not! And in the retrospective, the furor with which Kimmich was almost made the sole culprit for the approaching fourth wave appears strange.
Should all of that repeat itself now, only this time against the backdrop of the wave of departures around the national team? We could do better instead. The media and the discussants on social media, but also the other unvaccinated footballers who could share their concerns with us – but also Joshua Kimmich, who could then experience that an open and honest dialogue with the public makes more and more sense as an ostentatious silence.