As he said, there is a shift in roles between 2 subjects - advertising and football. A World Cup match should have taken place at a natural pace, with continuous emotions, and pressure pushed to the highest level. But now everything is cut in halfway... just to give television time to run commercials. The German coach's conclusion is "Football is now being controlled by those sitting in air-conditioned offices, no longer for players or fans".
In the shift of the times, football is no longer the rudimentary, romantic and full of beautiful emotions as before. Emotions are cut, in fact, from the time all kinds of technologies were applied, not the story of inserting advertising in the middle of each half. From "games" to "entertainment industry", football has become a giant industrial machine with billion-dollar commercial contracts. Klopp and anyone can criticize "losing the soul", but looking from FIFA's side, "industrialization" is the flow in the veins to "nurture" more than 200 member federations worldwide.
It should be remembered that FIFA earns money not to serve "those sitting in air conditioning" but to share the profits for member federations. For example, the Vietnamese national team did not participate in the 2026 World Cup, but the Vietnam Football Federation was still allocated a support fund.
In fact, there is no development that does not come with trade-offs. To have money, you must adapt to the times, businesses are not short of fields, not short of sports to cooperate and advertise.
Therefore, everything has two sides. And when the story is a trade-off (in possible conditions), positive development is not about choosing 1 of 2, but about balancing, both maintaining the splendor and professionalism of a super project without losing the quintessence, identity and soul. Criticism is always easy!
