“To leave now would mean to betray Estonian football,” said the president of the Estonian football association, Aivar Pohlak, who appeared to be dying on the country’s national TV station.
The Macbeth-inspired monologue was not performed by Pohlak himself, but a comedian from the group Kinoteater, who fill in time between World Cup matches.
On the first day of the championship, the group criticized human rights’ violations and workers’ poor conditions in Qatar, which Pohlak claimed was against the facts. That is when Kinoteater decided to respond during a special broadcast, and it set Estonian social media ablaze.
Pohlak’s decades-long iron grip on Estonian football is still strong, despite FIFA ranking the men’s team outside the top 100 and the women’s in the 96th place. The president has a history of controversy.
The latest will probably blow over, but his tenure may go into extra time.
