The Eredivisie is currently on winter break, and in order to stay fit, Vitesse had planned a trip to Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Initially, the trip seemed like a great way for a young club (the club's star player, Lucas Piazon, on loan from Chelsea, is 19 years old) to simultaneously recharge their batteries while starting to focus on the second half of the Eredivisie campaign. Vitesse currently shares the top spot in the Eredivisie with Dutch giants Ajax, and stands a very good chance to not only win its first-ever Eredivisie title, but also secure Champions League football next season. The team had scheduled scrimmages to test itself against Bundesliga clubs VfL Wolfsburg and Hamburger SV, who are also training in Abu Dhabi.
But things went sour when, at the last minute the UAE decided to revoke Dan Mori's visa.
As it is wont to do, the UAE decided to turn a sporting event into a political issue. Mori is a 25-year-old centre-back for Vitesse. He primarily offers cover on the bench for starters Guram Kashia and Jan-Arie van der Heijden, although he did play the full 90 in October's 2-2 draw against FC Groningen.
More relevantly, Mori is also Israeli.
The UAE, like most Arab states, do not recognise Israel. However, according to Vitesse spokesperson Ester Bal, speaking to Dutch radio station Omroep Gelderland, the club had previously received "verbal confirmation that [Mori] was welcome to join the team as he was a professional and they could make an exception."
Breaking its promise, the UAE has changed course and has decided not to allow Mori to travel to Abu Dhabi and train with his teammates.
Shamefully, this is not the first time the UAE has tried to drag politics into sport by banning Israeli athletes. In 2009, the UAE refused to allow Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer to compete in the Dubai Tennis Championships.
The tennis community stood up and told the UAE that politics, and especially those predicated upon discrimination, had no place in sport. The defending men's champion, Andy Roddick, withdrew from the tournament in protest (said tournament had $2 million in prize money at stake on the men's side). The tournament organisers initially tried to allege that Roddick was injured, but Roddick spoke up.
"I really didn't agree with what went on over there. I don't know if it's the best thing to mix politics and sports, and that was probably a big part of it. It's just disappointing that reflects on a tournament that probably didn't have much to do with the decision. Nevertheless, I just don't feel like there's a need for that in a sporting event. I don't think you make political statements through sports."
Then-CEO of the Women's Tennis Association, Larry Scott considered "canceling the tournament on the spot," but decided to allow the tournament to move forward at the urging of Peer, who didn't want her fellow athletes to miss out. The WTA fined the tournament $300,000 (a drop in the bucket for oil sheiks, but it was by far the largest fine ever issued by the WTA). The eventual winner Venus Williams also spoke out in support of Peer during the tournament and referenced her at center court during the trophy presentation, saying "it was a shame someone couldn't be here."
As a direct result of the tennis community being largely unwilling to sit by and allow the UAE to impose its disgraceful policies onto their sport (and the ensuing international backlash), the UAE allowed fellow Israeli Andy Ram to compete in the men's tournament, which was held a few weeks after the women competed. Further, the UAE allowed Peer to compete the following year. Somewhat ironically, she lost to Williams.
When asked about their relationship, Williams said:
"We have a certain special history together. I know she would have done the same thing for me or any other player. My parents both came from the South in the '40s and '50s, and just - you know, it was an outrage really. Just like, 'Are you serious? Can you really exclude someone?' This is professional tennis in 2010. We're all athletes here. The feeling inside of me was just one of almost rage and discontent. Like, 'Is this for real?'"
Given the fairly widespread condemnation of the UAE's decision to ban Israeli athletes, onlookers in the Netherlands and abroad were, quite reasonably, expecting a similar reaction from Vitesse when they found out that Dan Mori had also been banned from joining his team simply because he's an Israeli. In fact, there is a strong, and also quite reasonable, sentiment that Vitesse should have stayed behind in solidarity.
While Vitesse has stopped short of canceling their trip, the club has said that it is upset with the decision UAE's decision to ban Mori, and they plan to take the matter up with FIFA.
"We are upset that we have become part of a political struggle and afterwards we will seek to take this matter up with FIFA. Both the United Arab Emirates and Israel are members of FIFA and, in this sense, it is strange that a footballer should be shut out of a training camp."
For their part, the KNVB (Dutch FA) has not taken much of a stance, instead passing responsibility onto the club.
"It is primarily a political issue. It's for each club to determine where training is held. We understand that Vitesse are quite irritated with how this happened."
The reality of the situation, however, is the UAE revoked Mori's visa just 24 hours before the club was scheduled to leave for the winter training. To cancel the trip would surely send a very strong statement that there is no room for discrimination of any kind in sport, be it national, ethnic, racial, religious, gender, or otherwise. However, it would also mean that the Vitesse's training schedule would be disrupted and it would also have adverse effects on the training schedules of Wolfsburg and Hamburg.
That said, one could certainly make the case that Vitesse should have known that this would be an issue.
Less than a year ago, in February 2013, Swansea City striker Itay Shechter, who had been loaned to the club from German side 1. FC Kaiserslautern, was barred by the UAE from joining his club on a training visit to Dubai. Defender Tal Ben Haim had also been prevented from training in the UAE with Bolton back in 2006, but has since been granted entry after acquiring British citizenship and traveling on his British passport.
Especially now that European clubs have to contend with UEFA's financial fair play regulations the sad reality is that few, if any, clubs are going to turn down the vast amounts of money that the sheiks are chucking about on moral grounds.
Arsenal's stadium in North London is named after an airline company, Emirates, which is wholly owned by the UAE's government (or more specifically, by Sheikh Mohammed, the ruling monarch who is also both the prime minister and vice president). Emirates is also the shirt sponsor for Arsenal, as well as for AC Milan, Paris Saint-Germain and Real Madrid. In addition, clubs travel to the UAE every year to take advantage of large appearance fees offered by the government. By entering into a partnership with the UAE, are these clubs implicitly condoning all of the questionable stuff that goes on in the UAE?
That's hardly an easy question to answer and one each person has to answer for themselves (personally, I would answer "of course not").
However, we could also ask a different question - why we aren't demanding more from the influential voices in football? As the tennis community has shown, simply coming out and telling the UAE to leave politics at the door and quietly enjoy the sport they're bringing to them has effected change, even if that change is probably little more than a grain of sand in the desert that is the Arab-Israeli conflict (not a slight on the tennis community, mind you, but rather a recognition that the conflict goes eons beyond sporting visas).
To Mori's credit, the player commented on the situation with more grace and restraint than most of us would exercise after being told that we couldn't go about our jobs because of our nationality (author's note: Mori's statement was written in Hebrew, and the author used Google Translate and made some grammatical changes to arrive at the following, so this cannot be considered exact quote).
Training camp in Dubai! I got permission to enter, and all was well and good until yesterday, then comes a phone call that says: 'The police did not allow Israelis to enter even if they are athletes!' So, after everyone flew [to the UAE], I stayed in the Netherlands for personal training. I want to say with great pride, Blessed are You, our God, King of the Universe. I hope everyone has a good week :)
Asserting his pride in his religion and his heritage, Mori also appears focused on whatever training he can get with a personal coach and possibly the reserves (who did not travel to Abu Dhabi). A true teammate in every sense of the word, Mori is putting his club before himself, a truly remarkable feat given the deeply personal assault on him by the UAE government.
The question now is how the football world will react. Will they stand by and let the UAE's practices continue to go unnoticed and unpunished or will they follow Mori's example of putting others ahead of themselves, and be willing to sacrifice potential profits and use whatever power they have to effect change?