Explained | FIFA World Cup 2022: The story behind the OneLove armband, and Qatar’s laws against homosexuality Premium

The red, black, and green colours on the OneLove logo symbolise race and origin, and the pink, yellow, and blue colours symbolise all gender identities and sexual orientations.

The story so far: FIFA on Tuesday disallowed players at the FIFA World Cup 2022 underway in Qatar from wearing OneLove armbands during matches. The captains of ten European football teams, including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, England, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Wales, Sweden, and Switzerland, had planned to wear the armbands, which protest various forms of discrimination, during the tournament.

In a joint statement, the captains of England, Wales, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark said they will not wear OneLove armbands after FIFA made it clear they would be booked for doing so. “You don’t want the captain to start the match with a yellow card. That is why it is with a heavy heart that we as a UEFA working group and as a team had to decide to abandon our plan,” the Dutch football association KNVB said in a statement.

According to the rules, team equipment must not have any political, religious, or personal slogans, statements, or images, and during FIFA Final Competitions, the captain of each team “must wear the captain’s armband provided by FIFA”.

Wales said the countries involved had been prepared to pay the fines that would normally apply to breaches of kit regulations, but FIFA’s sporting sanctions threat took things too far.

On November 17, 2019, SBV Excelsior footballer Ahmad Mendes Moreira, who hails from Guinea, was subjected to racial slurs during a match with FC Den Bosch at De Vliert stadium in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. The incident shook the football fraternity and raised questions about the 2020 Euro Cup as well (the Cup was later postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic).

The OneLove campaign was launched in the Netherlands on September 26, 2020 as a direct response to the racist attack on Moreira. The campaign stood against all forms of discrimination,while focusing on the power of the sport to bring people together, in spite of all their differences.

OneLove is part of Ons Voetbal is van iedereen, which translates to “Our Football Belongs to Everyone”— an initiative launched in February 2020 to counter racism and discrimination in the sport. The idea that “football has the power to unite people” was inspired by a quote from Nelson Mandela, not only one of the greatest voices for equality in history but also an ardent football fan.