So far there has been little public anticipation of the World Cup in Qatar.

In the previous week, a poll by ARD attracted attention, which stated that 56 percent of Germans did not want to watch World Cup games on television.

50 percent of them named their general disinterest in football as the main reason.

The trend of the survey is clear: A few days before the start of the tournament on November 20th, Germany seems to have turned its back on the World Cup in Qatar.

Michael Horini

Football correspondent Europe in Berlin.

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But what do German football fans, the actual target group of a World Cup, think as a whole about this politicized World Cup, which in Germany is heavily influenced by moral, social and political questions in the run-up to it?

A representative survey by the Nuremberg consulting and market research company SLC Management, which is available exclusively to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, shows that interest in the World Cup among football fans is stronger than the last publicly drawn picture suggests: 75.1 percent of Germans Fans want to tune in at the World Cup in Qatar.

13.9 percent want to see all games, 41.7 percent selected games from all teams.

19.9 percent want to concentrate on the games of the German team in Qatar.

But 24.9 percent also state that they will not be involved in the World Cup at all.

One thing is clear: at no other World Cup tournament in the recent past have the sporting aspects receded into the background so clearly in the days leading up to the start of the tournament as before Qatar.

Even the dress rehearsal of the national team this Wednesday at the last international match before the World Cup in Oman (6 p.m. CET, in the FAZ live ticker for the national team and on RTL) is in view of the debates about the situation in Qatar and in the International Football Association (FIFA) stepped into the background.

The topics surrounding the World Cup are currently not set and determined by the athletes.

Since the trip to Qatar by Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), who is responsible for sports, German politicians have been debating with an intensity that did not exist before the World Cup in Russia or the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Faeser demanded that the awarding of major sporting events be linked "to the observance of human rights, to sustainability principles" and added with a view to Qatar: "There are criteria that must be adhered to, and then it would be better that that will not be assigned to such states.”

Qatar's Foreign Ministry then summoned the German ambassador and handed over a note of protest. In a FAZ interview, Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani complained about German "double standards" that different standards apply in football than in energy policy.

In Germany, on the other hand, Qatar's World Cup ambassador and former national soccer player Khalid Salman caused outrage last week, describing homosexuality, which is a punishable offense in the World Cup host country, as "mental harm".

His statement further strengthened the already strong public rejection of Qatar as World Cup host in Germany.

In the Bundesliga stadiums, numerous fans have called for a boycott over the past few match days.

That too has never happened before a World Cup.