Anyone who watches the World Cup afterwards can no longer be saved

Soccer is more than a game. is destiny is hope. Is corrupt. Is killer. Write the strangest stories. Few are beautiful. But nobody wants to read the ugly ones, nobody wants to see them, nobody wants to share them. Hardly anyone writes them down.

If the awarding of this year's soccer World Cup to Qatar, far removed from soccer, under dubious circumstances, and its relocation to what is typically a dark time of year for the state of Fifa in Central Europe, has led to something, then it's not only on the part of the usual critics of global soccer and its controversial central brain Gianni Infantino sheds light on the shadow world, on the dark sides of football.

In any case, at the end of the World Cup in Qatar, anyone who claims to have no idea about the price that had to and still has to be paid for the global entertainment event, about workers from India or all the African football talents who died because their dreams were shattered in Europe, who that claims suffers from a media denial of reality or must have spent the past one or two years in a coma.

But how do you summarize a global phenomenon like football in a series? Matthias Hartmann had an idea. Matthias Hartmann is an opera and theater director, he was once the head of the Burgtheater before becoming creative director at Dietrich Mateschitz's Red Bull Media House.

The idea for a kind of global network of series that should reflect the whole dark extent of reality and phantasm of football. The fact that she was born at Red Bull in Salzburg, which is one of the main soul sellers of the game for true football fans or those who think they are, is one of the jokes in television history.

In any case, Hartmann teamed up with Plinius Bachmann, who was dramaturge at the Burgtheater, and both soon evaluated a project that had never existed before in the global media world, but which could well be forward-looking.

"The Net" - a kind of rhizome-like, rampant franchise company for a series from many series, in whose narrative, production and financing structure the functioning of modern football is reflected. And which mainly tells of its darkness.

A joint venture between Red Bull Media and opera fan Jan Mojto's Beta Film (co-producer of Babylon Berlin, among others) was founded. First there should be five networked series, it has become only once an Austrian ("Das Netz - Prometheus"), a German ("Das Netz - Spiel am Abgrund") and an Italian ("Das Netz - Power Play"). It may continue in Brazil and Portugal and Scandinavia.

The stories intersect, scenes from one series encounter one in the other. Hartmann wanted to reflect the football phenomenon and its protagonists from different perspectives, from Zurich to the old forester's lodge in Köpenick. Tell different aspects in different aesthetics in different countries.

“Prometheus” – written and shot by Martin Ambrosch and Daniel and Andreas Prochaska, who have already made Wolfgang Petersen's “Das Boot” emerge from the depths of film history – deals with a kind of near-future story. Negotiations are not just about how football will continue, but also about doping and sports medicine in general.

At a time when players can be analyzed genetically from a young age with ever more precision as far as their biological prospects are concerned. At a time when hardly anyone has room for real convalescence. And the pressure on the players to get fit again as quickly as possible after injuries is almost inhuman.

It is about nothing less than eternal life and the formula for it. Corpses pile up. The story tangles that you get brain knots. It is difficult to get rid of them in their realistic artistry.

The spider in the "net" is Jean Leco, the president of Fifa, which is called WFA in the "net". He always wants to open up new markets for football, sells - which actually means turbo capitalization - as an ethical, cultural and social renewal, as an act to break the dominance of the white old footballers. Raymond Thyris Jean Leco is as charismatic, human, sleazy, dangerous and cunning, ambiguous and enigmatic as Gianni Infantino would have liked.

Leco wants to establish a World League, a world club championship. To strengthen the regions, he says. To end the dependence of the global soccer south on the dominant soccer west. Winning billions of hearts (and billions of customers, of course).

The thing about that is, of course, drivel. Leco, which he packs extremely skilfully and doesn't say offensively, wants to open up new markets. And even more new markets.

Any means is right for him. Bernd Lange - Hans-Christian Schmid's resident author - wrote the screenplay, Rick Ostermann (involved in four episodes of "Boot" appearing) directed.

A dream seller - that's what "Spiel am Abgrund" is all about - dies at the beginning in front of the Alte Försterei in Köpenick, the stadium of the Bundesliga leaders Union Berlin. His name was David, he was a talent scout, he brought children from Ghana and brought them into the leagues of Europe. At least he promised.

But hardly anyone made the career that he hoped for. Thousands perish in the process. Their passports are taken from them. It's like forced prostitution.

Then David wanted to get out. Then he was dead. Birgit Minichmayr puts all her gall in the lawyer Lea Brandstätter, who wants to clarify David's death and gets deeper and deeper into the WFA swamp.

There are many (too many) stories on the “net”. Anyone who sees this and reads the soccer misery special issue of the "Elf Freund" on the World Cup and then watches Infantino's World Cup is beyond help in this world.