« Un football africain un peu sauvage » : les propos racistes d’un ancien champion du monde font polémique après Allemagne-Côte d’Ivoire
Consultant for the German public television channel ARD, former midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger described the Ivorians' game as "orthodox", "unpredictable" and above all "a little wild".
On paper, Bastian Schweinsteiger was right. The 2014 world champion had predicted, speaking to the German public television channel ARD, a very close match against Ivory Coast, just before the Mannschaft's narrow victory (2-1).
The manner and the words chosen, however, are completely unacceptable. The former German midfielder, an ARD pundit throughout the World Cup, is at the center of a heated controversy after his racist remarks about the Elephants (Ivory Coast national team). Before the match, Bastian Schweinsteiger had described the Ivorian team's style of play as "African football," "sometimes a bit atypical, a bit wild, not quite as tactical."
"The formidable opponent we were expecting"
Very quickly, his statement, relayed in all German media, caused a scandal. "Behind terms like savage lie stereotypes older than football and which have racist and colonial roots," wrote author Philipp Awounou in the columns of Spiegel.
According to Die Deutsche Welle, the legend of the Mannschaft is "accused of using racist and colonial stereotypes reducing Black people to alleged physical attributes rather than recognizing their intellectual abilities."
Despite the scale of the controversy, Bastian Schweinsteiger has not yet apologized. "Ivory Coast was the formidable opponent we expected and demonstrated its technical and physical quality," he simply wrote on his social media after the match.
Not sanctioned by the ARD channel, the former Bayern Munich and Manchester United player was providing commentary for England-Ghana on Tuesday evening.
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