AOn Sunday morning, Manuel Neuer was still working in his field: he was a goalkeeper. To water. Former Croatian water polo international Niksa Dobud, Olympic champion from 2012, threw on goal. Neuer, on the head of a water polo hat with a coat of arms made by his friend, held and received praise for his goalkeeper skills even without a bottom under his feet. The goalkeeper of FC Bayern and captain of the German national soccer team was also cheered on social media for his interdisciplinary excursion on a field set into the Mediterranean in front of an island near Dubrovnik.
Neuer apparently spends a few days there accompanied by his goalkeeper coach and friend Toni Tapalovic. The former professional goalkeeper, born and raised in Gelsenkirchen, has Croatian roots.
Later in the day, the mood changed: Now the social media transported a video of Neuers, in which he is also on the same beach. The water polo field can be seen in the background. But now he sings a Croatian song in a happy group of men. The song is called “Lijepa li si”, which translates as “you are beautiful”.
Controversial band “Thompson”
The song is the unofficial Croatian national anthem of right-wing Croatians. According to connoisseurs of Croatian culture, the lines are a fairly harmless and kitschy declaration of love to beautiful Croatia and to some parts of Bosnia-Hercegovina claimed by the Croatians.
However, the interpreter is a controversial figure: “Thompson” is named after a machine gun used in the war, frontman Marko Perkovic has been accused of glorifying Croatian fascism for years. He himself denies this and claims that his opponents systematically take his texts out of context. He was not a nationalist, but a patriot. He sang a song at least once when he was drunk, in which the Holocaust, which in Croatia also includes the destruction of Serbs, was glorified. However, Thompson claims that the sound recording is not real. He also condemned the lyrics of the song.
The song “Lijepa li si”, astonishingly fervently and text-reliably sung by Neuer, at least according to the impressions of the popular video snippets, was also played when Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Zagreb last year before the European elections. Merkel applauded as unsuspectingly as Neuer, possibly without a clue about the background.
So far there has been no reaction from Neuer or his management. The management of the goalkeeper only pointed out to the “Bild” newspaper that the Bayern professional did not speak the Croatian language.
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