Berlin The criticism of DFB President Reinhard Grindel and team manager Oliver Bierhoff is getting louder – and sharper. Green politician Cem Özdemir brought up the replacement of the head of the German Football Association. “We urgently need a new start in sports politics at the DFB, with new faces,” he wrote in a guest article for the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”.
The Chairman of the Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek, had previously demanded: “Bierhoff and Grindel have to resign if they have learned nothing else in their long careers than:” You lose as Özil “instead of” You lose as a team “.”
After the World Cup from the German national soccer team, Bierhoff and Grindel had shown distance to national player Mesut Özil in interviews last week. Özdemir accused them of “cowardice within the association”. “This association got lost in the Özil case from the beginning,” wrote the politician: “For weeks Özil has been made a scapegoat. You have to defend him against these accusations as well as against attacks from the right. “
The debate has been going on since mid-May, when Özil and his teammate Ilkay Gündogan had themselves photographed with the Turkish head of state Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In addition to the national team’s sporting crisis, there has been a social one.
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Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) is surprised in an interview with “Zeit” about the communication: “Someone at the DFB, which is full of smart and highly paid people, should have made sure that it didn’t escalate.”
The former federal commissioner for integration, Aydan Özoguz (SPD), warns of long-term consequences. “The debate is growing somewhat strange,” said Özoguz of the German Press Agency in Berlin. The fact that the topic is still being boiled up after two months shows the atmosphere in which the debate falls. “In recent years, many things have created tension in the German-Turkish relationship and reservations on all sides,” emphasized the SPD politician.
Otherwise, political Berlin is (still) holding back with statements. “How the DFB deals with the issue, the DFB must decide for itself,” said a spokesman for the Federal Ministry of the Interior responsible for sport. A government spokeswoman joined in, but emphasized: “And for the rest of the federal government: A team wins together and a team loses together.” The German Olympic Sports Confederation, which also has football under its roof, did not respond when asked .
Does the integrative power of sport suffer from the discussions about Özil, Gündogan and the photos with Erdogan? In an interview with the “Welt”, the former national player and today’s DFB integration officer Cacau shows that he is worried about this concern: “I hope that the whole integration work, which is going very well, especially in the amateur field, will not be damaged.”
Football is still a meeting place where people come together and integration can succeed, said Cacau. “That should not be called into question by this discussion,” said the native Brazilian, who has been a German citizen since 2009. “A situation has arisen that moves people very much, and you have to take the opinions of the grassroots seriously, especially when they are controversial and perhaps not what you want,” he stated.
Honorary captain Philipp Lahm, who is close to the DFB not least as an ambassador for the application for the EM 2024, was also critical. In an interview with “Zeit”, he warned that clear rules should be communicated in the national team. “Football is very important to us beyond the game. As a player, I have to know how to move within the German national team. “When asked whether it had been neglected to convey that, the 34-year-old said:” I could certainly have done better. “
And it is not even four months since Grindel praised the social importance of football in the highest tones. At the presentation of the DFB Integration Prize in Berlin in March, he said: “Integration work is a question of the future viability of our football.” This is true today more than ever.
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