Saturday 17th July 2021
After racist insult
DFB team for Olympia cancels test game
The German team for the Olympic football tournament in Tokyo left the pitch prematurely in a test match against Honduras. According to the DFB, the trigger for this was a racist insult against Jordan Torunarigha. This is said to have been pronounced by an opposing player.
The dress rehearsal of the German Olympic footballers for the summer games in Tokyo was prematurely canceled five minutes before the end due to a racism scandal. According to the German Football Association, defender Jordan Torunarigha was racially insulted by an opponent in the match against Honduras in Wakayama, the German team left the field together when the score was 1-1.
The last test of the team of selection trainer Stefan Kuntz took place in camera. “That is the only right decision!”, Torunarigha’s club Hertha BSC tweeted about the abandonment of the game.
The game was scheduled for three times 30 minutes, the 23-year-old Torunarigha from Hertha BSC was on the field in both the second and third third. In the DFB Cup game of Berlin at FC Schalke 04 in February 2020, the defender had already been racially insulted with monkey sounds. The Revierclub was fined 50,000 euros by the DFB.
In the German team’s only test match before the Olympics, Honduras took the lead in the first 30 minutes, while Felix Uduokhai from Augsburg equalized in the last third. Kuntz used the game to rotate vigorously until it was canceled and deployed all 18 players in the squad. At the beginning, the coach relied on Marco Richter (FC Augsburg), Max Kruse (1. FC Union Berlin) and Nadiem Amiri (Bayer Leverkusen) in the offensive triple chain.
After numerous cancellations, the German team was only able to travel to Japan with 15 field players and three goalkeepers. A squad of 22 players is permitted. Tomorrow, Sunday, the DFB team will fly to Tokyo and move into their team hotel in Yokohama.
There the silver medalist from Rio 2016 will start the tournament on Thursday (1.30 p.m. / ARD, Eurosport and in the live ticker at ntv.de) against Olympic champion Brazil. The other group opponents are Saudi Arabia on Sunday next week and Ivory Coast three days later. The first two teams in each of the four groups of four reach the quarter-finals. Honduras meet China, Belize and Italy in Group B.
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