Dhe dress rehearsal for the German Olympic footballers for the Summer Games in Tokyo was canceled five minutes before the end. According to the German Football Association, defender Jordan Torunarigha was racially insulted by an opponent in the game against Honduras on Saturday 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!” Tweeted Torunarigha’s club Hertha BSC about the abandonment of the game. “If one of our players is racially insulted, it is not an option for us to continue playing,” said Kuntz. “There was a scramble five minutes before the end. I went straight to Jordan, he was very upset and said that he had been repeatedly racially insulted. That violates our values, we cannot tolerate that. So we decided to leave the field and tell the referee and the opponent. “
Honduras’ association spoke of a “misunderstanding” after the game. According to Kuntz, the team apologized to the DFB team after the cancellation. “That was the end of the topic for us,” said Kuntz. The game was scheduled for three times 30 minutes, the 23-year-old Torunarigha was on the field in both the second and third third. Honduras took the lead in the first 30 minutes, 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. On Sunday (10 a.m.) 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 against Olympic champion Brazil on Thursday (1.30 p.m. CEST in the FAZ live ticker for the Olympics, on ARD and on Eurosport). 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.
Torunarigha had already been confronted with racially motivated insults at the cup match between Schalke and Hertha BSC in February 2020. In the extension, the visibly angry Hertha defender saw the yellow-red card. The 23-year-old later filed a criminal complaint against unknown persons.
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