Jérôme Boateng wore the captain’s armband in the second half. Photo: Andreas Gebert
(Photo: dpa)
“I’m glad to be German. I’m proud, otherwise I wouldn’t have been here in the team and wouldn’t have been captain today,” said the world champion on a day of outcry. In the midst of the Germany-wide outrage over a controversial sentence by AfD Vice Alexander Gauland, the national soccer player was completely relaxed after the DFB team’s 3-1 defeat in the penultimate European Championship test against Slovakia.
“I can only smile about that. It’s sad that something like this still happens today,” said Boateng in his usual calm voice. The son of a Ghanaian and a German preferred to refer to the expressions of sympathy at the international match in the Augsburg stadium. “Jérôme is our neighbour”, decorated with a heart, was read on a banner. “Jérôme move in next to us” was written on a sign decorated with a Boateng portrait and the German flag, which three children held up.
“Of course it’s nice to read something like that,” admitted the 27-year-old. But the whole fuss and the statement “didn’t bother him that much” anyway, assured the Bayern star credibly.
The “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper” quoted Gauland as saying: “People like him as a football player. But they don’t want a Boateng as a neighbor.” The DFB colleagues then took a more drastic position than Boateng. “That’s outrageous,” said Sami Khedira, who, replacing the injured Bastian Schweinsteiger, had passed the captain’s armband to Boateng after being substituted during the break. “As national players, we live modern Germany like no other.”
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The topic is not discussed within the team, national team manager Oliver Bierhoff asserted on ARD. “It doesn’t bother him now. But of course it’s ugly now, because of course he gets into a discussion that he doesn’t need to get into,” said Bierhoff. Boateng’s family is now confronted with the issue. “You ask the neighborhood now – all these things that you don’t want in your private life,” said Bierhoff about the father of the twin daughters Soley and Lamia.
Unlike his half-brother Kevin-Prince, who decided to join Ghana’s national team after his time in the German youth teams, Jérôme, who was born in Berlin, has been playing for the DFB since 2009. The head of defense at FC Bayern played a key role in the World Cup triumph in the summer of 2014. And Boateng also wants to celebrate a title again at the European Championship finals in France.
With performances like the 1: 3 against the Slovaks, this will not succeed. “We started well, but we definitely have a lot to do defensively,” Boateng complained about tackling and defending when the ball was stationary. In any case, the four-time German champion Boateng now wants to concentrate entirely on sporting issues again.
EM schedule
EM participants
EM venues
National team schedule
Sporting management of the national team
International match record against 91 opponents so far
Provisional EM squad
Ascona Municipal Stadium
DFB team hotel in the training camp
Data and facts about Boateng
