German football has a bigger problem than a World Cup loss: Scapegoating
Eight years ago, it was Mesut Ozil, whose parents are Turkish. This time, German manager tries to blame Deniz Undav, who has Kurdish and Yazidi
Eight years ago, it was Mesut Ozil, whose parents are Turkish. This time, German manager tries to blame Deniz Undav, who has Kurdish and Yazidi heritage. Germany have failed to progress to the round of 16 in the FIFA World Cup for the third time in a row after losing to Paraguay this week. And yet again, the four-time world champions have – instead of diagnosing and treating the root causes of their failure – turned to a now familiar response: finding a scapegoat. Eight years ago, media figures and politicians from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party honed in on two players – Mesut Ozil and Ilkay Gundogan – and blamed them after the team stumbled at the group stage and failed to defend their 2014 title. The pair had accepted an invitation to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a state visit to the United Kingdom a month before the start of the World Cup in Russia. The pair, who are of Turkish origin, were pilloried for their decision. So vociferous was the criticism that there was speculation they would be dropped from the squad. When the team fell at the group stage, Ozil announced his international retirement aged just 29, citing the criticism in a letter explaining his decision. “I will no longer stand for being a scapegoat for his incompetence and inability to do his job properly,” Ozil wrote, referring to then-German Football Federation President Reinhard Grindel, who in 2019 resigned amid corruption allegations. Ozil accused Grindel of wanting him “out of the team” after Grindel criticised his meeting with Erdogan. Ozil, however, thanked the German national team coach Joachim Low and director Oliver Bierhoff for standing up for him and backing him.
Eight years later, in an interview with Magenta TV after the match against Paraguay, Germany manager Julian Nagelsmann tried to find a similar fall guy. He singled out Deniz Undav, a striker of Kurdish and Yazidi origin, for criticism. “We have to take the lead in the first minute of the game. We are four alone in front of the goal, and we just have to play the ball sideways, then you put it in an empty goal. Deniz [Undav] somehow puts it to the far post,” Nagelsmann said. “There are just little moments where you have to break the low block with a very simple action.” To their credit, German fans did not take the bait and focused their ire on Nagelsmann, whose baffling tactical and personnel decisions had been a talking point in the lead-up to the knockout round. Undav had never been in his manager’s good graces. The latest incident was the continuation of a fractured relationship between the Germany manager and the Stuttgart striker. In March, Undav scored the winning goal against Ghana in a friendly, but instead of praise, Nagelsmann criticised his fitness and link-up play. The former Bayern Munich boss was widely rebuked and later apologised to the player. At the beginning of the World Cup it looked like the story would have a happy ending. It took all of seven minutes for Undav to come off the bench and equalise against Ivory Coast in Toronto. He then also nabbed a winner late on. Without Undav’s five goal involvements in the first two World Cup matches, Germany might have finished in third place and faced elimination at the group stage. His substitution at the hour mark against Paraguay instead closed another dark chapter in the history of the German national team.
The BriefWire