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Mainz (AP) - After the fuss about the Bundesliga game between 1. FC Union Berlin and Bayer Leverkusen, Wolfsburg sports director Jörg Schmadtke warned against assuming a general racism problem in football.
“We don't have a racism problem in football.
If we now try to artificially talk about it, I'm an opponent of it, too, ”said Lower Saxony's sporting director on Saturday evening in the ZDF's“ current sports studio ”.
“Everyone who works in sport lives with foreigners and grows up with them.
As a six-year-old I already played with foreigners on the pitch.
There were never any problems.
Not in the sport I know. "
After his appearance in the sports studio on social networks, Schmadtke was accused of playing down the issue of racism.
The 56-year-old said in the sports studio interview: "There are limits that shouldn't be exceeded, not even in terms of emotions."
In a conversation with the "Sportbuzzer" he added on Sunday: "I have not relativized racism in football and would never deny that racism is a social problem that affects football".
On the previous evening he “perhaps should have made it clearer” that his statements were primarily based on his own experiences.
The control committee of the German Football Association (DFB) announced at the weekend that it would investigate the racism allegations after the game in Berlin.
"There is a suspicion that the Berlin player Florian Huebner could have racially insulted his Leverkusen opponent Nadiem Amiri, whose parents come from Afghanistan," said the DFB on Saturday.
Amiri has already accepted an apology from Hübner.
Regardless of this, Union manager Oliver Ruhnert rejected the racism allegations.
"He did not say so," said Ruhnert on Saturday.
According to Amiri's team-mate Jonathan Tah, the words “shit Afghans” should have been spoken in the direction of the German national player Amiri.
Tah said he didn't hear the statement himself.
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The sports studio in the video
Sportbuzzer report