Survey on the DFB team: Racists in Germany are becoming bolder

Opinion

One in five Germans would prefer it if more white players were playing in the DFB selection again. This is the result of a representative survey. However, the majority of respondents (66 percent) did not agree or did not agree at all with the statement “I would prefer it if more white players were playing in the German national team again.” And two thirds of the Germans surveyed think it is good that there are now many footballers in the national team who have a migrant background.

Anyone who is surprised that a fifth of the 1,304 respondents expressed racist views must have missed the AfD’s poll successes and the racist chants on Sylt and at folk festivals across Germany. In this respect, surprise is evidence of either ignorance or naivety.

WDR survey shows racism

WDR sports director Karl Valks defended the survey’s question against criticism and explained: “In interviews during the filming of the documentary ‘Unity and Justice and Diversity’, our reporter Philipp Awounou was confronted with the statement that there are too few ‘real’, light-skinned Germans on the football pitch. We deliberately did not want to report this anecdotally, but rather base it on well-founded data.” This is why the TV station commissioned the survey. “We ourselves are dismayed that the results are what they are, but they are also an expression of the social situation in Germany today.”

And Valks is right about that – as sad as it is: the proportion of the population that rejects xenophobia has fallen from 74.1 percent (2020/21) to 53.5 percent (2022/23). Mesut Özil already complained when he resigned from the DFB team in July 2018: “In the eyes of Grindel (the then DFB president, editor’s note) and his supporters, I am German when we win, but a migrant when we lose. Although I pay taxes in Germany, donate equipment to German schools and won the 2014 World Cup with Germany, I am still not accepted in society. I am treated as if I were ‘different’.” Apparently little has changed in this regard. On the contrary: fewer and fewer people in Germany seem to have problems publicly admitting their racism.

Criticism from Kimmich and Nagelsmann

National soccer player Joshua Kimmich sharply criticized the desire for more white national players: “Especially those who grew up in soccer know that this is absolute nonsense. Soccer is an example of how you can unite different nations, different skin colors, different religions,” said Kimmich on Saturday in the DFB team’s European Championship headquarters in Herzogenaurach. He called the opinion of this fifth “absolutely racist.”

National coach Julian Nagelsmann also voiced strong criticism: “I hope I never have to read anything like that from such a crappy survey again,” he said on Sunday at the DFB press conference before the European Championship friendly match against Ukraine this Monday (8.45 p.m./ARD). “I was shocked that such questions were being asked – and that people were answering them,” said Nagelsmann. He also thinks the survey results are racist. They are both right.

The fact that two thirds of those surveyed have no problem with the migrant background of German national players is actually the positive result of the WDR survey. For them, a person’s performance is what matters – not their origins.

Further sources: DPA, , .