German football has sunk deep into crisis after another shocking early exit. The German side crashed out of the World Cup despite a last 4-2 victory. The team has been booted out of the tournament with a humiliating defeat from Japan last week and barely managed to get a draw versus Spain. Such sporting humiliation highlights a reality that a country and its authorities must treat “all” of their players with dignity and respect, which is often not the case in European teams, particularly in Germany.
There are many reasons for Germany’s lackluster performance at FIFA's 2022 Qatar World Cup. This world cup has been their worst in four years and it has been a grim déjà-vu of how “the Panzers” left the championship after the shocking group stage defeats in 2018.
Germany’s footballing failures highlight that players from culturally diverse backgrounds have to be better accommodated and treated.
As Germany stumbled from one football defeat to the next, an increasing number of fans rightly reminded Germany about their shamefully racist dog-whistles hurled at ethnic Turkish Mesut Özil and the nation's anti-discrimination policy of being two-faced, evoking the struggles of the former super-star who quit the German national team in 2018 after being questionably treated and politically scapegoated for its catastrophic display and ouster in Russia 2018. Many Qatari fans struck back at Germany by holding up powerful hand-drawn sketches of former German legend Özil while covering their mouths with their hands pointing fingers at Germany's dubious silence over racism against Özil.
Özil, a German national born to Turkish immigrants, blamed the country’s football association, Deutscher Fussball-Bund (DFB), and biased media for racism in their treatment of people with Turkish roots. “I am a German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose,” Özil stated back then.
Despite scoring impeccable goals for Die Mannschaft and being a triumphant member of Germany's 2014 World Cup-winning squad, his Turkish roots made him an easy target for abuse reflecting broader structural biases in Germany and a Europe, which is politically lurching to the far-right with Islamophobia and anti-immigration as toxic weapons as recent election outcomes in Sweden, Poland, Britain, Italy and Hungary bitterly attest.
Özil's abuse commenced prior to the 2018 World Cup when he and his German squad teammate Ilkay Gündoğan – who is also of Turkish descent – took pictures with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as they had every right to. He was thereafter booed by many German hooligans during a World Cup warmup match. The abuse of Özil, in particular, augmented after the championship, stoked by the incendiary statements from Germany team manager Oliver Bierhoff and the federation president at the time, Reinhard Grindel.
Özil, vociferous in his unyielding commitment to the human rights of oppressed Palestinians and Uyghurs, has become a symbol of resistance in most of the Muslim-majority countries. Özil, by bravely being the voice for the silent masses, is using his fame to raise awareness for crucial matters and causes. Any progressive pluralistic society must praise such activism rather than frown upon it.
In 2018, Özil declared he was quitting the German squad on Twitter, writing that “people have used my picture with President Erdoğan as an opportunity to express their previously hidden racist tendencies.” Özil observed that "For me, having a picture with President Erdoğan wasn't about politics or elections, it was about me respecting the highest office of my family's country.”
He also stated that his critic and previous German captain Matthäus, who is Caucasian, was photographed with Russian President Vladimir Putin during FIFA World Cup Russia 2018 without that facing any fuss or furor. Prior to Russia’s February incursion into Ukraine, German politicians maintained cordial rapport with the Kremlin. Previous German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder retained sanguine diplomatic relations with both Putin and Erdoğan.
It is heart-wrenching that German players of Turkish origin, who contribute so much to German football and all other aspects of society have to face such deplorably regressive behavior in 2022. Sezgin Aksakal, the former Hertha Berlin midfielder, and Mehmet Scholl, a German-born Turkish footballer who won an unprecedented eight titles with Bayern Munich have set the standard of excellence and proven to represent the very best of sportsmanship, acknowledge the inherent racism in German football and overt favoritism toward ethnically German players.
Other footballers also lament the racism they face in German football. In June 2022, South Korean Golden Boot winner and current Tottenham Hotspurs striker Son Hueng-Min confessed the racism he was subjected to as a teenage footballer after joining Hamburg’s youth team. He said his most memorable career moment was South Korea’s amazing victory over Germany and how he felt he avenged the years of racism he suffered while playing in Germany. Another German footballer, Antonio Rüdiger, who is Black, openly admitted his own lived experiences with racial slurs and abuse.
Germany’s colossal failures at the 2018 World Cup morphed into a collective psychological trauma for many because of how they tragically fell after the squad returned to Germany. An unsavory blame game raged between fans, the commentariat, and DFB's top brass, all swiftly honing in on Özil's track record as the root cause of the Mannschaft’s ills. Their selective amnesia made them collectively forget how Özil was a former global champ who conjured up a record seven opportunities as Germany lost to South Korea. Most of his teammates conveniently remained mute, and football is meant to be a team sport not just in letter but in spirit. Despite Özil's outstanding track record, his critics remained stubbornly unhinged.
International fans raising their concern for footballers like Özil, Gündoğan, Aksakal, Scholl, Son and Rüdiger underscores the divisive nature of German citizenship and immigration rules.
Özil’s suffering from racism in Germany is linked with the state's arcane citizenship rules. As Germany’s major cultural minority of 3.7 million people are of Turkish descent, Turkish Germans such as Özil have been prey to Germany's gruelingly excruciating sociological characteristics. The bitter truth remains that Özil was penalized for his pride in Türkiye, very natural given that this is the country of his cultural and social heritage. One thing no one can snatch away from him, ever.
Türkiye and West Germany inked a migrant labor pact in 1961 yet people of Turkish descent are treated as second-class citizens. So let us do away with the fallacy that Europeans “let” their migrants in. They desperately required people to rebuild their war-ravaged countries, providing in return sub-human wages and appalling living conditions.
These same descendants of that racism are still processing the collective trauma of the discrimination and prejudice that was born. One reality no one can snatch away from us as individuals is that irrespective of cast, color, religion or creed, we decide who we are.
Passionately reminding us that minorities have multiple identities that must be celebrated and not frowned upon. Tolerance must be the rule rather than the exception.
