Former Germany player Bastian Schweinsteiger said Friday he was talking about Ivory Coast’s style and not its players when he spoke last weekend about what his country’s national team could expect from its African opponent during their group match.Schweinsteiger called it, “A bit African football, a bit unorthodox, a bit wild, a bit perhaps also not so conditioned by tactics” and added it was unpredictable. Ivory Coast coach Emerse Faé slammed those comments on Thursday as being racist.“I was talking about football, not about people,” Schweinsteiger said in a statement released by German broadcaster ARD, the same outlet on which he made the remarks. “It’s a football analysis. Nothing more and nothing less. ... I certainly didn’t mean to offend anyone.”Some commentators criticized his comments as playing into racist stereotypes. Sports commentator Patrick Schnitzler wrote on Instagram of “racist prejudices that we are all passing on unnoticed,” and journalist Philipp Awounou, who is Black, wrote in Der Spiegel magazine that the characterizations played on old racist tropes rooted in colonialism. Awounou said he did not think Schweinsteiger is racist.
Germany went on to defeat the Ivory Coast 2-1 on Saturday.
