Focus (the German news magazine) laid out the sports story today, which will go to page one on internal politics and set up a long-term problem for German soccer.
Mesut Özil resigned from the German national team this weekend. You could classify him as a Turkish-German....fully integrated into German culture and sports....29 years old, and probably one of the ten best players in Germany today.
For several months, things have been brewing. He had a picture taken of him and Turkish President Erdogan. It got into the public, and because of this anti-Erdogan slant that's been going on....people were anti-Mesut.
This even reached into the headquarters of German soccer. Accusations of racism came against the soccer chief of the German sport league, Reinhard Grindel.
What happens now? There are a fair number of Turk-Germans who live in Germany and have watched the whole thing play out. I suspect in the minds of most....Mesut got a raw deal, and they might have a problem with league games as they play out.
How the German sports folks handled this? I would suggest that it was the act of 12-year-old kids pretending to be adults. They should have seen this coming and been prepared. By taking politics into the sports arena....they've made the sport into something less-than-a-sport. This week? I expect this to be one of the top three topics of the week, and it might drag on for months.
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