PHILADELPAHIA, June 25 – Ivory Coast coach Emerse Fae said comments from World Cup winner Bastian Schweinsteiger could be labelled racist after the ex-Germany midfielder described African football as “wild” and “unorthodox”.<\/p>\n
Schweinsteiger is a pundit at the World Cup for German broadcaster ARD. Last week, before Germany beat the Ivorians in their second Group E fixture in Toronto, he said that Germany needed to be “prepared for it to be unpredictable at times”.<\/p>\n
He said Ivorians played “African football”, which he characterised as “a bit unorthodox sometimes, a bit wild, not quite as tactical”.<\/p>\n
Schweinsteiger was not immediately reachable for comment through his representatives or through ARD on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Asked for a reaction after Ivory Coast beat Curacao 2-0 on Thursday to finish runners-up behind Germany and advance to the last 32 at the World Cup, Fae told reporters he was disappointed by Schweinsteiger\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
“When you know football the way he knows it, then it\u2019s odd that he would speak that way … which we could call racist if we were calling a spade a spade,” said Fae.<\/p>\n
“But that’s the way it is. Nowadays, we live in a world where everybody is free to say what they think.<\/p>\n
“I can’t change his perspective. I can’t change the way he talks. But all I can do is show on the pitch that Africa is not just the physical game. We are very technical as well and very tactical.”<\/p>\n
Schweinsteiger has not publicly addressed the backlash over his comments about Ivory Coast\u2019s style of play, according to multiple media reports.<\/p>\n
Fae said he had been a fan of Schweinsteiger\u2019s playing style when he was in his prime at Bayern Munich and Manchester United, so much so that one of his friends nicknamed Fae “Bastian”.<\/p>\n
“All I can hope is that this was just a clumsy statement that it wasn’t particularly reflective of what’s in his mind, but, you know, such is life, that is football today.<\/p>\n
“Nowadays, there are a lot of pundits, a lot of former players who are also looking to create a buzz.<\/p>\n
“He was a worldwide star but has kind of been forgotten a little bit, so he’s trying to create a buzz. Good for him, if that’s what he thinks. He\u2019s free to do so. But we will move forward and we’ll try to ignore that,” Fae added. REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPAHIA, June 25 – Ivory Coast coach Emerse Fae said comments from World Cup winner Bastian Schweinsteiger could…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":760732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-760731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/760732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}