The German players walked off the pitch after one of their player was racially abused. The incident took place when Germany was playing against Honduras in a friendly prior to the official game to kick off few days later. Jordan Torunarigha, a member of the German team was racially abused by a member of the Honduras team in the 87th minute of the game. The German team decided to walk away putting the game into 1-1 draw.
This raised serious questions about the lessons and upbringing of the players hurling racial slurs and the entire world called it dangerous for the beautiful game of football.
Jordan Torunarigha in his Hertha Berlin outfit. (Image Courtesy: Getty Images)
‘If one of our players is racially abused, it’s not an option for us to keep playing,’ Germany coach Stefan Kuntz conveyed. “It was hard to get him in, he was terribly upset because he said he was repeatedly racially abused. For us it’s clear, this violates our values, we cannot tolerate it. We’ll take our player completely under our protection”
Torunarigha’s club, Hertha Berlin, agreed to the decision by retweeting ‘that’s the only correct decision!’ The German coach further asserted, ‘After the situation calmed down a bit, the whole Honduras team came over to us on the bench and apologized. That was the end of the matter for us.’
ℹ️ The game has ended 5 minutes early with the score at 1-1. The Germany players left the pitch after Jordan Torunarigha was racially abused.#WirfuerD #Tokyo2020 pic.twitter.com/D85Q63Ynr9
— Germany (@DFB_Team_EN) July 17, 2021
The taunts towards one set of people to another isn’t anything new in this sport and yet again the world has seen such pathetic outburst. Racism in football has been a major conversation this week following the abuse towards three Black players on England’s Euro Cup 2020 team. England’s Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Sako have been the subjected to online racist abuse from England fans after they missed their respective penalty kicks in the Euro Cup final against Italy.
