Ozil affair won’t threaten Euro 2024 bid: German FA boss

MONACO: The under-pressure president of the German Football Association (DFB), Reinhard Grindel, has told AFP he is confident the controversy over Mesut Ozil’s international retirement will not have a negative impact on Germany’s bid to host Euro 2024.

Ozil, capped 92 times, walked away from the Germany set-up in the wake of their disastrous World Cup campaign, complaining of facing “racism and disrespect” and being made a scapegoat for the team’s failure.

That was after Ozil and teammate Ilkay Gundogan, born in Germany but of Turkish origin, sparked a political storm in May by meeting Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and being photographed together.

Arsenal star Ozil took aim at Grindel in a statement announcing his retirement, saying that “in the eyes of Grindel and his supporters, I am German when we win, but I am an immigrant when we lose”.The DFB chief has vehemently rejected accusations against him of racism, and has dismissed calls to resign over the issue.

In July, Germany’s biggest selling newspaper, Bild, questioned whether Grindel staying on “represents a threat” to the Euro bid, with Turkey the other contenders.“Everyone in the DFB and in UEFA knows me very well. I have very deep trust that they can put this into perspective, so I think there will be no influence on the bidding process,” Grindel, 56, told AFP in an exclusive interview in Monaco.

The Ozil affair has generated a fierce debate about integration in Germany, a country with a large ethnic Turkish population, but Grindel says his stance on the infamous photographs was about defending his values.“In the end, it has nothing to do with whether a player of ours has a migration background or not,” he said.