When the German national soccer team plays in the Nations League game against Serbia in the evening, there is a good chance that anger will flare up among AfD representatives. Not because players lack commitment or talent, but because of the color of their skin. Or their last name.
For days, high-ranking AfD officials have been agitating online against the squad of new national coach Jürgen Klopp. Extreme right-wing politicians are active on several social networks, and statements about individual players are sometimes hurtful and grossly offensive.
AfD politicians usually try to at least maintain the appearance that their anti-immigrant statements are aimed at criminal immigrants. But the new derailments reveal blatant racism. And it is defended, including by members of the Federal Executive Board.
There is Kay Gottschalk, a member of the Bundestag since 2017 and co-founder of the AfD. On X he shares a tweet from the right-wing influencer Naomi Seibt. She posted two photos - one of the 1990 World Cup winning national team and one of the current squad - and indirectly wrote about the “Great Exchange”. Gottschalk gets on board with this and denies the current squad's Germanness: "Character traits, certain virtues and team spirit are cultural values that develop over centuries and are shaped by shared historical experiences," says the AfD politician.
Again and again the fairy tale about the exchange
The “Great Exchange” is a right-wing extremist conspiracy according to which political and Jewish elites are allegedly planning to abolish white Germans. In this story, migration is not an escape from war and hardship and existential hopelessness, but rather a controlled part of this alleged exchange.
Lena Kotré, a member of the Brandenburg state parliament and general secretary of the AfD-affiliated “Erasmus Foundation Brandenburg,” also suggests that the players supposedly cannot be German. “If this photo of the German national team irritates you, you are a case for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution,” she writes ironically about a group photo of the DFB team before the game against Greece.
The Lower Saxony GD activist Felix Wolf, right-wing influencer and also supporter of the “population exchange” narrative, shared a picture of the starting lineup against Greece – with players like Younes Ebnoutalib, Josha Vagnoman and Yann Aurel Bisseck. “With this team, Klopp wants to bring national pride back from the wrong people,” jokes Wolf. “I think it will remain an attempt.” Now he followed up with the new line-up before the Serbia game. “AfD is working,” he said – presumably because there are fewer blacks in the starting line-up this time.
Hatred of skin color
In the run-up to the AfD, the hatred is well received. Right-wing extremist actors describe the players online as the result of "interracial porn" or share AI-generated images of packaging with chocolate kisses in which only one is covered in white chocolate.
What's true: The proportion of national players with one or both parents of non-German origin is growing. At the men's World Cup in the summer, according to the Integration Media Service, 14 of 26 players, or 54 percent, had a migration history. At the 2024 European Championship in Germany it was 35 percent. But what the AfD supporters are hiding is that the national players all have German passports, the majority of them were born in Germany, all of them grew up here and have been working on their football careers for years. Not a single player from Klopp's squad fled to Germany themselves.
A member of the Federal Executive Board of all people tries to explain on Stefan Möller, a long-time AfD official in Thuringia and a close confidante of Björn Höcke, has been in the Bundestag since 2025 and on the party executive board since this summer. It's not about racism, but about the sense of one's own identity, he claims. And then brings skin color into play: He was shaped as a young man in a white Germany. “This identity does not change just because the prevailing politics is reorganizing the population structure through a migration policy as if it were senseless,” says Möller.
Thuringian party colleague Christopher Drößler makes it clear that it is not just about deporting asylum seekers who have committed criminal offenses. The AfD is the last attempt to restore orderly conditions. A multi-ethnic society is not as harmonious as a football team, he tweets. And demands: “Remigration to the maximum extent legally possible.”
The national team itself has so far paid little attention to the hateful tweets. That's what national coach Jürgen Klopp said on Thursday before the game against Serbia. “I have little time for stupidity in normal life – and no time for social media either,” said Klopp. He recommends that those who spread hate online use the sports locker room as an example. »Everyone is respected because of the right facts and not discredited because of wrong opinions. Point!
