FOXBOROUGH, Massachusetts, June 26 - World Cup winner and television pundit Bastian Schweinsteiger is rejecting claims his analysis of African football was racist.
The controversy began when Ivory Coast coach Emerse Fae said Schweinsteiger's comments calling African football "wild" and "unorthodox" could be labeled racist.
"I was talking about football, not people," Schweinsteiger stated through broadcaster ARD. "This is a football analysis-nothing more, nothing less. I certainly did not intend to offend anyone."
Schweinsteiger, a 2014 World Cup champion with Germany, serves as a pundit for ARD. Before Germany's match against Ivory Coast in Toronto, he warned Germany needed to be "prepared for it to be unpredictable at times."
He characterized the Ivorian team as playing "African football" that was "a bit unorthodox sometimes, a bit wild, not quite as tactical."
ARD Sports coordinator Axel Balkausky defended the analysis. "The discussion was about a footballing assessment, not the people themselves," Balkausky said. "I cannot detect any form of racism in his remarks."
Coach Fae responded after his team's 2-0 victory over Curacao on Thursday. "When you know football the way he knows it, then it's odd that he would speak that way... which we could call racist," Fae told reporters.
"But we will move forward and we'll try to ignore that," Fae added. "We will try to show on the pitch that Africa is not just the physical game. We are very technical as well and very tactical."