German rightwing party apologises for Jérôme Boateng comments

Germany’s anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has apologised after its deputy leader was quoted as saying that, while most people admired the international footballer Jérôme Boateng, they wouldn’t want to live next door to him.

The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung quoted AfD politician Alexander Gauland saying that “people like him as a football player. But they don’t want to have a Boateng as their neighbour.”

Bayern Munich defender Boateng, who is teetotal and a practising Christian, has a German mother and Ghanaian father. He has been mooted as a stand-in for the national captaincy at the upcoming European Championships in France.

Widespread criticism led Gauland to release a statement denying that he meant to insult the player. He said he had not made the comments in the form quoted by the newspaper, adding: “I don’t know him [Boateng] and would never come up with the idea of denigrating his personality.”

But AfD’s party leader, Frauke Petry, on Sunday issued an apology on Gauland’s behalf, as well as tweeting: “Jérôme Boateng is a great footballer and rightly part of the German national team. I am looking forward to the Euros. #Neighbours.”

The president of the German football association, Reinhard Grindel, criticised Gauland, saying it was “simply tasteless” to abuse Boateng’s popularity “for political messages”.

Julia Klöckner of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party tweeted: “Better Boateng than Gauland as a neighbour. Typical AfD pattern: abuse, provoke – then try to relativise.”

Schalke defender Benedikt Höwedes, who started alongside Boateng in the Germany team that beat Argentina in the 2014 World Cup final, also commented on the affair on social media: “If you want to win titles for Germany, you need neighbours like him. #Defence.”

In the wake of Gauland’s comments, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung also interviewed Boateng’s neighbours in Munich’s exclusive Grünwald district. One local commented that “it’s mainly the normal people who have wild parties here, not celebrities”, while a grey-haired man on the same street described Boateng as “very nice and down-to-earth. His children go to the kindergarten around the corner. Very normal.”

Gauland’s comments are the second time within days that the multicultural makeup of Germany’s football team have become the subject of a media storm. Supporters of anti-refugee protest movement Pegida had recently expressed their outrage about outrage at the depiction of a black boy on the packaging of Kinder chocolate bars – seemingly unaware that the picture was a childhood portrait of Boateng.

Championship hosts France, who like Germany have won the World Cup with a squad full of players of multiethnic backgrounds, have also been dogged by a debate about ethnicity ahead of the tournament. In an interview with the Guardian, Eric Cantona last week accused coach Didier Deschamps of having overlooked players on racial grounds.