Arsène Wenger made a controversial statement this Sunday morning (4), when he said that teams that were concerned with “political demonstrations” were more likely to be eliminated in the group stage of the World Cup, as happened with Germany.
The German national football team has protested FIFA’s decision to ban the use of a rainbow and diversity armband. Before the match against Japan, for group E of the 2022 World Cup, in Qatar, the eleven starting players posed for the official photo with their hand over their mouth, in a sign of censorship. After the elimination, commentators from Qatar mocked the posture.
Head of FIFA’s football development department, Wenger took part in a technical study group meeting with the media. The former German player and coach Jürgen Klinsmann was present.
Klinsmann was analyzing some teams and the needs of the World Cup and cited Germany and Denmark as negative surprises from the group stage of the tournament.
“It’s a World Cup of adaptation. You have to be very good to adapt to new circumstances and you need mental and physical work. If you have difficulty adapting, especially mentally, to everything you encounter and the dynamism of this Cup , you will have problems and a negative surprise, as we saw with Germany, Denmark and other teams”, analyzed Klinsmann.
When the German finished the analysis, Wenger asked for the floor and added:
“You know that when you go to a World Cup you can’t miss the first game. The teams that have the experience to play in tournaments, like France and England, played well in the first game. Teams that were mentally ready, with a team mentality focus on competition, not political demonstrations”.
The former French coach also claimed that none of the big teams stood out enough in the first few games.
“As for the teams that haven’t been visually consistent, England is one of them. England were absolutely superb in the first game, struggled in the second game against the United States and then recovered when they needed to put on a convincing performance against Wales . There were big ups and downs. None of the big countries were disappointing”, he said.
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