It wasn’t just the 1-1 draw against Spain that made German football fans happy in front of the television. During the ZDF broadcast, the former Bayern striker and current SpVgg Unterhaching coach, Sandro Wagner, was once again convincing as a knowledgeable co-commentator alongside ZDF man Oliver Schmidt.
Wagner is still very close to the current national team and actually brings real professional competence when assessing situations on the pitch. He is refreshingly honest and does not spare his former colleagues. When Jamal Musiala, for example, failed to put the ball across to his better-placed colleague Niclas Füllkrug when he had a promising chance in the second half against Spain, but instead scored himself, Wagner related this to the often voiced criticism of Niklas Süle in the game against Japan : “I think a scene where you don’t pass the ball over is just as bad as the positional error against Japan.”
Sometimes, however, the horses also go through with Sandro Wagner, which has now earned him a rebuke from ZDF. In the 79th minute of the game against Spain, Wagner said, as usual, flippantly: “I thought before that the whole corner was full of Germany fans. Only then did I realize it was the Qatari bathrobes.” Wagner alluded to the long white robes traditional in Qatar – called thawb – that many men also wear in the stadium.
In the public excitement machine Twitter, it was only semi-well received, some users rate Wagner’s statements as racism. That in turn was enough for ZDF to discipline its own experts. In a tweet from the ZDF “Sportstudio” it says almost stately: “Sandro Wagner’s statement about the Thawb unfortunately happened in an emotional phase of the game. It shouldn’t. We will discuss it.”
