The Nationalelf goes to church
For years, Germany's football controversies revolved around immigration and identity. Felix Nmecha's celebration after the victory over Curaçao suggests the debate is entering a new phase.
Dear Reader,
It has become something of a German tradition. Every major international football tournament seems to produce a fresh argument about what Germany’s national team represents.
Ahead of the 2018 World Cup, we had the notorious meeting between two of Germany’s star players, both of whom had Turkish roots, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “To my president, with respect,” midfielder Ilkay Gündogan wrote on a signed Manchester City shirt. Photos of the players smiling alongside Erdoğan were published by the Turkish strongman’s political party ahead of his re-election campaign.
The incident came at a time when Erdoğan was imprisoning critics — including a German journalist — and had recently attempted to prosecute a German comedian who had written an unflattering poem about him. The meeting caused indignation across the political spectrum. The AfD demanded that these “passport Germans” should go and play for Turkey, since that was where their loyalty lay.
The entire build-up to the tournament was overshadowed by the controversy. Gündogan distanced himself, describing the meeting as a matter of politeness towards the president of the country his family came from. Mesut Özil refused to do so. The pair were whistled by their own fans during warm-up matches. At the tournament itself, the Nationalelf — reigning world champions at the time — slumped out in the group stage after three lifeless performances. Özil and Gündogan, two of the team’s most gifted players, barely touched the ball.
Özil resigned from the national team shortly afterwards. When he married a year later, Erdoğan officiated the ceremony.
At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the political gesture was saved for the opening day of Germany’s campaign. After a heated debate about gay rights in the host nation, the national team wanted to wear a rainbow armband in solidarity with LGBT people. When FIFA warned that players would be punished for doing so, the entire team covered their mouths during the official photograph before their opening match.
Germany also exited at the group stage in Qatar, much to the delight of many local fans. During the team’s final match, spectators held up pictures of Özil and covered their mouths in mockery of the German players. According to Qatari media, they were protesting against “Western hypocrisy”. Domestically, the gesture was celebrated on the Left as an act of solidarity and derided on the Right as proof that the team was too distracted by woke politics.
Around other recent tournaments we have had an AfD leader insisting that most Germans would not want Jerome Boateng, the son of a Ghanaian father, as their neighbour and claims that one of the current squad is a secret Salafist because he posted a picture of himself kneeling on a prayer mat while pointing towards the sky.
Now we know what the controversy of the 2026 World Cup is.
In Germany’s match against Curaçao, a Caribbean island of around 150,000 people, one player in particular caught the eye. Felix Nmecha scored a superb opening goal before celebrating by dropping to one knee and mimicking the act of placing a crown on the ground before him.
What exactly the celebration meant was no mystery. Before the match, Nmecha was spotted walking around with a Bible in his hand. Once the final whistle had blown, he and teammate Jonathan Tah joined several members of the opposing team for something one seldom sees on a football pitch: an impromptu prayer circle.
Afterwards, the 25-year-old explained: “In the game we are opponents, but after the game we are all Christians, we are all brothers.”
Nmecha, the son of a Nigerian father and German mother who is a known admirer of the assassinated American evangelist Charlie Kirk, has added a new twist to the debate around Germany’s changing national team.
Where previous controversies were often framed around fears that immigration was undermining the squad’s sense of intrinsically German values, Nmecha is being embraced by many on the Right as a saviour. Here, they argue, is the son of an African immigrant who is willing to stand up for Christian beliefs at a time when native Europeans are too embarrassed to do so. With one fearless gesture, he has single-handedly beaten back the forces of the Great Awokening.
His decision to dedicate his goal to Jesus amounted to a defence of “the foundations of Western civilisation”, enthused the conservative commentator Julian Reichelt. It was a stand for “a religion of freedom against a religion of submission”, he added, somehow managing to crowbar Islam into the debate.
“Signs and wonders still happen,” tweeted AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch in a state of rapture. “There is hope again. And that hope has a name that leftists want to erase: Jesus Christ. And now he stands at the heart of our German national soccer team.”
However, not everyone was quite so delighted.
At the home European Championships in 2024, when the Nationalelf finally rediscovered its form, the sight of dark-skinned players smashing in goals while wearing the German jersey lifted some progressives into an almost transcendental state.
“This team is truly amazing,” gushed Green lawmaker Katrin Göring-Eckardt after Germany beat Hungary. “Just imagine for a moment if it were made up entirely of white German players.”
Now that some of those non-white athletes are openly professing a form of Christianity that many progressives hoped would fade away in an increasingly diverse Germany, the mood is less enthusiastic.
“A red card for Jesus!” declared the left-wing daily taz. Nmecha carries his faith around in front of him “like a monstrance”. We have all seen him showing off his Bible, the newspaper sniffed. “Apparently, he isn’t just traveling around the US as a football player, but also as a missionary.”
Curiously, the Left, usually so keen for footballers to stand up for noble causes, now just wants them to stick to their day jobs. The Right, so concerned that Muslim footballers might be bringing illiberal attitudes into the dressing room, seems to have forgotten that Nmecha has suggested the Pride movement is the work of the devil.
The Nationalelf cannot avoid it. It has become the infantry force in a culture war. The only question is which side it is fighting for.
Nmecha's goal celebration came at the start of a 7-1 thrashing. If that's not a sign of which side God is backing, then I don't know what is.
This article made my day!