After giving away the free-kick which led to Toni Kroos curling home an epic late winner for Germany against Sweden, Jimmy Durmaz has hit back at racist abuse.
The 29-year-old has slammed those aiming abuse at him and his family, and has done so with a message in Sweden training with his coach and teammates all behind him for support.
While it was undoubtedly a silly and rash challenge to make as he seemingly lost his head in a tense moment, it doesn’t warrant any sort of abuse, especially the level of which Durmaz has revealed that he has received.
“When you threaten me, when you call me ‘Arab devil,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘Taliban,’ then you have gone far beyond the limit,” Durmaz said in the statement. “And even worse, when you go after my family, my children, threaten them. Who does such a thing? It is completely unacceptable.”
The Toulouse ace went on to reiterate that he was proud to be Swedish, having been born in the country and adopting them as his national team despite having family ties with Turkey.
While this is a great thing to do and a strong response from Sweden as a whole, they’ll be desperate to put that disappointment behind them now and try to bounce back to advance to the knockout stage of the 2018 World Cup.
They have it all to do now though as they’ll have to beat Mexico and hope that Germany don’t match their result against South Korea.
‘F*** racism’: Jimmy Durmaz, backed by Sweden’s squad, stood up to the online abuse he has received after his foul led to Toni Kroos’ winning free-kick goal. pic.twitter.com/Ky5SnCBFH9
— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) June 25, 2018