Real Madrid icon Toni Kroos – ‘Germany is not the same country it was due to mass immigration’

Politics have been a major theme at Euro 2024 in recent weeks, and while Toni Kroos will be watching the semi-finals, an interview released just before the quarter-final against Spain has blown up on social media. Turkey defender Merih Demiral and Mirland Daku have been banned for espousing a far-right symbol and insulting Macedonia and Serbia respectively, France players have spoken out en masse against the far-right in their home country during an election period.

Speaking on the Lanz and Precht podcast, Kroos said Germany had changed since he last lived in the country in 2014, for which he in part explained using mass migration. His words have been misquoted in many places, but Ken Early provided a detailed translation in The Irish Times.

“My whole family is still in Germany, I think it’s a great country, I love being there, but it is, at least, no longer quite the Germany that it was perhaps 10 years ago when we left.”
“Well, a feeling has definitely changed, a feeling, because I can’t even contribute much more than a feeling… a feeling of… how can one best express it without being put in a corner [laughs] a feeling of… if I were to compare it with Spain…”
“I have a 7-year-old daughter, for example. When she gets older, when she turns 13, 14, 15, and if someone were to ask me right now, ‘Would you let your daughter out in Spain at 11 p.m? When she’s 14 or in a big German city?’, I think I would tend to favour Spain at the moment.”

Kroos spoke positively of migration as a concept, but rather explained that it had not been handled in the best way.

“Of many, that’s my feeling, of many problems, I’d say this big issue of migration is also a – how should I put it – that one has the feeling that ‘it’s full’. I think it’s a clear theme. I think… we’ve actually already shown, whether back in 2006, or again today, the open arms with which this country actually welcomes people. And I think that’s sensational, I think it’s really great. Only I think it was – it was just too uncontrolled. I don’t think we managed to achieve this fundamentally very positive approach or idea, which I support 1,000%, because I think it’s sensational that people from outside come to us and are happy. But I think it was simply underestimated, and then in the end it was just too uncontrolled.”

“Of course, when a lot of people come there is always a percentage – and the Germans are the same, among the Germans there is also a percentage who are not good for us and are not good for themselves. And that is exactly the case with a lot of people who come. If you can’t distinguish between those who are not good for us, then in the end it becomes difficult. And then of course the attitude of the Germans is always becoming more and more divided on this topic. Although the basic idea that people are coming – who we obviously need! – that they are here is sensational, and good.”

Certainly Kroos is not one to shy away from giving his opinion on difficult topics, but as the far-right records its best election results since Adolf Hitler came to power, it’s a delicate and sensitive issue in Germany