Saturday 15th May 2021
After racism allegations
Union’s young scout criticizes the club
Bundesliga club 1. FC Union Berlin is shaken by serious allegations against the youth performance center. While the director refuses to answer the allegations, the head of scouting speaks of failures. There is a lot going on.
After the allegations against the management and some employees of the Union Berlin’s youth performance center, the head of scouting at the NLZ commented on the club’s failures. “I think communication is a fundamental problem at Union Berlin, but also in other youth training centers,” said Lars Mrosko of the “Märkische Allgemeine Zeitung” and BuzzFeed News. “At Union there is a lot of trouble not only in terms of communication with the players.”
It seems that those in charge of the club are not ready to deal with different clientele. The club could still learn here, said the 43-year-old, who is leaving the Bundesliga club in the summer.
Union had rejected the allegations on Tuesday and made a questionnaire submitted by journalists from BuzzFeed News and “Märkischer Allgemeine Zeitung”, including the association’s answers, public. The media published the results of three months of research under the heading “‘Quota of foreigners’ at Union Berlin? Serious allegations of discrimination against Bundesliga clubs”.
“But you can’t deal with young people like that”
The head coach of the NLZ, André Hofschneider, rejected the allegations in the “Berliner Zeitung”. “I want to win. The NLZ coaches want to win. We all want to bring the best players onto the pitch. And it doesn’t matter what religion, origin, skin or hair color they are,” said the 50-year-old. The allegations raised are “baseless”. “And I think that we are more damaging to the fight against racism, which is incredibly important, with these accusations that we are structurally disadvantaging players of Turkish and Arab origin,” said the ex-Bundesliga professional.
Hofschneider also admitted omissions. “Of course, mistakes happen in daily dealings with one another. Nobody is perfect,” he said. “But that never happens willfully or with intent, as we have been accused of. I push that far from us!”
Mrosko criticized the handling of talent at Union. “When players have good phases, he sometimes does extra units with them. When they have bad phases, the care is less,” he said of Hofschneider, who had previously also coached the club’s professionals. “That was probably already the case in the professional field. But you can’t deal with young people like that. These are two completely different areas.” Hofschneider decided “very emotionally”, added the scout. “André Hofschneider may have been shaped differently in his younger years and is now ultimately passing that on.”
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