Wednesday 05 May 2021
Aogo takes “Sorry” with “But”
Lehmann loses another job
After his post on the Hertha BSC supervisory board, Jens Lehmann has also lost his role as Laureus ambassador. The former national goalkeeper gets to feel the consequences of his racist remarks. The affected Dennis Aogo accepts the apology with reservations.
Former football professional and today’s Sky expert Dennis Aogo described Jens Lehmann’s formulation as “disrespectful”, but accepted the former national goalkeeper’s apology. He spoke to Lehmann twice on the phone today, Aogo said in a message on social networks.
The 51-year-old Lehmann had previously lost his position as a member of the supervisory board of the Berlin Bundesliga club Hertha BSC. In addition, Sky and Sport1 announced that Lehmann would no longer be invited to these two channels – as was often the case in the past. The Laureus World Sports Academy also reacted and suspended the ex-keeper “from his role as Laureus ambassador for an indefinite period of time”.
Aogo said, however: “I accept his apology. I didn’t like what he wrote. I didn’t like the wording either, I also find it somewhat disrespectful because you don’t write something like that, no matter who it is to Message was addressed, “said the 34-year-old.
Lehmann had written in a message via Whatsapp to the former national player Aogo: “Is Dennis actually your quota black?” The racist sentence was mistaken with a smiley in front of the question mark. Aogo, who worked for Sky on Tuesday evening as an expert in the semi-final second leg of the Champions League of Manchester City against Paris Saint-Germain, had published a screenshot of the message in his Instagram story. He published the comment: “WOW you serious? @Jenslehmannofficial The message was probably not meant for me !!!”
It is not Lehmann’s first failure
Everyone makes mistakes, said Aogo, and demanded: “Everyone deserves a second chance. And I don’t think it’s right that everyone pounces on him now.” He believed that “he was sorry”. The subject was settled for him, said Aogo and announced that he would “meet with him as soon as possible”.
Lehmann had previously asserted that the undoubtedly racist statement was “meant positively”. His attempt to explain on Twitter had also caused harsh criticism. There Lehmann wrote of “a private message from my cell phone” almost as if he hadn’t typed it himself. “An impression was created” for which he apologized. He was accused of putting the blame on the recipients of his racist testimony.
Since the end of his career, Lehmann had repeatedly attracted attention with crude views and dubious statements. According to his own statement, he would have “found it strange” to have known about the homosexuality of his former teammate Thomas Hitzlsperger and said that he had not seen this outing because Hitzlsperger was “very intelligent” and “from his style of play was not the cause at all would have given “. In April 2020, he played down the dangers of Covid-19 disease for young people; in December, in a tweet that has now been deleted, he compared the number of flu deaths with the number of corona deaths, although there had long been scientific consensus that Covid-19 was far is more dangerous.
The football magazine “11 friends” concluded from Lehmann’s failure: “Jens Lehmann was once considered smart and ahead of his time. Since today at the latest and his racist message to Dennis Aogo, it is clear that he is one thing above all: completely out of time.”
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