BERLIN (AP) — Germans are debating whether their national team’s insufficiently lusty singing of its national anthem has anything to do with its loss to Italy at the European Championship.
Wolfsburg coach Felix Magath wrote in a weekend newspaper column that “those who saw how fervently the Italians sang, even screamed, their anthem could sense the will with which they would approach the following 95 minutes.”
Conservative lawmaker Hans-Peter Uhl was quoted Monday as telling the Bild daily it was “shameful that not all our players sing along with our anthem.”
However, Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, who’s responsible for sport, sounded a note of caution. He told Bayern2 radio that “one should not, after losing a semifinal, look for every possible reason why things didn’t work out.”
