The poll by the ARD public broadcaster said 21% of respondents agreed with the proposition.
“It is racist. I feel we need to wake up. Many people in Europe had to flee… searching for a safe country,” Nagelsmann said on Sunday.
The 36-year-old said he agreed with Germany midfielder Joshua Kimmich, who described the questionnaire as “racist” a day earlier.
“Josh [Kimmich] responded really well, with a very clear and thought-out statement,” Nagelsmann said at a briefing at his team’s training base.
“I see this in exactly the same way. This question is insane.”
“There are people in Europe who’ve had to flee because of war, economic factors, environmental disasters, people who simply want to be taken in," he went on.
“We have to ask what are we doing at the moment? We in Germany are doing very, very well, and when we say something like that, I think it’s crazy how we turn a blind eye and simply block out such things.”
ARD - the German public broadcaster - said it had commissioned the survey to have measurable data, after a reporter working on a documentary on football and diversity was repeatedly asked about the make-up of the national team.
The poll was conducted among 1,304 randomly selected respondents.
Karl Valks, sports director with the ARD station who commissioned the poll, said the company was “dismayed that the results are what they are, but they are also an expression of the social situation in Germany today”.
“Sport plays an important role in our society, the national team is a strong example of integration,” German media cited him as saying.
The current national squad has a number of players with mixed heritage, including captain Ilkay Gündogan and winger Leroy Sané.
Germany is hosting the Euro 2024 tournament later this month, and Nagelsmann said his team would be playing “for everyone in the country”. They will kick-off the competition with a clash against Scotland at Munich’s Allianz Arena on 14 June.
The controversy comes just weeks after the team’s kit manufacturer, Adidas, was forced to ban fans from buying German football kits customised with the number 44, after media raised their resemblance to the symbol used by World War Two-era Nazi SS units.
The SS was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis. Members of the SS ranged from Gestapo agents to concentration camp guards. SS duties included administering death camps where millions of Jews and others were put to death.
The downvote button is not the “I disagree” button. It’s a “this is irrelevant or destructive to the conversation” button. “I get what you’re saying but I disagree” to me indicates you don’t think my comment was either.
If the question was phrased as “Is the German national team diverse enough?” - which asks for the same opinion - would that be somehow better?
This type of finger-in-ear nonsense is the type of behaviour that leads to Germans supporting a genocide in 2024 and AfD’s success being a surprise.
Like it or not, that’s how people generally use it.
I treat it as a “I do not agree with this opinion” button.
And I do not.
Outright stating that you are trying to destroy conversation- congrats, you have provided a great example of a real reason to downvote.
My pleasure. Idownvoted this one as well, because I disagree with your take.
Example:
A user posts a brain dead take on a topic = I downvote because it’s not worth the effort to correct
A user posts an incorrect statement about a topic I can meaningfully contribute = I’ll not vote. I’ll instead conribute my stance.
A user posts a neutral post and maybe I even agree with it = Upvote and maybe a comment.
This any anything inbetween. Sometimes the example user is myself ;)
This isn’t reddit, there’s not a rule for what the downvote means. Further, there’s no consequences for downvotes, so I don’t see how it stifles conversation.
This attitude towards the downvote button came from reddit, because Reddit started hiding responses with an arbitrary number of downvotes, which most Lemmy clients emulate. That’s how it stifles conversation.
Reddit also has karma barriers for posting in various places, which literally stifles conversation, in that you will not be able to respond if you have enough downvotes. I don’t think it’s really comparable.