In Athens, Greece, a 20-year-old soccer player for AEK Athens made a winning goal in a league game against Veria. Pleased, he raced to the sidelines, pulling off his shirt as he ran, faced the crowd, and snapped into a Nazi salute.
What? A Nazi salute?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbVk0jA1DdU
A Nazi salute in Greece, which was brutally invaded by Nazi Germany in WWWII? In Greece, where the resistance fought back from island to island? In Greece, where whole villages were dynamited or torched? In Athens, where 300,000 Greeks died of starvation?
A Nazi salute in Greece, where money is, um, tight, and there’s a movement to extract war reparations from Germany?
But in Greece, bizarrely, there’s also a neo-Nazi party, Golden Dawn. They say they’re not Nazis, just racist and nationalistic. They use Nazi symbolism such as black shirts, swastikas, and yes yes, the Nazi salute. They got 7% of the vote in the 2012 national election.
Screen capture of the salute
The salute didn’t go over well. At first player Giorgos (pronounced ZHOR hos) Katidis (pronounced DOOM kopf) claimed it wasn’t a Nazi salute, he was just… pointing at a sick teammate in the stands. Pointing supportively. Yeah. No?
It was promptly announced that Katidis (pronounced UH oh) was banned for life from representing Greece on any national team. Katidis then asked not to be used as a starter for AEK Athens while they decide whether to keep him – and made a lengthy statement of apology.
I would like to confess that I am totally unacceptable and I feel terrible for those I upset with the stupidity of my act. I made the mistake so I will be the one to pay for it, AEK is not responsible. So that is why I have decided to put myself out of the team because I have now realized how much I have offended the history of the club.
Also, I understand fully the reasons for the decision made by the Greek Football Federation to which I owe a huge apology as it has helped me to get where I am in the professional game. Unfortunately I cannot take the clock back but I want to clarify that I am not a fascist or neo-Nazi or racist. I have a step brother from Puerto Rico and all my family are from the Black Sea and have experienced racism in the worst ways.
There is no reason to look for excuses. I was completely wrong and I will pay for it with a lot of pain because despite being only 20 years old my career is now at risk. I sincerely apologize to my team mates and everyone involved with the club that I have insulted in not knowing exactly what I had done in my celebration. Nonetheless, the fact that I did not know what I was doing is no excuse.
I liked that he said he was totally unacceptable. However. It’s okay to say there can be no excuse – although he gives ignorance and “being only 20 years old” as excuses. But it’s not okay in this case to give no explanations. If he didn’t know what he was doing, what did he think he was doing?
I’m not the only one who wonders. AEK wants to know. They’ll hear from him and decide what to do about him at a board meeting next week.
His coach, Ewald Lienen, didn’t see the salute, and was taken by surprise. Lienen, a German with political interests in the peace movement and sustainable development, talked to Bild about the Mega-Skandal. “I was appalled and shocked. The young man has behaved in a very, very immature and completely stupid way. The pictures are amazing,” he said. But Lienen defended him: “He is a young man without political views.”
True, Katidis was “already disrespectful, arrogant, presumptuous.” True “Giorgos has…[made] very, very many mistakes, …lives entirely in his own world….[and] had a complicated childhood.” But he certainly wasn’t expressing a political opinion. “He wanted in a stupid and naive way to show strength and power.” (If I am ever totally unacceptable, I want Lienen to speak up for me.)
I saw this on the internet and now I do it without knowing what it means.
Elsewhere, Lienen said “He most likely saw such a salute on the internet or somewhere else and did it without knowing what it means.”
In the widely-seen AP photograph of the salute, you get a better look at Katidis’s many tattoos, including a girl with her hair in her eyes, and the phrase GET RICH.
Maybe it’s true that he’s simply an idiot, snatching at random memes. I’d actually like that to be the case.
he was pointing at a sick teammate! it was a stiff-four-fingers point. (it too is pronounced “uh-oh.”)
I totally accept his apology.