Extreme right former footballer for President of Germany

O german extreme right-wing party Alternative to Germany (AfD) today appointed former Bayern Munich footballer Thomas Berthold as candidate to replace President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose term ends in February.

The party considered Berthold an excellent candidate for office, for which the conservative bloc of Chancellor Friedrich Merz appointed the policy Ilse Aigner.

Faced with Aigner's favoritism for relying on the support of the parties of the Government, the gesture of the AfD assumes an eminently symbolic character, according to the Spanish agency EFE.

Tino Chrupalla, co-leader of the AfD, said on social media that Berthold “has risen against the harmful policy of covid” during the pandemic.

“ A man who gave us, the Germans, an unforgettable title and an unforgettable experience, the 1990 World Football Championship, the year of reunification ", praised Chrupalla.

The leader of the far right also said that Germany needed a “superpartisan federal president” and a patriot, as the former football player described.

At the same time, he criticized Aigner, the candidate of the government coalition, for pursuing health policy and excluding cooperation with the AfD.

Berthold, born in 1964, played throughout his career as a defense in Eintracht Frankfurt, Bayern Munich and VfB Stuttgart and, in 1990, he joined the German team that became champion of the world in Italy.

During the covid-19 pandemic, he stood out as critical of government measures, which he qualified as exaggerated.

He publicly repeated theses of the Reichsbürger movement (citizens of the Reich), right-wing extremists who reject the legitimacy of the German state based on conspiracy theories.