April 25 – An unusual spat has broken out in Germany after leading club Schalke 04, sponsored by Russian energy giant Gazprom, was criticised for considering visiting Russia amid increasing tensions with the west over the crisis in Ukraine.
Club president Clemens Toennies (pictured) suggested in an interview published in a German newspaper that he would accept an invitation to take the team to visit Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow. “The team would love to see the Kremlin and is interested in Moscow,” he said. “And the Russian president is interested in Schalke and invited us.”
Politicians responded with outrage. “In the current situation, accepting an invitation to go to the Kremlin and allowing yourself to be exploited does not show much tact,” Peter Tauber, General Secretary of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), told Bild daily.
Fellow CDU politician Gunther Krichbaum, head of the parliamentary Europe Committee, said accepting the invitation would mean “Tönnies is probably misusing Schalke 04 for his own business interests.”
Other politicians also urged Toennies to reconsider. His spokesman responded by suggesting the possibility of meeting Putin had been part of a long-standing invitation from Gazprom whose sponsorship is worth about 17 million euros a season.
But by Thursday, Tönnies had toned down his stance. “There was never and there is no commitment to such a visit,” his spokesman said. “This would not be appropriate in light of the current political situation.”
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