The chairman of Fortuna D\u00fcsseldorf has defended the German soccer club\u2019s decision to pull out of signing Israeli player Shon Weissman after fan backlash over his contentious social media posts about Gaza, and said it\u2019s \u201cabsurd\u201d to accuse the second-division team of antisemitism.<\/p>\n
D\u00fcsseldorf announced Tuesday that it would not sign Weissman from Spanish team Granada despite having been in advanced negotiations.<\/p>\n
Fans had opposed the planned signing of the 29-year-old Weissman because of his social media posts expressing support for Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Weissman’s Instagram account was set to \u201cprivate\u201d on Saturday.<\/p>\n
In the social media post on Tuesday announcing the decision, the club did not say why it had called off the transfer. But Fortuna issued a statement on Friday saying Weissman\u2019s \u201cstatements on social media and the subsequent handling of them were not consistent with our values.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chairman Klaus Allofs defended the club’s decision before the team\u2019s match against Hannover on Saturday, but acknowledged that a faster process to reach the decision would have been preferable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say it was a mistake. We tried to sign a player and I think that\u2019s legitimate,\u201d Allofs said. \u201cIt\u2019s also part of our values, that we don\u2019t limit ourselves with prejudices and rule things out from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allofs said the club deliberately waited to consult with Jewish community members in D\u00fcsseldorf before deciding against the signing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The chairman of Fortuna D\u00fcsseldorf has defended the German soccer club\u2019s decision to pull out of signing Israeli player Shon Weissman after fan backlash over his contentious social media posts about Gaza, and said it\u2019s \u201cabsurd\u201d to accuse the second-division team of antisemitism. D\u00fcsseldorf announced Tuesday that it would not sign Weissman from Spanish team …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52628"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52630,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52628\/revisions\/52630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}