Fact check: No petition against migrant national team players
Key takeaways
- It has been claimed that following Germany's World Cup exit, some fans launched a petition seeking to ban "African" and "Muslim" players from the national team – and DW covered the story.
- Claim: Deutsche Welle reported that after Tah's missed penalty, some Germans were collecting signatures calling for a ban on "Africans" and "Muslims" from playing for the national team in the future.
- DW did not report on any such racist petition and we were unable to find any reports by other media outlets saying the anything similar.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
It has been claimed that following Germany's World Cup exit, some fans launched a petition seeking to ban "African" and "Muslim" players from the national team – and DW covered the story. This is not true.
https://p.dw.com/p/5GQTUGermany suffered another early exit at the World Cup Image: Sathire Kelpa/M.i.S./picture alliance Advertisement. It was another blow for the German national team: After group-stage exits at the World Cups in Russia and Qatar, Germany suffered another early exit on Monday. This time, at the FIFA World Cup 2026,a defeat to Paraguay, 4-3 on penalties in the round of 32. Midfielder Jonathan Tah missed the decisive spot-kick. Within minutes, numerous users wrote racist comments and insults on Tah's social media channels. Then, the following claim went viral:
Claim: Deutsche Welle reported that after Tah's missed penalty, some Germans were collecting signatures calling for a ban on "Africans" and "Muslims" from playing for the national team in the future. This was according to this Spanish-language post on X with more than two million views and this one with more than 900,000 views. The claim also circulated on other platforms such as Facebook.