The headline belongs to Josu at Malaprensa, who has the marvellous story of how Guus Hiddink’s comment in Bild that it was unfortunate that Mesut Özil had distinguished himself with a bad pass was translated in the Spanish press as Hiddink regretting a false passport having been required to enable him to play for Germany.
Hiddink is a man of exquisite tact, and Marca and As’ difficulty with the polysemes Pass and falsch is surely nothing more than a case of ignorant clowns in a hurry, but there is a disturbing background to all this. Özil was born in Gelsenkirchen of Turkish parents and gave up his Turkish passport in order to be able to play for Germany. The German nationalist-socialist NPD’s press spokesman labelled him a Plaste-Deutscher, a plastic German, and an Ausweis-Deutscher, an ID-card German, leading the German Football Association to contemplate legal action.
Update
Footy-mad Margaret Marks has the undisputed truth:
Actually, since Bild was avoiding anglicisms – if not particularly on that date – it wasn’t a bad pass, nor a fake passport, but the wrong passport – if Özil had chosen the Turkish passport, he would have been in Hiddink’s Turkish team.
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