Giorgos Katidis, midfielder in the Greek Super League, has been banned for life from all Greece national soccer teams for giving a Nazi salute after scoring the winner for AEK Athens against Veria this past Saturday. Katidis claims that he didn’t mean anything by the salute:
‘I am not a fascist and would not have done it if I had known what it meant.’
The Hellenic Football Federation levied a lifetime ban on Katidis for the salute saying it was ‘a profound insult to all victims of Nazi atrocities’ and they condemned it ‘unequivocally and categorically.’
AEK’s German coach Ewald Lienen is standing by his player:
‘He is a young kid who does not have any political ideas,’ insisted Lienen. ‘He most likely saw such a salute on the internet or somewhere else and did it without knowing what it means.
‘I am 100 per cent sure Giorgos did not know what he did. He was crying in the dressing room seeing the reaction.’
