Germany leaves field after alleged racist incident
Stefan Kuntz is happy with Germany's decision to exit the pitch after Jordan Torunarigha was allegedly racially abused against Honduras.
Germany's men's Olympic football head coach said his players had no option but to walk off the field with five minutes remaining of the match.
Saturday's pre-Tokyo 2020 friendly, which was played behind closed doors in Wakayama, was brought to an early close shortly after Felix Uduokhai had cancelled out Douglas Martinez's first-half opener.
A tweet from the official Germany team account read: "The game has ended five minutes early with the score at 1-1. The Germany players left the pitch after Jordan Torunarigha was racially abused."
The Honduras national team later tweeted that the incident "was a misunderstanding", but Kuntz is standing by his side's decision to take a collective stand by making its way off the pitch.
"When one of our players is racially abused, playing on is not an option," Kuntz said.
"It was a strong statement. After the situation calmed down, the whole Honduras squad came to us and apologised. That was the end of the topic for us.
"We talked to each other about whether we should do anything else, but Jordan said 'No, that was a strong enough statement'.
"We want to end the subject there because now we fly to Yokohama to prepare for our next game."
Torunarigha plays for Hertha Berlin at club level and has represented Germany Under-16 and every level up to and including the Under-23 side.
The 23-year-old was also the alleged victim of racist abuse in February 2020 in a DFB-Pokal match between Hertha and Schalke.
After this latest incident, Hertha offered its support to the centre-back, tweeting of the decision to leave the pitch in unison: "That is the only right decision!"
"His team-mates picked him up straight away and hugged him for a few minutes," Kuntz, who earned 25 caps for the Germany men's senior side in his playing days, said.
"He was very relaxed and you could tell he was happy to be with us. Afterwards we even started to joke a bit again.
"This team is great. It helps of course when you can see that your colleagues support you so much. It's also a strong statement from Jordan to say what we did was enough."
Germany faces Brazil on 22 July in its opening Group D fixture at the Olympic Games, before taking on Saudi Arabia and Cote d'Ivoire.